0:00 [Music] who are you and where are you going what do you want for the next 24 minutes we're going to design and attain your ideal life [Music] on the way to wow show together we'll find the ideal path to get you back on the track to success and happiness
0:36 on the way to wow show with your host kevin bemel i don't want to say we are how we dress but the clothes that we wear have a tremendous impact on our mindset on our behavior study after study shows this and my guest colleen hammond is going to help us understand why and how to dress to our advantage or at least how the ladies can dress to their advantage and then we're going to talk with rabbi mendel schwartz
1:12 who's going to explain to us how we can get on that spiritual path if we choose to how do we start to create a relationship with this non-corporeal entity we call god [Music] our guest bartender today is tobin shea now this and tobin has a very interesting background he started out life son of one of the top
1:48 high school football coaches in pennsylvania and then he got sick and so instead of playing football in college he played rugby and was part of a team that went from being nothing to almost national champions along the way he decided to work his way through college by being a bartender his father gave him the mr boston bartender's guide so out of college like a lot of us he's going into the corporate world and decided this is not for me i'm going back to my
2:25 first love which is bartending and we are so fortunate to have you here on the way to wow show thank you and that is just really a a fascinating journey thank you for having me yeah uh it's so funny because whether you're in college and they're prepping you like this is what your life is going to be like the whole time i was bartending i was making a great living i was like making 30 or 40 000 at the time which was you know 1996-97 not to age myself but anyway they're telling you that's what you're going to make when you get out of college that's your your initial job will pay you between 30 and 40 000. i was like i'm already
3:00 making that so when i got that job it's it was one of those things to where i was doing it i was going through the motions and i realized that i really loved bartending so i went back and 25 years later here i am still so well we're we're the fortunate recipients of that decision so what are you gonna mix up for us today today we're gonna do the tuxedo number two uh it's essentially a gin martini but we added a little bit of this and a little bit of that that kind of take it over the top give it like this herbaceousness but at the same time too a little fruity flavor oh well listen anything having to do with tuxedos
3:35 i'm on board that's great so we're gonna start with uh our gin here we're going to go two ounces per cocktail so let's do three cocktails here okay you know the production team will thank you right drinkers all um you know that sounds so good but it's it's it you know we and everybody enjoys their cocktails absolutely it's it's funny because you know one of the things that i learned as a bartender when we first
4:10 started was you know certain topics we don't talk about in bars because they can be hot button topics but at the same time too once people have a drink especially with each other they tend to become friends almost instantly i can't tell you how many times i've served drinks to people who were at the opposite ends of the bars but by the end of the night they were inviting the each other to their weddings and to be godfathers of their children i've had many experiences right yeah i've seen it all so um we started with the gym the second
4:45 ingredient we had was the dry vermouth classic driver move here uh this is maraschino it's a cherry liqueur made in italy uh also in croatia too but made with the cheriota v and then they sweeten it it's spectacular it gives a nice fruity flavor then we have absinthe here which is a wormwood infused liquor from around the world france is where it was mostly known but uh this is great it adds a fennel flavor sometimes a black licorice flavor depending on what your
5:20 what you're looking for but you know there was a adage that it made you go crazy and i i don't believe it i think the reason why people it had that adage because it goes crazy is more often than not if you look at the percentage of alcohol in a absent bottle it's 65 percent yeah right so if you're drinking straight abasing you're in trouble yeah exactly right so now we're just gonna add some orange bitters here and some ice we're gonna stir this to chill okay oh let me get you a couple thank you very much
5:56 let me bring this over that would be more efficient right well you know i'm not sure efficiency is necessary thank you very much my pleasure there you go so i think over the years a couple things that i've learned from bartending is is that you know you like i said we can create friends instantly i need to be over here we make friends at the bars and yeah we carry those friendships on throughout our life that's perfect strain into the glass
6:35 huh beautiful this little bit will keep for me we're going to finish it with an orange a lemon twist here okay mmm you get that nice yes and it's amazing too like the majority of the flavor from the lemons a lot of it comes from the peels you get that nice essence yes you really do and your fingers smell spectacular we'll make these look nice
7:13 yeah this is very fancy yeah yeah that extra step you know it takes two seconds but when you get it you feel special like someone really yeah oh look at that rather than just twisting it and dropping right exactly huh beautiful well i know our guest is going to love these enjoy thank you sir so tobin mixed this up for us this is called a tuxedo
