“Good conversation is what makes good radio. We research our guests before we reach out to them to make sure they’ll do a good interview” explains Yitzchok Saftlas (Photos: Christopher Libertini Sruly Saftlas Margaux Yiu Amir Levy)

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itzchok Saftlas Flatbush resident and the founder of Bottom Line Marketing recently got a call from his brother-in-law who said he’d been collared in shul: “Hey!” said the man accosting him. “I saw that your brother-in-law Yitzchok has a show on the radio — but he looks like a regular frumguy!”

A “regular frum guy” on secular radio. An oxymoron? Not in Saftlas’s case. The 46-year-old former talmid of Adelphia Yeshiva and Zichron Eliezer has become the host of a business radio show on WABC one of the most popular talk radio stations on the air. “I never realized how many frum people listen to the radio till I started my show” he says.

With his wholesome yeshivish appearance and soft eager-to-please manner Yitzchok does seem the quintessential frum boy next door. But don’t let the eidel personality trick you into underestimating his talent and passion for business. While still in beis medrash Yitzchok attended a top marketing program (“I went with another frum guy ” he qualifies) and envisioned a career on Madison Avenue. Then Rabbi Paysach Krohn helped land him a job at ArtScroll where he stayed for several years before founding his own company Bottom Line Marketing in 1992. Yitzchok also pens a Yated Ne’eman column and in 2015 published a book about marketing titled So What’s the Bottom Line?

The WABC radio station operates out of the expansive 17th floor of 2 Penn Plaza the building frontingMadisonSquareGardeninManhattan. Well-known radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh and John Batchelor have held forth from this labyrinth of clean but utilitarian offices and recording studios. Yitzchok was signed on to create a business-focused show entitled Mind Your Business airing every Sunday night at 11 p.m. Each week Saftlas interviews a different leading light in the business world eliciting their insights on how to achieve and maintain success.

While the show airs on Sunday evenings he records it on a previous weekday. “Some people choose to do call-in shows but I prefer to pre-record” he says. “It’s too much of a challenge to my guests to come in at 11 p.m.”

He reminds us that pre-recording is the norm in much of radio and television. “Remember the Megyn Kelly–Donald Trump interview that caused such a sensation? That interview was being talked about a few days before it actually aired.” With only an hour — actually closer to 50 minutes with time for commercial breaks and top-of-the-hour news — to dedicate to his guests pre-recording allows Yitzchok greater artistic control.

“Some shows are call-in but my concern is that I wouldn’t garner the kinds of sophisticated questions I’d like” he says. “My show educates people about business and marketing so I prefer to curate the questions myself in advance.”

Yitzchok isn’t a newbie to the radio business; for about four years he regularly sat in for Nachum Segal – whom he still considers a friend and mentor — when the latter did live radio on 620 AM. “About ten or fifteen times a year I’d do the show” he says. “Of course the content was different — it was a music show. But I was able to bring those radio skills with me when I began at WABC.” 

Yitzchok relates that the opportunity to do the show really came about through Hashgachah pratis…