Lockdown Edition: Building Relationships During a Time of Crisis With Ted Rubin

I grew up on the south shore of Long Island, in a town called Oceanside in Nassau County. I spent almost my entire life there. Went to college in New York State, and then lived in New York City for 10 years after college. That’s really where my roots come from.

I moved down here to Florida in December 2016, but for the 10 years before that, I was living back in Long Island.

Long Island, New York—born and bred. I’ve lived in a few other places, but mostly in New York and along the East Coast. I’ve traveled a lot, but yeah—I’m a New Yorker through and through.

I’m a classic New Yorker who ended up in Florida. You know, typical story: Jewish kid from New York, grows up, goes to college in the Northeast, comes down to Florida for spring break, the relationship ends, and boom—you’re living in Florida.

My college roommate had moved down here, and I came too, partly to support him. He was going through a hard time, and I ended up taking over a place he had inherited. I renovated it, and he lived there with me for a little while. Sadly, he passed away about a year ago at 63.

So I just want people to really hear that. People ask me, “How did Bruce die?” And I say, it was neglect. Not taking care of himself. A lot of us don’t. But if you take better care of yourself—if you stay physically active, eat right, watch your weight—it’s amazing how much healthier you’ll be. Almost guaranteed.

That’s just a point I wanted to make as we talk through this.

Exactly. My whole life, my mentors—starting with my parents—always taught me: take the negative and turn it into a positive.

And now, people are stuck at home, and I keep saying, “This is your time. You’ve got the time now.” When I’d tell people before, “Hey, you should exercise,” they’d go, “I don’t have time.”

Well, now you do. You’re home. You’ve got time to cook right, eat right, move more.

And more than that, you’ve got a reason. Because if your immune system is strong, if you’re healthier, if you’re not overweight or struggling with bad habits, you’ve got a better shot at avoiding this virus—or at least not becoming one of the statistics none of us want to be part of.

This is something I’ve been talking about for years—I call it Return on Relationship. It’s all about the importance of relationships and how to nurture them, especially when you’re not asking for anything. You’re not trying to get something out of it. You’re just checking in, just connecting. And right now, we’re seeing the value of that. It’s happening naturally, just like you said—people are reaching out.

Sure, maybe some of it is because they’re bored. That’s fine. Boredom makes you realize how important connection and engagement really are. But for a lot of people, it’s because they genuinely care. They want others to know they’re thinking of them. And it can be as simple as reaching out and saying, “Hey, how are you doing?”

One thing I’ve been doing—and I’ve always done this, just not at the level I’m doing now—is going through my old photos. When I find one with a friend, a colleague, or someone I was at an event with, I’ll send it to them with a message like, “Hope you’re well. Hope you’re staying safe.” It’s a small, personal reminder of a time we shared. A little spark of positivity.

Now is the perfect opportunity to ask: How can I touch base with people? How can I strengthen these relationships? Don’t be afraid to ask, What can I do to support you?

A lot of people hesitate—they’re scared someone will ask for a donation, or to jump on a call, or for advice. But now is exactly the time to say yes to that. People have more time. And this situation? It’s not ending next week.

I was just telling a buddy the other day: I used to travel a lot. Even when I cut back, I’d still come home and have maybe one day, maybe ten. But the closer I got to leaving again, I’d think, “Oh man, I didn’t go for a run, I didn’t take the kayak out.”

Now, I have to remind myself daily: There’s no rush. I’ve got time. I used to avoid certain calls because I wanted that little window to go ride my bike. Now? When someone calls, I say, “Let’s talk.” I’m happy to have those conversations.

And honestly, people seem less stressed right now. They’re more open. You know how it is—before, someone would say, “Hey Shane, can I get 15 minutes to pick your brain?” (And let’s be real, I hate that phrase—don’t pick my brain, just talk to me.)

But back then, people scheduled calls like 12:30 to 12:45, and it felt so transactional. Now, we can slow down, be real, and actually connect.

This is a great time to flex those relationship muscles. A lot of us have let them atrophy over the years—but now’s the time to build them back up.