7:48 number two it's a variation on a martini aside from the presentation being beautiful let's see hmm oh that's great thank you yeah can you taste a little cherry liqueur in there all the way from italy and thank you thank you beautiful stuff that's great well gosh uh i you know i was the preparing for this interview i was trying to think of how long i've known you it's been a long long time um study together
8:25 and 20 years yeah i think so um and so i you know and also reading your bio so let's see you were you were ordained as a rabbi at the brooklyn talmudic i was ordained as a rabbi actually in australia oh in australia i studied in france right outside of paris for two years okay in brooklyn for two years wow and i got my smikha which is the rabbinid in melbourne australia okay and i got another degree in israel after that okay but you also studied in russia i believe i was here for three summers as a counselor wow that's really
9:01 just you know all over all over the world that's right and um i know you you worked in israel for a time um yeah i was there in 2001 2002 a little bit of 2003 right when the intifada kicked in and i was there with my wife and our first son was actually born there in israel at that time and mazel tov he just became a paratrooper in the idf wow 19 years old yeah oh my goodness yes we're very excited and then you came back here and eventually took over the high center from your father right yes well as a joint effort
9:37 my mother is still involved my wife's involved we have some other staff but my dad was grooming me already years ago it's a large organization the high center primarily dealing with the outreach in the jewish community right for people that are not that involved and that's most of the jewish people and um so i've been doing that uh since he uh since i moved back from israel which is 2003 till now so uh 17 18 years give or take i think your your father uses uh schwarze used to say any jew that moves right yeah so you know
10:12 as you can imagine a lot of our viewers are not jewish um but i think that the experiences that you've had in helping jews rediscover their their faith and their heritage i think that applies to any person whether they're jewish or not so i thought we we talk about how how do you help people in in sort of reuniting with their spiritual i don't know roots is if if
10:47 that's a good word yeah it's a great that's actually a great question kevin um as someone like myself that follows the torah diligently the bible some people call the old testament so noah noah we know no on the flood so he was not a jew god called him a sadiq a righteous person saved him and his family because he had moral clarity so even though he didn't follow the biblical traditions of maybe putting on that filling or keeping the sabbath but he had a moral clarity and he was worth saving so we read about
11:22 noah a lot although he was not a jew he is in many ways a leader for all people including jews so as a rabbi today identified as a hasidic jew and helping out a lot of the jewish people like i say who are not involved and connected to judaism but absolutely you are correct that it is appropriate to reach out to non-jews as well and to have them connect with their roots just like noah in the bible connected with his roots so that's a very good point and actually the talmud tells us that we the jewish people have 613
11:58 commandments the non-jews have seven noahite laws from noah so they have a lot of a big load to carry as well primarily to have law and order and of course to believe in monotheism to believe in one god and not in a hundred gods like i saw when i was a student from australia i took a uh a one-month tour to uh kathmandu nepal and there are more uh gods and statutes than the population so uh that's today in the year 2020 wow so uh getting people to uh uh worship and um believe it maybe unless gods
12:34 and more immorality is i guess the name of the game so how does one how does one do that i mean look you hear all kinds of stories about people who have been turned off from traditional religion because of religious people being judgmental or or harsh we we i i would say we don't want to be like that so how how do we how do we begin that conversation i
13:09 guess like i said i'm a hasidic jew which means when i say the word hasidic for the audience that doesn't quite know the denominations that means the founder of the hasidic movement his name was the baal shem tov the master of the great name and he was roughly 300 years ago so if you would have asked me prior to the founding of the hasidic movement that may have been one answer but now we're post the hasidic movement after the baal shem tov and i'm a hasidic jew and what he introduced to the masses is you don't have to be perfect you don't have to wear a black hat
13:44 you don't have to grow the beard and you don't even have to do all the 613 commandments he said don't judge a person after holding on the 612th rung of the ladder or a person that's holding on the fifth wrong of the ladder but rather in which way they're going so a person that's doing a little bit more today than they were doing yesterday that means they have a relationship with god that means they are being a good upstanding citizen whether they're a jew or not a jew so so let's if you will peel that forcefully to what does it mean to have a relationship with god
