Can an Entrepreneur Raise an Entrepreneur?
Introduction:
This week, Jay Goltz and Diana Lee discuss the dangers of mixing entrepreneurship and parenting. Years ago, when Chris Rock was asked in an interview about his relationship with his children, he responded, “My kids are rich. I have nothing in common with them.” Obviously, that’s an extreme example, played for laughs by a comedian, but you don’t have to be a celebrity to wonder about the differences between your upbringing and your kids’ upbringing. As it happens, Jay and Diana were both raised in family businesses, but they offer contrasting thoughts on the challenges of raising a family and building a business at the same time. Plus: we also talk about what the upheaval in the auto industry means for Diana, how to think about the president’s vaccine mandate, and whether Jay has resolved his crazy double-billing problem with AT&T.
— Loren Feldman
Guests:
Diana Lee is co-founder and CEO of Constellation Agency.
Jay Goltz is founder and CEO of Artists Frame Service and Jayson Home.
Producer:
Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word Productions.
Full Episode Transcript:
Loren Feldman:
Welcome Jay and Diana. Can an entrepreneur raise an entrepreneur? Jay, what do you think?
Jay Goltz:
I only, obviously, have my own sampling of three children who are now 39, 36, and 31, and I believe that it’s largely genetic. One of my kids is extremely entrepreneurial, one of them is largely entrepreneurial, and the other one doesn’t seem to be entrepreneurial at all. I’ll have to define that, meaning taking risk, being optimistic, seeing things as opportunities instead of problems. So yeah, I don’t know that it’s something that you can inspire or teach to a kid. I think there are many other parenting issues, like, just how do you navigate running a business when you’re trying to raise kids? That’s a whole other thing. Are we gonna talk about that?
Loren Feldman:
Sure.
Jay Goltz:
Okay, I’ve got plenty to say on that subject.
Loren Feldman:
Before we get there, Diana, how about you? Have you thought about this?
Diana Lee:
I have, and it’s weird that you asked, Loren. My parents were entrepreneurs, but they actually came from a very poor country—South Korea—and we moved to the U.S. in 1974, when I was five years old. They had a very hard time with all the businesses that they had, because they self-funded everything and they were working 15-,18-hour days just to get by and make enough money. They came from pretty desperate times. My parents were held up at gunpoint multiple times while I was growing up, running their convenience stores or fish markets or whatever they actually owned at the time. Many of the reasons were because they had to actually open in pretty bad locations or locations where they could afford it. But obviously, they weren’t in the best places.
Watching them, throughout the years, they would come home, and they would have a bag of cash afterwards, because obviously, they’d have to take the money out of the registers. They would count the money as soon as they got home. And then they’d count the coupons of what they actually had to apply everything to, and I watched it my whole life. And as many times as I said, “I don’t want to turn out like them”—where I’m working 15-hour days, not sleeping much, working all the time, and completely ignoring me, their child—I ended up repeating the same identical thing. But in a bigger way.
Loren Feldman:
Tell us about that. When did you realize that you were repeating?
Diana Lee:
I started the business when I was 47 years old, so it was five years ago. I’m 52 now. My kids were in high school then. My husband had said to me, “If you’re going to actually build a business, you should do it now. Because our kids are in high school. They don’t really want you around as much, and they don’t want to be controlled, Diana. In the end, you’re gonna have a better relationship if you just go to work more.” So I was like, “Okay, fine, I’ll do it.” And because I’m a control freak, I wanted to make sure everybody’s okay all the time. And I was over-controlling about what they ate, how they dressed, all those things that I think most mothers are with their children.
And then, as soon as I start the business, I am so over-consumed. And now I have employees, I have people I have to support, but I feel like they’re my children as well. I ended up putting all this energy knowing that my kids want me to have less control of their lives. So that’s how it all started. It was all for the benefit of them, to have a better relationship with them. The business starts doubling year over year, and I just get more and more sucked in, more and more consumed. Having 100 employees now, every hour of my day has been consumed with work. So they recently all left for college. I have two in freshman year and one in his senior year. And I just feel like I haven’t been around for them at all for the last four or five years because of the business. And I feel guilty, but I ended up repeating the same thing my parents did for me.
Loren Feldman:
Jay, you grew up in your father’s dime store, and you’ve often credited that experience with helping you learn important lessons like—I know it’s a very different kind of business—but you learned how to treat customers. Did your sons grow up working in your business at all?