And you especially do now. And I’ll give another tip to people: a lot of senior executives are taking calls now who didn’t take calls before. They’re sitting at home, they’re not going to the office — they, like you, have extra time. Yes, they might be working really hard trying to figure out how to keep their business going, but they’re not traveling, they’re not getting in their car every day, they’re not commuting.

Plus, if you approach them the right way, they’re going to be willing to talk to you. Because people want ideas. They want interaction.

Don’t sell shit. Don’t start sending out the emails saying how you’re going to teach them how to make money, or “I’ve got something for you,” or “I’ve got something perfect for this environment.” If anything — give something away. Whether it’s your time or your product.

Look at Photofy — we’re a startup. You know John Andrews, my business partner from Collective Bias. We’re a minority partnership, but we’re basically running the business. And we’re struggling — don’t think we’re not like everybody else. Fortunately, thank God, we’re okay for a few months right now. But we’re at a point where we’re trying to figure out:

How can we make what we’re doing more appealing to people so they’ll come back faster when this is over?
And also — how can we support the small business community?

We’re giving away our product for free. And this is not a pitch — we’re giving it away for six months. This isn’t a “one month free and then it hits your credit card” thing. We’re truly trying to help the small business community.

We’re also going to a lot of our enterprise clients — clients who are already with us — and saying, “We want to give you something for free. More interactivity. More tools. More seats on our platform. Whatever helps your people engage with each other.”

And very often we hear, “Well, what’s the catch?”
There is no catch.

We want you to think of us as a good community member. A good partner.
We want you to feel some Return on Relationship.

Because we know that’s going to come back to us in the future — if we survive and make it to that future with our business intact.

And look — I get that people are hurting. I get it.
But when you’re out there banging on people, trying to sell them something they don’t need right now, you’re doing more damage to your reputation than you’ll be able to repair.

And that damage will far outweigh any small amount of income you bring in now.

Gift cards are a great solution. Personally, I don’t want to do takeout right now—I just don’t feel comfortable with other people preparing my food. That’s just my personal thing.

If I’m ordering something from somewhere else, it’s not really a small business, but it is a startup. I order vegan meals from a company called Vistro. They come frozen, and I feel comfortable with it. It’s an industrial kitchen, and they already had amazing procedures in place even before all this. Then they doubled and tripled up on safety for COVID.

So yeah, gift certificates are a great way to support local businesses.

My cleaning lady, for example—she sent me a text letting me know all the precautions she’s taking, and I said, “Listen, I’d rather you don’t come right now, but I’m still going to pay you through this.”

I asked her if she had Venmo. She said no, so I said, “Would you mind getting it?” Because that just makes it easy. And now I send her payments through Venmo, and I’m perfectly happy to do it.

Like you said—it doesn’t change my lifestyle, but I know it makes a huge difference for her.

Little things like that matter.

What I’d really love to see is local businesses—or more importantly, local governments—start stepping up. I believe at some point they’re going to have to start feeding people. This isn’t just about stimulus checks or money in the mail. We’re going to need food kitchens to help feed the people who are living paycheck to paycheck, day to day.

And the truth is, you and I might not see it when we look out our door—but we know it’s happening.

I just don’t think we, as a country, are fully preparing for that yet. It feels like a lot of people are still crossing their fingers, hoping this all passes in a few weeks or a month—before anything that extreme needs to happen.

But I really hope someone behind the scenes has the foresight to start preparing for that now.

I’m going to simplify this for you. Photofy is a photo and video app that allows you to put overlays and branded content on top of your photography, share it, and track it.

Back when Photofy started—before John and I were involved—it was a consumer app. It had about 10 million downloads and 500,000 active users. But, as we all know these days, that doesn’t necessarily make you a leader. There are a million photo apps out there, and platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer similar tools now. John and I saw that early on. Even before we officially joined, we had some influence in the direction.

Then John came on as CEO. And just so you understand how things happen in my life: when John decides to do something, I usually get a text that says, “Oh, by the way—you’re the CMO now.” That’s just how it works.

