Business and Cross-Cultural Insights from Liat Portal, MBA
Liat is an established writer with an academic background in Industrial Engineering and Management and a master’s degree in Business Administration, empowering her clients.
I published this interview on Medium and my website, too. Thank you for reading, sharing, and exploring the Substack of Liat.
Dear readers, in this new interview episode, I will introduce you to a relatively new writer on this platform who is not new to writing and shining on multiple writing platforms.
I came across authentic, insightful, and inspiring stories of
in my publications, so I decided to introduce you to her fascinating world of writing and storytelling, covering business and cross-cultural communication from multiple angles.In addition to the valuable and authentic content of Liat, I also admire her writing style and how she connects with her readers on multiple platforms, educating, empowering, and inspiring her readers as an experienced businessman. Thank you for exploring her stories and supporting her writing journey.
Meet Liat Portal, MBA
Hi Liat, let’s start the conversation with your interesting background.
Hi Mehmet, thanks for the opportunity. I live in San Francisco, the heart of Silicon Valley. It is the world’s capital of the high-tech industry. I have a deep understanding of SMBs in the high-tech and traditional industries.
Since childhood, I have felt comfortable connecting to people from different cultures without bias. I naturally speak to any audience with a diverse educational, economic, or national background and find connections between us.
My academic background in Industrial Engineering and Management and a master’s degree in Business Administration have sharpened my ability to establish trust and create cross-cultural collaboration.
Today, I can synthesize all the working parts of a business, allocate resources and responsibilities to the right key players, and ensure everyone knows what they need to get the work done.
Considering your MBA credentials and years of work, how do you define sole proprietor business, and what advice do you give to aspiring business people to get started?
Sole proprietorships in the US represent approximately 70% of all US businesses, with an estimated 27 million in operation. Although numerous, their contribution to the overall US economy (GDP) is relatively small, estimated at approximately 4–6%, and they employ around 7–10% of the US workforce.
While they are easy to set up and offer the owner full control, the owner is personally liable for all business debts and has limited access to loans and investments. Business profits are taxed as personal income. However, achieving a healthy work-life balance is often very difficult, if not impossible.
Beyond the entrepreneurial spirit of sole proprietorships, a harsh reality unfolds in today’s workforce. Corporations increasingly hire only top talent directly, leaving everyone else to contract work. Benefits disappear, wages stay low, and the line between an employee and someone easily replaced blurs.
Many sole proprietors are forced to work as contractors and don’t have alternatives, as corporations want to minimize their liability for employees. In practice, not all sole proprietors want to start their own businesses; they are forced to do so by reality to get a job, but nobody talks about it.
Those who are lucky enough to open their own small business because they want to, and not because they are forced to, need to understand that the three pillars of any business, whether small or global, are the product or service that generates revenue, the sales and marketing of that product or service, and the operations of running the business.
So, when opening a business because you are talented and want to make a living from what you are good at, that will be about 30% of what you actually do in the business. The other 70% will go to the “boring” aspects of running the business. Until you are financially stable enough to hire a team, you are responsible for and do everything on your own.
That means you need to handle many things you hate, like issuing invoices, talking to banks, selling your product or service, producing marketing materials, answering all calls and emails, and also being the one who makes the coffee and cleans the toilets.
What does health mean to you, and how do you achieve work-life balance as a businesswoman?
To me, health begins with the security of health insurance, knowing that someone has your back. Many people don’t fully grasp what life was like before modern healthcare developed in the past century. People died from minor infections or diseases that are now easily treated with vaccines and medication.
If we could travel back in time and tell people that smallpox was eradicated, that we have vaccines for measles and diphtheria, and that infections are treated with antibiotics in a matter of days, they would think we are either magicians or delusional. I am deeply grateful to live in an era of science, where excellent healthcare and advanced treatments exist and where some plagues have been eradicated.
As a sole proprietor of a small business, I struggle to achieve work-life balance. I constantly worry about income and securing the next client. With recent changes that have eliminated or closed programs supporting women, employers are more likely to hire men who won’t take maternity leave or avoid promoting women if they can without facing any implications.