Jay Goltz:
No, not really. I mean, my business is in the city and my kids are in the suburbs. Back when I was a kid, I had to go to work on Saturdays, because that was the big business day. And then during the holidays, I actually took off some time in high school. I took a couple of days out of high school to help out at the store because it was Christmas rush. But my father was home every night at a quarter to seven. I wouldn’t say he was consumed by it. He worked six days a week. I grew up never seeing my father. My father worked six days a week. I also worked six days a week my whole life.
And I would say to people, there’s that old story about there’s no old person lying on their deathbed wishing they would have spent more time with their business. I tell everyone that’s not really the right parable. The right parable is: The day they leave for college that they’re walking away from the car, you want to vomit and you say, “Oh my god, was I home enough? My kid’s grown up. It’s over.”
Loren Feldman:
It sounds like Diana just had that experience.
Jay Goltz:
And here’s the difference, though. See, when you’re on your deathbed, you’re gonna be dead in a few days, a couple days of suffering. Here, you get another 30 years, hopefully, to torture yourself over that you screwed up. So I warn people—
Loren Feldman:
If you screwed up.
Jay Goltz:
Well, there are different levels of screwing up. I think this whole concept of balance, when it comes to owning a business, is laughable. I call it “tolerable sacrifice.” I mean, I was home. I was home Sundays usually. Was I home enough? Not terrible. If I had it to do all over again, I probably would have been home a little more. But the biggest thing I’ve learned—and of course, I learned it too late—is, I call it having “alignment.” Meaning, if you make a decision—I really want to be there for my kids a decent amount—maybe you don’t open that one extra store. Maybe you don’t open that extra office. And I wasn’t thinking about that.
So I did in fact expand probably bigger than I needed to. Entrepreneurship is intoxicating. And you’re not thinking about it. You think, “Oh, I’ll take that vacation next year. This year, I’m too busy.” And then, whoosh, your kids are out of the house. And I said this to you in particular, probably five years ago. I said, “You know, I’m way more successful than I thought I would be. I think if I would have worked 10 percent less, I would have been home more. And it would have been a better outcome for being home with my kids.” But then you said, “Yeah, and maybe you’d be broke.”
Loren Feldman:
You don’t know that 10 percent less work means 10 percent less results.
Jay Goltz:
Yeah, it’s not necessarily a linear relationship. Maybe that 10 percent less work, maybe the business wouldn’t have survived. Who knows? It’s tricky.
Loren Feldman:
Diana, would you do it differently if you had it to do over?
Diana Lee:
I don’t think you can, as a startup entrepreneur. There is no such word as “work/life balance.” If you want work/life balance, don’t open up a business. That’s what I would say. Because it is gonna consume you. And just like what Jay said, it’s intoxicating. And what’s crazy about it is it becomes more and more intoxicating every time that you’re more successful. Whatever the goal is, the goal continues to just go higher and higher, year over year. It’s never good enough.
And people around you say, “Oh, it’s great, but at the end, can you get here? Can you get here? Well, the company would be worth so much more if you could get here. Well, if you went into another vertical, you’d actually have to do this.” And for whatever reason, in so many ways, I feel like I’m a professional athlete. It’s like “good” is never good enough. And at the end, they want you to perform. You’re like a performance, pretty much. And the goal always ends up changing to another level.
Loren Feldman:
You feel that way even though you don’t have investors or outsiders who are driving performance? That’s all self-inflicted, obviously.
Diana Lee:
Self-inflicted, but there are always people who are making an evaluation of your company. I don’t care who it is, because if you’re successful, everybody is waiting for you to be more successful, and everybody is watching you. So like, we win, whatever, Inc. 5000, number 65. Or, we’re the fastest growing company, woman-led, number 10. I have Goldman Sachs contacting me nonstop. I have Morgan Stanley contacting me nonstop. I have JP Morgan contacting me nonstop. I have bankers, I have lawyers, I have… everybody wants to be your friend. And at the end of the day, they’re watching to see what you do, because they want to represent you. And it gets more and more intoxicating.
Jay Goltz:
Can I help you with this? They don’t want to be your friend. They want to make money off of you. You know, as I’m listening to you, I’m thinking, like, “Unleash yourself, untether yourself from these people,” because I just learned, what you’re saying doesn’t really make any sense. People are watching you, so you need to keep pushing the business to a limit to where you’re exhausted? I don’t think so. And that’s the difference between my age and your age. What you just said is all in your head. It’s totally self-inflicted—you’ve put this in your own head. What if you slowed your growth down? Just so you’d have more time?