It worked out great for me with Collective Bias. John founded that company and dragged me in kicking and screaming. It got acquired in 2016, and that set us up for the next stage of our lives in a really nice way. It gave us the freedom to try new things.

We’ve always been on the content side. At Collective Bias, we used bloggers to create storytelling content at scale for brands. At the time, it was a new idea—brands weren’t used to letting people write about them without controlling every word. But we built a community of 4,000 bloggers, and eventually Inmar acquired us.

Photofy takes that concept a step further. Instead of relying on outside people or advocates to create content, Photofy focuses on employees creating content. We call it employee-created content, as opposed to the more traditional employee-generated content model.

Here’s the difference: employee-generated content is typically when a company creates a branded piece of content and then asks employees to share it—like what you’d see with platforms like Dynamic Signal or other employee advocacy tools.

What we’re doing is encouraging companies to empower their employees to actually create the content themselves. That’s the only way to scale content creation effectively.

We’ve shifted the app toward being an enterprise solution. One of our biggest clients is RE/MAX—an ideal partner. They have 200,000 brokers around the world who need to create content daily: photos, listings, updates. But creating that content on-brand—adding logos, names, taglines, branding elements—takes time and effort.

Now, with Photofy, around 10,000 of their brokers are using the platform. They can easily add branded overlays, taglines, and design elements that RE/MAX has preloaded into the app, keeping everything consistent with the brand. They can also share that content, and RE/MAX can track it.

So they know what’s resonating: do people want to see interiors? Exteriors? Neighborhood shots? That kind of insight is valuable.

Right now, our sweet spot is in the direct selling space. These are companies that have large distributed workforces—consultants, reps, distributors—who already rely heavily on social media to drive sales. Traditional brands are still hesitant to let employees be that active on social, but in the direct selling world, it’s expected.

Our vision is simple: every franchise, every retail chain, every field-based business should be empowering employees to create content.

Take Papa John’s, for example. They’re already built for delivery. Imagine if every delivery driver snapped one photo a day—a pizza, a happy customer, something fun—and posted it with branded overlays. That would massively expand reach and impact.

Think about the local SEO benefits. Local content, photos, posts—that’s what’s driving local discovery right now.

This space hasn’t fully arrived yet, but it’s coming. We saw this same resistance at Collective Bias. We had to convince major brands that it was okay to let bloggers create content without micromanaging every word. Now, we’re doing the same thing—just with employees instead of bloggers.

The low-hanging fruit right now? Companies like RE/MAX, the National Association of Realtors, and direct sellers. They’ve adopted our platform and are seeing a huge increase in content output.

So, at its core, it’s simple:
Take a photo. Add a logo, message, or overlay. Share it.

Photofy has thousands of overlays and templates. For brands we partner with, we white-label their content and load it into a custom version of the app for their team.

It’s all about scaling content creation—authentically and efficiently.

It’s an awesome time to have that audience. It’s an awesome time to create your own advertising—because budgets are being cut like crazy right now.

Who can afford to advertise, especially small- and medium-sized businesses? It amazes me that some ads are still running on TV, or that I’m still getting flyers in the mail.

And I get it—they want to stay in business. But am I really buying pants right now? I mean, I’m not even wearing pants right now. But yeah.

A couple of things my business partner and I have been talking about—first, there’s nothing wrong with offering something. It’s the hard sell that’s the problem.

It’s like these dealerships now putting up banners: “Great deals! Come in and get a car now!”
Why would I come in right now?

First of all, who’s really thinking about buying a car at this moment? And second, anyone with half a brain knows that in six months, the deal is probably going to be twice as good.

Now look—should your service department be open? Of course. There are people who rely on their vehicles and need them serviced. Be a good community member.

Come out and say:
“What can we do to help you? We’re doing everything we can to stay open. If you need a car, we’re here to serve you—and we’ll do it safely. We’ll deliver it. We’ll sanitize it.”