14:19 right because god i mean we speak of god most often in in the mail you know gender although indeed god has no gender right god has no god is non-corporeal so how do you have a relationship with a you know non-corporeal i'm not even sure the word being is is is the proper term but how do you have a relationship with with god yeah so that's a that's a good question so we have of course the ten commandments uh which we're not going to go through
14:54 right now uh we have 613 commandments um i'll just give an example that is not in the ten commandments uh one of the 613 commandments let's say would be for me to keep kosher okay so it's a commandment and i have a certain dietary diet that i'm on called kosher it's not in the 10 commandments doesn't mean it's not important but as a religious jew i'm having a relationship with god by listening to that tradition that commandment but that's more of the black and white that thy shouts that thy shout nots well i should do what i shouldn't do but you talk about peeling the onion a
15:29 little bit and peeling the layers a little bit god also says to be happy god says to serve him with joy and that's actually a commandment so if i'm going to be a depressed religious man that doesn't really help anybody and i'm not sure i can consider myself a religious person if i don't know how to be happy and have a little fun in life so i take that commandment pretty seriously to have fun and be joyful there's a whole hasidic sect of the breslav movement that's all about being joyful and being happy so it's a good point what you raise which is how do i have a relationship
16:04 with god so the basic answer is well let's just look what it says in the torah about having keeping the sabbath resting on the seventh day of the week have it keeping kosher not coveting and being jealous of what my neighbor has and so forth but when you want to go a little deeper it's some of the things which is maybe in the gray area where people tend to ignore push on the wayside which is being happy when it says to love thy fellow as thyself that's in the torah and people forget about that because it's not so defined how do i really love my neighbor or love thy fellow as thyself it's easy to say i keep the sabbath i go
16:40 to synagogue i pay my dues and leave me alone and then many people say i'm a religious jew i paid a thousand books to the synagogue and i'm part of the club and that's it well it's again it's one level but having a relationship is also it to be a mensch to love that fellow as thyself and that's important for to love a jew love a non-jew love everybody love your neighbors love animals love love the species love the trees and everything else so for someone who maybe has been estranged from god or maybe has never been introduced
17:16 to to god how did they start how would you how would you advise them to start yeah so that's a good question um i would say we live in we live in a physical world and people like to know at the end the day that they met their quota that they reached their benchmark right i go to the gym and i want to know at the end of the month i knocked off four pounds and at the end i'm not getting off the elliptical until i burn 500 calories and i see 450 it's not good enough i have to see 500. so that's the way we're built that's the way we're hardwired so i think when a
17:51 person wants to get involved i think besides studying a little bit about judaism it's also to do something practical and i would suggest for a woman to take 15 minutes on the shabbat and when shabbat the sabbath enters besides lighting the shabbat candles on a friday night when the sunset kicks in on a friday night to spend 15 minutes and ask themselves how they did this week and how can they make next week a better week it's a 15-minute piece of homework and this is a tradition this is a commandment and this is
18:26 something for them they'll feel better about themselves and i would say for a man the same thing um which is to when you enter into the shabbat is they may not have the the commandment or the the tradition to lighting the shabbat candles like the lady does because the lady is the woman of the house the woman of the family but i think to spend some time with his spouse or girlfriend or even alone if he's an individual and single and do the same type of exercise which is to think about how my week was and this is called resting on shabbat
19:02 and this is actually of the ten commandments of the sabbath and like i say there are many ways to observe the sabbath but at the very least to observe it and enter the sabbath on a friday night and think about what they've done this past week what they've contributed and how they can make it even a little bit better i think this is a very good start because they're doing something for the torah which is thinking about the sabbath and also something for themselves for their own personal growth and for someone who's not jewish would it be beneficial for them to do the same thing i it's that's a good question i do think yes
19:38 even though it's not commanded or imposed on them to rest on the seventh day the same way it's not imposed on them to keep kosher but i do find that first of all christians do go to church on sunday at least many of them and if you're muslim you go to a friday and i think that a lot of these wonderful traditions are being lost on people because when a christian thinks of going to church they think of oh my gosh i gotta listen to the sermon for two hours or give more money to the you know to the poor and but i i think it could be it could people can enter the sabbath whether you're a jew or not you on a