Diana Lee:
One, I don’t think you and I… I think we’re probably close in age. I’m 52. How old are you?
Jay Goltz:
I’m 65.
Diana Lee:
Okay, so we’re not that far apart!
Jay Goltz:
No, but I’ve also been in business for 43 years.
Diana Lee:
Yes, yes, so that is a big difference. I think for me, it has to do with the fact that I entered the type of industry that I entered into, which is technical. And then there’s a lot of fast growth in the technical industries. The multiples are through the roof when you do a technology business, and so it’s not really all those people that pressure me. I don’t feel any pressure from them. It’s my employees who I feel the most pressure for. So I know …
Jay Goltz:
All right, there’s something to that. No, there’s something to that. I give you that.
Diana Lee:
Yeah, I don’t care about the bankers. I don’t care, because at the end, they are basically kissing up to you to do business with you and make money off of you. It’s the employees. They left whatever organization because of your vision that you promised for them.
Jay Goltz:
All right, I give you that. I don’t have that issue because I’m not a technology company. You’ve got a good point with that. I can only tell you, Loren, you were there with me. We were at an Inc. conference 10 years ago? Sitting at the table, there’s a woman there who’s maybe late 30’s, 40s, four to six months pregnant. She mentioned at dinner that she had been up in her room for the last two days—not at the conference—she was up in her room doing proposals. And they’re opening another office, and she’s got two other kids at home, and she’s in the middle of a divorce. And I just say to myself, “That’s not a good picture.” Like, opening more offices? Getting divorced? Having her third kid? Like, how’s that story working? And I think that there’s tens of thousands of people out there who are like that, who are just—I’m using the word out of “alignment.” Like, are they going to get what they want?
And I’ve been asking people. I’ve been watching people in business groups, watching them raising kids. Here was the one moment that really gave me some clarity. It was a long time ago. I was probably 34 or something. And there’s a guy in the business group who’s in technology, and he’s going to Europe all the time, and he’s got a custom-made Mercedes Benz that he flew in from Germany that no one else has here. And he’s this big hitter, and I’d gotten to know him a little bit. At that point, I’d just had my third kid, and I was trying to figure out: How do you navigate this whole thing? So I say to him, “Is it difficult that you’re going to Europe all the time and you’re leaving your wife home with four kids and you’re growing this business?” And he turned to me and he said, quote-unquote—I couldn’t make this up—he goes, “My children have eaten in the finest restaurants in the world.” And I said to myself, “You are really screwed up,” and I didn’t ask anything more. That’s all I had to hear.
So then, three or four months later, there’s the holiday party, and the spouses were invited. And I happen to be standing there waiting for a drink at the bar with the wife, and I had to go back to the scene of the crime. I had to ask her. So I just said…
Loren Feldman:
You had to ask her.
Jay Goltz:
I had to ask her because I’m just fascinated by this whole thing. I said, “Is it hard raising four kids when your husband’s traveling a lot?” And she looks at me, stone cold. She goes, “Yeah, I’ll tell you a story. A couple of months ago, my son dropped out of high school.” This is in a very affluent area, like they probably don’t have a lot of dropouts. “My son dropped out of high school, and I had to put him into drug rehab. And when my husband got home, he was furious. He said, ‘If I was home, this wouldn’t have happened.’ Yeah, that’s probably true. If he was home, it probably wouldn’t have.”
Loren Feldman:
It sounds like he didn’t really realize what he was saying.
Jay Goltz:
No, I don’t even know if she realized when she said that to me. Like I said, I’m not that good of a writer. I couldn’t write this stuff that well. And so I don’t know where they all ended up. I just know there are a lot of really screwed up entrepreneurs out there, and most of them are in the magazines. Just read about their lives. And like, I don’t want any part of that. So I’ve tried to navigate it.
Diana Lee:
So I think that what you’re saying might be logical, but I would disagree with you on something. And this is it for me. Our business is not a “me” business. It’s not about me. It doesn’t make any sense for me, even if I own most of the shares of the business. It’s not me. It’s a “we” business. So for us, it’s whether we all make it, and everybody is basically striving for the evaluation of the company. Everybody wants that. And at the end, I have to deliver that experience, period. And so when you get sucked into this type of situation—and it’s not a “me” business, I don’t own 100 percent—I’ve got to deliver it for the employees who actually own percentages of the business.