But these companies just pushing products, trying to get me to spend money on something I probably shouldn’t be spending on right now? That’s what bothers me.

Like we’ve said, their target audience right now isn’t people like you and me—it’s people who are going to need that money in a few months.

That’s the issue. Be a good community member.
Yes, if you’re a restaurant, you need to sell—of course. But let people know what you’re doing to help the community. Let them know what steps you’re taking to keep deliveries safe.

And here’s another big thing we’ve been talking about: I think the world’s going to change after this.

A lot of companies that resisted remote work—distance learning, working from home—are now realizing that it can actually work.

They thought they’d lose control. They thought it would be ineffective. But now they’re seeing that, in many cases, people are more effective working from home. They’re getting more done. They’re more creative. They’re not as distracted. They’re saving on commute time.

I’ll tell you this—at Photofy, we’ve already decided: we don’t need an office anymore.

We had one because, sure, it was a nice space. We didn’t require people to be there all the time, but it was a place to meet, to build the team vibe.

But now we’re saying—why? Why take on the extra overhead?

We can meet at a Starbucks twice a week when things go back to normal. That’s enough.
And yeah, I’m not talking about right now during lockdowns—but going forward, we’ve already started making those changes.

I think that’s true for businesses—and for people in general. Look, I’m very lucky. I was brought up with a dad who was a Depression-era kid. We went through some tough times when my dad lost a job or had to change something, and he taught me how to save. He taught me how not to spend.

And I don’t know if you’re familiar with this, but a lot of people know me are—I had to fight to keep my daughters in my life back in 2007 to 2010. It cost me seven figures. I was spending double, sometimes triple, a month what I was bringing in. After blowing through everything I had, I reverted back to what I was taught by my dad—which I’ve used ever since.

I’m 62 years old. I’ve had to reinvent myself, rebuild—probably 43 or 45 times in my life—and each time, those skills came into play.

What I think is important now is that, out of necessity, people are starting to learn what you mentioned: what you need, and what you don’t need. What are you paying for every month that you don’t need to be paying?

I’ve got friends who’ve gone through some hard times—borrowing money from me—and then they’ll call me up twice a week saying, “Hey dude, meet me at the diner.”

And I’m like, “It’s 10 o’clock at night. You got no money, right?”
They say, “Yeah, I’m hungry.”
And I’m like, “Then eat at home!”

It’s not that they don’t have money. They’ve got $1,000 in the bank. But they’re going out to get an omelet. And I’m like, “Didn’t you eat already?”

They say, “Yeah, but you go for the omelet, then you add on a drink, you give a tip—you just spent $18.15 or $20. And you’re doing that three nights a week.”

I told them: “Have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

Which I happen to like better anyway.

And it goes—well, this is the same guy who would call me up. I knew him. We were train-riding buddies back on the Long Island Railroad.

One day, he calls me and goes, “Hey, I’m driving in today. You want to come with me?”

I’m like, “Why are you driving in?”
And he says, “Because I’ve got a meeting late. I don’t like taking the train home late at night.”

I’m like, “It’s gonna cost you $100 to drive it. Don’t you have a monthly train ticket?”

This isn’t just about daily life—this is someone whose business is falling apart, who’s looking for a job, trying to make money.

And I told him, “You’ve got to go back to the basics.”

And you know what? He did. He saved way more than he borrowed from me—and I only had to lend to him once. I didn’t even know where the rest was going. But just like you said, this is the time for people to figure out what’s necessary, and what’s not.

Another good thing—start putting some money aside. Learn how to save. We’ve become a country that nobody saves. I gotta tell you, I’ve got a lot of buddies who are very successful, make a lot of money, and they’re telling me they’ve got, like, a month or two left.

And I’m like, “How could you only have a month or two left? You make a fortune.”
Yeah, that’s going to be everything beyond their means.

They expect the last five years of their work to fund their retirement, and they don’t even think about, “What am I going to need for tomorrow?”

Because their expectation is they’re always going to be earning. But you know what? Again, some people have charmed lives, and until something like this happens, everything’s good.

