The Trust Factor
A daily lesson that focuses on achieving unparalleled success in life using ancient wisdom in modern times.
We will be discussing critical concepts as they are laid out in the book Sha'ar Habitachon - The Gate of Trust. Written 1000 years ago, the author reminds us of the values and wisdom that have allowed humanity to thrive throughout history.
The concept of trusting in a higher power that exists purely for our benefit, puts us in the drivers seat with absolute confidence to achieve greatness.
Eliminate: Fear, Hatred, Anxiety, Depression, Jealousy, Greed...forever!
* Note that some terminology will be in the original Hebrew or Aramaic which I will always follow with the English translation.
The Trust Factor
Episode 105 - When I stepped back, God delivered our highest food safety score ever.
Surrender isn't weakness—it's the ultimate strength.
Have you ever wondered what might happen if you stepped back and trusted a higher power with the outcome? After nearly two decades in the snack food manufacturing business, I faced our annual food safety audit with a completely new approach. Instead of micromanaging every aspect as I'd always done, I made all the necessary preparations but then deliberately detached from the process. The result? We achieved the highest food safety score in our company's 20-year history.
This powerful lesson in divine trust didn't happen overnight. For years, I've been developing my "trust muscle" in various aspects of life, recognizing that while effort matters, the outcomes ultimately rest in God's hands. The audit was simply my latest opportunity to apply this spiritual principle to my business, understanding that my preparations were necessary but my obsessive control was not.
What's truly fascinating is how this approach helps clarify what genuinely matters. As I've discovered, roughly 98% of what we worry about is just noise and distraction. The things that truly deserve our focused attention—our relationships with family, our parenting, our community involvement, our spiritual growth—often flourish when we bring balanced effort followed by faithful surrender.
Whether you're managing a business, raising children, or navigating personal challenges, there's profound wisdom in recognizing the limits of our control. Make your best effort, then surrender the outcome. Watch what happens. Stay attuned to the results. This isn't about abandoning responsibility—it's about acknowledging a deeper reality about how the world actually works, and finding your place within that divine order.
What area of your life might benefit from less control and more trust? Try this approach and see what unfolds. Your own highest score might be waiting just beyond your willingness to let go.
Good morning everybody and welcome to the Trust Factor podcast. I hope you guys are doing well. Remember, this is the podcast that guarantees your success when you implement its divine teachings. Yesterday I promised you that I was going to include you in what was going on in my life as an example of how I deal with this concept of making an effort not too much, not too little, just right and giving over control to the big boss. So here's how it goes.
Speaker 1:For those of you who don't know, I've been in the snack food manufacturing business coming on 20 years in one fashion or another. About 15 years ago or so, I started manufacturing, and when you manufacture in Canada and around the world, there are food safety standards. Some companies don't have any food safety standards and they're still allowed to operate from their garage or their basement. And other companies, when they grow and start to sell nationally or internationally, are forced to get into what's called the Global Food Safety Initiative, gfsi, where we start to become audited by outside, independent third parties on an annual basis. They come in and they tear our business apart. They tear production apart, they look into record keepings and management all kinds of different questions. Some audits take many days. Mine have typically taken two days, two full day audits. Now, in years past I've been intimately involved in those audits and here's what I do. I maintain control over what goes on in terms of cleaning and preparation in my plant. Sometimes we know when the auditors are coming and sometimes we don't know. It's an unannounced this year was an unannounced audit. That means they've got a three-month window to show up at any given time and I have to be prepared for that and the plant has to be operating at its peak. And that's what we do. We spend their time. I spent my time, day and night, working with staff, going through the plant, making sure everything gets addressed, keeping track of what's been done and what needs to get done. I normally hire a third party consultant to come in and help us with that, to guide us, to go through and look at what I've looked at and see things that I haven't seen, Look at our paperwork and see what's missing or what hasn't been completed properly, what needs to change. That person comes in on a regular basis. Now, even though I do all of those things leading up to the audit, I'm still intimately involved in the audit. I'm the guy, I run the company, I own the company and so for me I have to be there. I feel a sense of duty and obligation to be in that meeting for the two days, to spend as much time as I can in there answering questions and dealing with concerns and just being another voice or another opinion, another source of answers in that room.
Speaker 1:This year, my friends, was different. This year I took it upon myself to detach from it almost entirely, and here's my rationale, because nothing changed. I spent the same amount of time working to be able to work with my staff, to be able to go to the back and look at the things that are getting done and give them pointers and make sure that everybody writes things down and they know what needs to get done. And I've done that, as I've done in years past. And I also hired an outside consultant and I paid her many, many thousands of dollars to be able to come in for a very short period of time leading up to the audit to make sure that we are on track. And I've got a partner who I put my faith in to be able to help out when needed. And so this year I said I'm done, this year I am detracting, I don't need to be there.
Speaker 1:God knows that I've put in my effort. God knows I've spent time, I've spent money, I've got people who I can rely on or that I should be able to rely on. I've done all of the things I needed to do. And so this time, my friends, I spent maybe a total of 15, 20 minutes in that audit. It's not for me. God runs the world. He knows the efforts that I made, he understands what I've done for this to be successful and he understands, most importantly, that I understand, that he's in charge of outcomes, understands, most importantly, that I understand, that he's in charge of outcomes.