Jay Goltz:
Wait, now that part I didn’t know anything about. Walk us—because that’s totally different from my situation. How much of the business do you own, compared to these other people?
Diana Lee:
So we have what’s called equity rights, Jay. So equity rights basically means that you have equity rights that you’ve given your employees, but they have no ownership interest at a percentage level—you know, as stocks. If there is basically a future transaction, then they would get a percentage of whatever the equity rights were, and then I would dilute and my partner would dilute, based on the equity rights. 20 percent of our business is owned by our employees through equity. They don’t actually have voting power, but they actually have the rights to the stock.
Jay Goltz:
Wait, I didn’t know you had a partner. That’s all news to me. And so at the end of the day, how much of this is you and how much is everyone else? Because that’s news to me. I thought you owned 100 percent.
Diana Lee:
So I have a partner. He’s 20 years younger than I am, and I met him on LinkedIn. And it’s a funny story, because I had to deliver a social media campaign for Pfizer pharmaceuticals about seven or eight years ago, prior to launching Constellation. Being 52, what do I know about technology? How am I going to launch a campaign like this? I’m just a good salesperson, so I end up selling. By that time, I had to actually execute this thing, so I went on LinkedIn and tried to find a social strategist and found Matt, and he is a social strategist for Ogilvy & Mather’s at Social.Lab. He was the number one employee who actually got hired at Social.Lab in New York, after they acquired Social.Lab. Omnicom acquired Social.Lab.
So he ends up running and executing this campaign, and I realized that there’s all these things that are happening technologically that I’ve missed. But I understand clients, and I understand how to sell, and I understand operations. That’s my strength. So I said, “Why don’t you partner with me to launch Constellation Agency?” and that was the birth of Constellation. So that was five years ago. I did it with a complete stranger. I know that sounds really weird. And he always says, “I think I got struck by lightning, Diana. I got struck by lightning. Nobody walks into your life and basically offers you equity of something and then blows it out of the water, and you end up becoming a millionaire overnight.” And that’s pretty much what happened to Matt. So Matt is 32. I’m 52. Obviously I own the majority share, and he owns minority shares.
Jay Goltz:
Okay, so when you say you disagree with me, that’s not really accurate. You’re in a very different situation that I’m in. I have no partners. I don’t have anybody who’s counting on me selling the company and retiring. This is typical in entrepreneurship. People are in very different situations, and in your situation, you’ve done a good job of explaining why you’re in this situation. I get it. So in your situation, I understand that you do have expectations to meet for other people. I don’t. So it’s just different.
Diana Lee:
Right. But you’re in a very different but lucky situation. So all I’m saying is, you can’t judge other people based on their circumstances, because they could be in a very difficult situation.
Jay Goltz:
For sure, I’m not judging anybody. I’m telling you my own story.
Loren Feldman:
Diana, you kind of said in some ways, you’ve already blown it out of the water, but you’re concerned about not hitting valuations and the impact that would have on your employees. You’ve already done so well, what’s the scenario that concerns you? What are you afraid could happen?
Diana Lee:
As an entrepreneur—and this is the analogy that I usually make—I always feel like I’m going into a boxing ring. I’m the boxer, and there’s going to be a fighter that comes in. And every day, it’s a different fight. Every month it’s a different fight. So Delta variant, COVID, chip shortage in the auto industry, data restrictions, cookieless future, iOS 14 changes. I don’t care what it is. Every year, there’s something that I can’t predict that basically happens. So when I put in an evaluation of what we’re going to do, and a prediction of what we’re going to do, something always goes wrong. I don’t care what it is. In the [last] five years, there’s never been a year where basically everything went the way it was supposed to.
And so in this, it’s like the fighter comes in. I’ve got to basically punch and pivot, and I can’t get knocked out. That’s what I believe, but I know there’s going to be another fight. Another boxer’s coming into the ring to take me out, whether it’s this year, next year, or whatever. And I’ve got to figure out a way to stay in the battle, not get knocked out, and still win that round. It’s how I feel.
Loren Feldman:
I see. So just to tie up this conversation about parenting, it occurs to me, listening to the two of you, that I might have started with the wrong question. I asked you, “Can an entrepreneur raise an entrepreneur?” Maybe the first question should have been, “Do you care if you raise entrepreneurs or not? Is that something that’s important to you? Does it matter?” Jay, what do you think?