But for most people, that’s not the way it is. And you know, like I said, I’ve made a lot of money in my life. I’ve lost a lot of money in my life. I’ve had ups and downs. But one of the things I was fortunate enough to be taught by my dad early—and I’ve learned along the way—is: prepare for a rainy day.

You know? And look, let’s look at the bright side. Maybe it’ll solve the problem of close talkers.

Like, we don’t have to worry about those people who used to be about those people—those people. Maybe they’ll get trained to, like, keep your distance a little bit.

Like, have you ever been in one of those conversations where you just keep backing up, like—?

Like today, I kept stopping and starting and moving, and then I’m looking at someone, I’m like, “Oh, you want to go? Or should I go?”

Help me with—before we get off of here?

Well, I would absolutely like to have a meal with Barack Obama. I mean, there’s absolutely no doubt about that.

To me, that would probably be just about—I mean—definitely number one. I mean, above anybody.

Not Miley Cyrus.

I mean, just saying. I remember watching her—my daughters used to watch her TV show, whatever that whole lot was called, yeah. So no Miley Cyrus.

Who are the other ones I would love to meet? I would love to meet JFK, for sure. That’s another one. I guess I’ve gone with presidents for two. So the person I’d like to have another 10 minutes with would be my mother’s father and my grandfather.

I had a very unique situation growing up. My father’s father died at the age of 47, before I was born. My mother’s mother died at the age of 54, shortly after I was born. I never knew either of them. And then my father’s mother married my mother’s father.

So we had a very—we had a very close family. There were no in-law issues. The best—from what I understand, the best of both sides survived. I don’t really know that much about my grandfather. My father had a lot of issues with him. He was a gambler. Had some issues with the family.

My grandmother was what they called back in the day—the one who passed away—a difficult woman. I think today they’d call that a bitch. But you know, just… yeah, yeah.

And the ones that survived were incredible, and they were soulmates. You know, actually, it might even be the two of them. They were just amazing people. They both escaped Poland just before World War II. They spent most of their time raising money to rescue Jews out of Poland. They talked a lot about their childhood, but I would love to.

My grandfather was probably—and I should have mentioned earlier, besides my father—one of the ones that always liked to sit me down and say, “Always put something aside. Always be careful. Nothing’s ever going to go straight up. You’re going to have things. Watch out for that.”

And I would love to be able to talk to him now, about where I’m at and what I’ve done, and what I’ve seen since he passed away—which was the age of 92 in 1992. He was born in 1900.

So he’s been gone a long time, and I would love to have a little bit more time with him. Imagine the stories. Although I’ve got to tell you—if it was not unlimited time, I’d be very stressed about what I want. Like, I could just imagine an ending, and you go, no, no, no, no—two more minutes!

I remember years and years ago, my grandfather was really a peaceful man. He was a religious Orthodox Jew—not overly Orthodox—but I really respected him, and I respected his feelings about how to treat other people.

One time, some kid—first time in my life that had happened—called me a “dirty Jew.” I didn’t know what to do.

I came home, and I asked my grandfather, “What would you have done? Like, what should I have done?”

And he looks at me—it’s my grandfather, who never raised his hand. Never. Not a bone in his body was aggressive in that way.

He said, “I would have kicked him in the shins.”

And to me, that was… like, lay him on the ground. That was what hit a spark in me—my grandfather, going beyond reason to say that. He didn’t even stop to say, “Why did it happen?”—he just responded.

That really stayed with me forever.

I’m really easy to find. Ted Rubin—on just about every platform: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, even on, I mean, whatever—anything. You name it.

LinkedIn, Google—Ted Rubin. The first 14 pages are links to things I’m doing to make it even easier.

My phone number is 516-270-5511. I actually answer my phone. And if I don’t, my phone does take voicemails.

My voicemail box is not full because I actually check them and return those calls. They’re clean, so people can leave me messages.

And my email is tedrubin@gmail.com. Feel free to be in touch anytime.

My pleasure. And please thank your wife for all that she’s doing in the hospital.