20:13 personal level uh by taking 15 20 minutes and cell phones off netflix off hulu off and just really uh meditate and connect with uh the sabbath and really appreciate of what god gave us and how many years i'm living and how my week was and how i can better myself and better my productivity for the upcoming week oh that's great that's great so you brought us something for our collage you brought your thing and and this is really unique so i'm going to have you put that up on the collage there thank you means life
20:49 and when i make a tree a toast some people say salute and friday on the roof they say so this is for him to high for life there we go okay so i'm gonna put this up here okay okay how's that nothing like a some good duct tape yeah and i think that worked oh yeah there you go okay fantastic great yeah that match everyone's matching my pink shirt okay there you go
21:24 wonderful kevin thank you so much it's great to be back here nice to see you okay good my guest is colleen hammond former on-air talent for the weather channel you know you always find out something interesting about the people you know that you didn't know before for the for over 30 years now colleen has been working with women helping them style and create their personal brand so that they can go through their day with with
21:59 confidence they can approach every meeting every engagement in a way that really supports them achieving their goals so colleen thanks for coming on the way to wow show yeah i wish i was live in studio but it's good to be here at least remotely so well we'll next time we'll get you live in studio we'll fix up with a cocktail and and we'll we'll really go to town that there you go so i i first i just have to ask you on air talent for the weather channel how do you go from that to helping women you know dress for success
22:37 it actually started when i was 14 i started modeling when i was 14 years old and i actually really did like model and do acting jobs and that type of thing because that's how i put myself through college but also my senior in high school i won miss michigan teenager so i started working with an image consultant at that point who taught me what colors to wear and that type of thing so i was in college actually studying chemistry because i wanted to be a pediatrician and i got a job through my modeling agent i got a job at the local television station during the weather and about six months later talent scout
23:12 was in town for a funeral and i got the job at the weather channel so again at the weather channel i started working with a stylist and i said yeah but i want to wear what karen is wearing and they said you can't wear what karen minton is wearing because karen is blonde and brown-eyed and i'm like so so she started teaching me the differences between what i could wear and what other people could wear so when i left working in television i had been it just fascinated me and so after that i started working and becoming an image consultant and a stylist and it just blossomed from there
23:47 so actually i started with image consulting and styling before there was a certification program and you know the international image consultants you know group and that type of thing so i've been doing this for almost almost 40 years yeah you must have started when you were three except for you just told us you started when you were 14 so wow a little bit older but yeah so yeah it was it was an interesting thing and i i really have found that once a woman can nail her style and it just takes a couple of things
24:22 that you need to know once a woman can nail that style and her personal brand and the image that she projects by the colors that she wears and the styles that she wears prints patterns all of these tiny little things what kind of earrings do the earrings move do they stay still what's the shape of the glasses which you know that the point on the toe is appointed around it all of these things send a different message and once a woman can nail her style she can easily go through her closet because every girl i know every woman i know well a lot of guys too is like what am i going to wear i have a
24:58 networking event tonight what am i going to wear you know i i have an interview what am i going to wear once you can figure out what to wear that works for you and sends the image and portrays the personal brand that you want to send everything is simple and then you walk out of the house every day confident knowing that you look and feel fascinating so in in these days when you know a lot of people still aren't going to the office they're not going to the workplace it seems like you know all of our meetings are are via zoom um i know i was just watching a short video of a friend of mine and he always looks so put together he has
25:34 his you know sports coat on and his he loves pink shirts right and then he stands up and he's wearing shorts right um so does it matter how we style ourselves these days i mean do people really care yeah i've worked a lot with hollywood people i've worked with musicians i styled a recent presidential candidate so everything you wear in every color that you wear and sends a message so if i showed up today wearing a flannel shirt
26:11 a flannel shirt would send a very different message than a suit coat you know you know a blazer with a uh if i showed up wearing flip-flops or if i showed up wearing high heels or i showed up wearing cowboy boots all of those have a different mental subconscious connotation because we pick up on the all of these things subconsciously and so there's so much work that goes into crafting a television personalities personal brand what they drink how they dress what they say who they hang out with how they allow themselves to be photographed