Women are at risk more than ever in any position, especially as small business owners. Moreover, single mothers working to make a living will soon face a harsh reality when men support men and ignore women without consequences because men have changed the laws to benefit them, effectively setting women back 100 years.
What are your hobbies, or what excites or entertains you?
Entertainment plays a significant role in my life. I love music, especially live shows and all performing arts, including theatre, ballet, and opera. Watching a live show, a musical, or a play is captivating, deeply moving, and inspiring. The arts play an essential role in the progress of our society as they mirror and criticize social norms, cultural shifts, and political changes in a way that makes the audience think.
As much as I love entertainment, I also love education, especially when it’s delivered in creative ways that resonate with the audience and leave a lasting impact. I want to build an education system based on the entertainment industry. I describe it as the compulsory education system of the future.
In my journey to infinity, where my stories unfold across various timelines, I tell the readers about the Israeli culture through my own eyes, having grown up and lived in Israel. Israel is a melting pot of Jewish communities around the world who came to Israel when it was established. The secret source and power of the Israeli culture is the integration between cultures from all over the world. For each ethnicity, I focus on a signature dish that became a staple in the Israeli cuisine and various artists, usually musicians. One of my latest installments was about Ofra Haza’s life journey, her musical career, and also her personal life and unexpected death at the age of 42 from HIV.
This installment was written with Kevin Alexander, the editor of The Riff publication on Medium, and also includes podcasts. So, for anyone who wants to learn more about the history of the Israeli music culture, Ofra’s musical journey including dealing with racism by Israeli mainstream cultural institutions that didn’t accept Yemeni and oriental music in the early days of the state of Israel, I invite you to read the stories and listen to the podcasts.
Here is a link to the story that was written last month for the 25th anniversary of her death. Scroll down to see the list of links of stories and podcasts in this installment.
I also enjoy spending time with my family. My father is a great storyteller, as I mentioned in a story lately.
What are the top three books that affected your life?
1 — Freakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt.
It was a mandatory reading book in my undergraduate degree in engineering school, and it completely changed my perspective of how I analyze everything in life in general. The connection between cause and effect, or between events that may initially seem random or unrelated yet are fundamentally linked, is a central theme in Freakonomics. One of the examples in the book that remains relevant today is the analysis of the drop in crime rates during the 1990s when Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York City. Giuliani claimed that crime rates fell because he had stationed a police officer on every street corner. However, the data told a different story. The reality was tied to the legalization of abortion in the 1970s, which granted women greater control over their bodies. This law allowed women living in poverty to terminate unwanted pregnancies, preventing those children from being born into disadvantaged circumstances that often lead to crime. As a result, the crime rate dropped independently of the increased police presence.
2 — Revolt by Nadav Eyal. In his unique way, Nadav combines economic, political, historical, and artistic information into the story of our reality.
He argues that modern globalization is not sustainable, pointing to the rise of nationalism and populism. He suggests that the collapse of the current world order is not so much about the imbalance between technological achievement and social progress or the breakdown of liberal democracy as it is about a passion for upending and destroying power structures that have become hollow, corrupt, or simply unresponsive to urgent needs.
3 — Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel by Francine Klagsbrun.
Golda Meir was a world leader and figure unlike any other. She was one of the few women in Israel’s leadership, and her impact is profound to this day. Born in Tsarist Russia in 1898, she immigrated to America in 1906. She grew up in Milwaukee, where she displayed the political consciousness and organizational skills from her earliest years that would eventually catapult her into the inner circles of Israel’s founding generation.
I have learned so much from her biography about what she went through and her entrepreneurial spirit, which brought her to Israel from the United States. While most American Jews were generous in donating money, few were willing to leave their comfortable lives to build a country from scratch. Her strength, her vision, her modesty, and her ability to form domestic and foreign relationships ultimately led her to greatness and to holding the top position in the Israeli government as prime minister.
Now, let’s talk about your writing. Why do you write on Medium?