Speaker 1:And so I resigned and I pulled myself back. I mean, I resigned from that audit, I pulled myself back and I did not get involved. I left it entirely to those people who I should put my faith in after having invested so much time and energy in them. And it all worked out, my friends. Not only did it work out, but yesterday we achieved the highest food safety score that we've ever achieved in 20 years of business, in 15 years of auditing. So clear message from the heavens, very clear If I want to hear it. The message is there for me and the message is you've given an effort, you gave a reasonable effort, you spent time, you spent money, you trained your staff, you oversaw them, you did everything you needed to do, and it wasn't that I was on vacation when the audit came in. Who knows, I probably could have been there also, but I was a few offices away. In other words, I was still here. If they needed an answer, they can get a hold of me. And you know what, if I was in the Bahamas and I had a phone, they could still get a hold of me over there. At the end of the day, I put in a valiant effort, I gave a hundred percent and it worked out. It worked out better than it's ever worked out before, and I think the reason it was better than before was because I put it all in his hands.
Speaker 1:Now, if you've been paying attention, you should be saying to yourself right now. You should be saying to me that's very nice, jesse, but what took you so long? Because you've been a balchuvah, you've been somebody who's keeping torah and mitzvahs for 20 years, almost 20 years, and you've been in the business for almost 20 years. You're telling us that now, after 20 years, only you've decided to give over control. What took you so long, right? Well, I've got news for you. It didn't take me that long.
Speaker 1:It took me that long when it came to this specific circumstance, this specific situation, but I've been working on myself for 20 years, almost 20 years, and this is a muscle, my friends. It's a muscle that we all work on and it's okay to not have faith and trust sometimes or to have a much lower level, because we're human, because emotions get the better of us, because society and stresses and pressures get the best of us. I know this, you know this. But, most importantly, he who created all those societal pressures, he knows this. But if we're always striving and if we're always trying to get back to balance, to middle, to him, to his Torah, to his mitzvahs, if we're always focused on that, even if at some time it's at the back of our minds, that's all that we can do.
Speaker 1:So for me, while I haven't had the ability to be able to completely extract myself from the audit process, that only occupied two days out of 365. What happened with the other 363 days for the last 20 years, every year? And the answer is I've been growing tremendously in all the other areas of my life and you know, and I know that there are so many other areas of our life that constantly need improvement, that constantly need us to grow in our faith and our trust with our creator and, by the way, which are exponentially more important than work and audits, because on the totem pole of what's important in life, that falls almost at the bottom. There are very few things in this world that I find we need to worry about. 98% of the things that happen in this world, my friends, are what I call minutiae noise distractions. You are not supposed to waste your time and energy focusing on all of these things, but there are things that are critically important, like your relationship with your spouse, like your relationship with your children, like the ability to parent, to be there as a parent and to invest time and energy in those relationships, being a good son or daughter, to be able to do the things that are required to make sure that you live a balanced life, to be a good community member. I was doing that, and I've been doing that and I'm going to continue to do that. Those things are important. That's where the majority of my time and attention was spent over the last 20 years. It just happened to be that now, after 20 years, or almost 20 years, I've attributed or I've applied it to this concept of being audited for food safety in my work, which, in the big picture, in the grand scheme of things, my friends, it is really really low on that totem pole, but it's important nonetheless. It has its level of importance.
Speaker 1:Earning an income is important. You need to do that. We've said you need to make efforts, but I've made the efforts. The only difference is this time I've injected a lot more God into this situation and because of that he showed me the outcome clear as day. But, more importantly, I was tuned in and I was looking for the outcome. I was saying to myself and to him you got this. Now let me see the results of me giving over control. And that's what I got. That's what I mean by testing. You can do that. You can say to God God, I'm letting go, I'm giving over control. I want you to run this show and then sit back and watch and see what happens. But you got to be dialed in. You got to want to see those results. If you don't want to, or if you're a guy or girl who chalks things up to coincidence and to a little bit of your effort and all this kind.
Speaker 1:Just so you know, I take and this is probably not right, but in my life, my personality, I take all of my effort that I put in, including the money and the time and the energy and the training. I take all that and I void it altogether. I take all of my efforts. And I say they were nothing because I believe that all they were was just an indication. They were just me doing what I need to do, just going through the motions. That's what I truly believe.
Speaker 1:Now, some of you may say that's not right or that's right, it's irrelevant. That's how I operate. I reduce my component, my involvement factor, operate. I reduce my component, my involvement factor, way down to next to zero, because I know, at the end of the day, what am I? I'm nothing, I'm a puppet. I'm really nothing. I just have to step up and make an effort and the king of the world, who loves me and loves my family and wants us to succeed and wants us to do well and be happy, he's the only one that matters. He determines outcomes. So my efforts are simply just an indication to say God, I recognize you need me to show up and give my effort. I've done that. It's all you.
Speaker 1:Now, god and my friends, my blessing to you is not that I'm perfect. You should know I'm not. I'm the furthest thing from it. Again, like I just illustrated, why did this take 20 years? It took 20 years because I'm a human being, as are you. This is a process. It takes time. You need to look for opportunities to build your trust muscle and when you find those opportunities, build that trust muscle and tune in, dial in to see the result and those muscles will grow. My friends, that's it for today. We'll continue with the book tomorrow. Have an amazing day.