26:46 so that their personal brand their image is portrayed in a specific way and i have a program where i go through the difference between miley cyrus and kate middleton and i show different pictures of them in the exact same pose but they're wearing different clothing in each one with miley cyrus because she has an irreverent and a connotation what you're going to see from her you're going to immediately think something is irreverent it's it's brash it may be even sexual but if kate middleton does the same thing because you know she's the duchess of cambridge you're going to say oh well that's because she's refined and she's royalty
27:22 and you know so one girl bites her lip and you see it one way the other lady bites her lip and you see it a different way based on how they're dressed how they're portrayed but they're drinking the whole it all matters now i mean again these days we're not going into the office so much how should we be maintaining our personal brand even when we go to the grocery store i mean is is it how how integrated does it need to be in order to be effective i guess is my question it has to be authentic to who
27:57 you are so what happens is if if i've worked with clients that want to create a personal brand of somebody that they're not and i won't do it i give them their money back because you can only create who you are or who you are on the best day right so when we go into a job interview we try to portray our best self we we say certain things because we want the interviewer to know certain things about us we dress a certain way to project a certain image to the interviewer because we want to get the job but if what we say is inauthentic and we get the job but we lied or we you know we're not going to keep
28:32 the job it's the same way when you're projecting a personal brand when you're in the c-suite when you're running for office you know all of these things may get you the vote may get you the job may get you the promotion but do you stay there is based on your personality and your personal image now so i show up and i'm wearing pajama pants right so i'm comfortable but the the situation that we're in now is we do all of these zoom meetings but we're in our own homes so we feel more relaxed we end up using a more relaxed tone of voice sometimes we show up on camera and we're wearing what we wore around the house we're drinking coffee i've seen people vaping
29:08 on business calls you know they're so comfortable at home they lost that sense of place you know but there one thing we do do on camera that we don't do in the boardroom is this hi you know we're all waving on camera you don't do that in the boardroom but we do that on camera and i think subconsciously what happens is it's a body language issue and in body language when people see the palms of your hands they trust you so it's kind of an open-handed type situation i think maybe subconsciously we know that so we wave but it's important to be true to who you are so i think you carry that into the grocery
29:45 store you carry that into your shopping trip you carry that when you go to get your car fixed it's who you are and so you want to make sure that it's genuine to who you are but to your best self so i i we need to wrap things up so one one last question for the viewers who want to take some action in terms of establishing or improving their their brand image where do you recommend they begin what what should they do well i have a uh free ebooks called the seven judgments people make about you in
30:21 seven seconds it's actually less than a second but the first one is trustworthiness so people determine whether or not they trust you in point one of a second now that's just looking at you you haven't opened your mouth or anything so one of the things you want to do is project your image to be trustworthy since that's the number one thing that people are judging us on one of the easiest ways two of the easiest ways to do that number one is the color blue blue is perceived as a very trustworthy color a solid blue also glasses people who are wearing glasses are seen as more intelligent and more trustworthy the look that you project if it's sloppy
30:57 people think your work is sloppy if it's if it's polished pulled together then it makes you look like all of you your work everything is is polished and pulled together so those would be the first two things i would work on is just getting your colors right that look good on you and projecting an image of professionalism at all times colleen thank you so much for coming on the way to wow show thank you for helping us understand how to dress better and style ourselves and we'll look forward to checking in with you again and seeing how
31:32 we can take it on to the next step great sounds good thanks thanks colleen that's our show for this week i want to thank my guests colleen hammond and rabbi mendel schwartz colleen gave us some great advice when we're dressing for success first start by doing so in a way that conveys trust wear blue well at least my shirt and wear glasses which look i couldn't see if i didn't also check on the show notes right below
32:07 download her book that has many many more tips on how to use the way you present yourself to further your way to wow and then i think rabbi mendell schwartz gave us a great practice for wrapping up our week reflect back what did you do right what could you have done better ponder that for a little bit and vow to do it better next week talking about next week stay tuned when we're going to have michelle tillis letterman talk to us
32:44 about how to build those authentic life-sustaining relationships courage at all times my friends [Music] marie you're still my bill [Music]
33:30 you