I write on Medium because it is a platform for people who love to read, expand their knowledge, and hear voices from all over the world. It is one of the largest platforms, providing exposure to millions of people worldwide from different cultures, religions, and nations who connect and inspire each other.
I weave together episodes from my life with the vibrant tapestry of Israeli culture through music, food, the arts, entrepreneurship, fiction, and more. I write on weekends and evenings, posting these episodes as they unfold, like a live performance filled with raw moments and unexpected turns.
These aren’t just stories; they are moments that challenge perspectives, celebrate connections, and spark inspiration. I write about current and historical events and share memories and personal stories. I also write fiction about the future to spark imagination and critical thinking.
All these stories are episodes and part of my show, “The Liat Show,” which is based on my life. Currently, only some parts of it are running, and every day more pieces are connected. Right now, the written stories across timelines and podcasts are the foundation. Soon, I’ll connect videos and then live sessions. In my vision, these sessions will be aired across various social media platforms and will follow the structure of a school schedule to create what I see as the compulsory education system of the future.
Do you write on other platforms? If so, how do you find them?
Yes. I do. Substack and Patreon are my main platforms since I have paid subscribers on both. My first commitment is to those who support my work directly and allow me to keep writing, develop my show, and design the school of the future.
I don’t remember how I found Patreon, but I discovered Substack through stories on Medium. I opened an account, but it took me about a year to launch my publication there and start posting.
Today, Substack is my pillar platform because it also distributes my podcasts, making it the ultimate platform that helps me connect with my audience through newsletters and emails. It also serves as a distribution center for all audio platforms for podcasts and processes direct payments.
For creators, this is a valuable solution, especially for writers who are often overlooked and tend to be minimized compared to other parts of the creative process. Everything starts with words, and without them, it’s impossible to achieve anything.
Why did you join ILLUMINATION, and how do you find it so far?
I joined ILLUMINATION following recommendations from writers at the online Medium conference last year. Writing for a respected publication with more than 200K followers is a great honor.
My constant wish is for more people to come across my content. So, I collaborate with writers and editors and write with them. I love the process of writing together on a Google Doc and creating a story from scratch. It’s educational, exciting, and eye-opening to work with people I would never have the chance to collaborate with in my day job.
I have learned a lot about culture, collaboration, discipline, and support, opening doors for each other along the way.
What are some stories that you want to share with your audience?
Here are some of my stories that might be of interest to your readers:
Breaking Barriers but Bound by Shame in the Untold Story of Ofra Haza — Current Time Reflections on a Flashback
Greenland 90210: When They Sell You a Lot… in the Middle of the Ocean — Flash forward.
From Cheap Protein to Luxury, Why Eggs and Shakshuka Are No Longer Affordable — Current Time
The Theatre — Current Time
The Liat Portal Method for Reading: A New Way to Read Online — Current Time
What are your plans as a writer or as a professional?
I will continue to write and tell my story. Working with others and supporting my audience delights me.
I’m ending all my texts with the following request from the audience, and I’ll do the same here. I’m inviting all of you to join my journey and to see the magic happen firsthand.
Unlock my potential to write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told. Your support would make a big difference in taking this journey to the next level.
Follow me on My Journey to Infinity to find out. It will be more beautiful than you could ever imagine.
Many thanks to Liat Portal for giving us a glimpse into her interesting life and insights. You can connect with her via Substack, Patreon, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and her website.
Health is essential to me and my readers. Therefore, I focus on it by writing and curating insights from other writers, practitioners, and thought leaders.
I am pleased our Health and Wellness Network was selected as a bestselling publication on Substack. Thank you for your wonderful support to grow this network. These funds will go to our Substack Mastery Boost Pilot program to empower writers, readers, and editors of the program who keep the community vibrant. I wrote a story about this on Medium to guide freelance writers yesterday. To celebrate this milestone, I am providing a 50% discount to free subscribers who want to support our work and help this community grow fast.
Thank you for being part of our joyful and exciting journey.
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