Jay Goltz:
I want to have happy kids, and I’m not about to put that responsibility on anybody. I want to have happy kids. If they want to be an entrepreneur, great. If they want to go teach school, great. If they want to become an accountant, great. I just want happy kids. And I take back what I said, “I’m not judging anyone.” I am judging someone. I’m gonna judge someone who grows the business at the expense of their children and leaves this world with some really messed up kids, which I’ve seen close-up and it’s horrible. And I say, if you don’t want to pay attention to your kids, and you want to just go to work and rationalize that you’re just making a living and never be home, don’t have kids. Do yourself a favor. Do the kids a favor.
It’s not easy being an entrepreneur. I’m not saying you’re supposed to be home every Saturday and Sunday, be home at five o’clock for dinner. I’m saying that there are some people who absolutely are workaholics in the true definition of a workaholic. They’re never home, they leave their spouse with the kids, if they have a spouse left. And it’s pretty brutal. I just think for the children of the world, they deserve to have a parent who’s around at least some. I mean, enough. Whatever the word enough is, I don’t know what that is. But it’s not an easy trip, and it’s difficult.
By no means, I understand in the startup phase, there are absolutely times where you just have to stay at work. I get it. I mean, you have to. You can’t just go, “I’m out of here!” It’s not that simple. Though, in my case, my wife was home with the kids, so it worked. If I had a working wife, I don’t know that I could have done what I did.
Loren Feldman:
Diana, do you care if your kids are entrepreneurial?
Diana Lee:
No, that part I agree with Jay on. I want my kids to be happy, and whatever their passion is, is what I’ve always said: It never feels like work to me because I am passionate about what I do. And I want them to find what their passions are in life, whatever it may be. So that part I completely agree with Jay on.
Loren Feldman:
All right, I want to change topics. I want to talk a little bit about the car industry, which happens to be the industry, Diana, that you built your business on. But first, we’re gonna take a quick break to hear from our sponsor, Work Better Now, which connects entrepreneurs like you guys with virtual assistants.
[Message from our sponsor]
Loren Feldman:
And we’re back. Diana, you did build your business by helping car dealers with their marketing. But right now between Tesla and the pandemic and the inability to get cars because there are no computer chips, that industry is truly in turmoil. So first question, Is that a problem for you?
Diana Lee:
Oh, yeah, that’s totally a problem for me. That’s one of the boxers that’s coming in, and mainly because the auto dealerships are having an all time gross high, meaning they could make the most amount of money on a car that they’ve never been able to do in the last 25 years, because there’s such a shortage of vehicles right now. And so why would they advertise, right? Why does anybody want to market? There are no incentives. There are no manufacturers that are basically coming out and saying, “Oh, you’ve got a $3,000 rebate.” No, no such thing. They don’t have to put out a rebate. Dealerships have two cars on the lot right now on new, so they don’t have to put any incentives on, so why would you ever have to advertise right now? So think about the entire marketing side of auto. It’s pretty much taking a hit pretty bad.
Jay Goltz:
I actually went out to buy a car, and they’re asking $3,000. They call it a “market adjustment.” And yeah, to your point, I’ve never seen anyone get away with that. But they are, and I just decided, “Okay, we’ll just wait until that catches up, because I’m not paying $3,000.” Now, if I had to, I guess you have no choice. But I do have a choice.
Loren Feldman:
Diana, I get your point about there not being a need for them to market right now. But some of them are facing an existential crisis. I mean, a lot of dealers are selling to the larger dealer groups or private equity, I guess, because they’re not sure they can make it in the new world, especially with more manufacturers planning on selling direct, and with everybody moving toward selling online, especially since the pandemic. Can you help with that?
Diana Lee:
This is the interesting thing right now, Loren, that’s happening in the auto industry. It’s being disrupted right now. You’ve got electric vehicles. You’ve got Rivian, Polestar, Lucid, Tesla that all can sell direct-to-consumers right from the website. So you can go on any of those websites and buy a car, and they’ll ship it to you, and they’ll arrive in like six weeks. All the traditional automakers in this country have basically a law here that says that you cannot sell a car direct-to-consumers in the U.S. All of the traditional automakers, the 25 of them—so these are like Toyota, General Motors, Ford, so on and so forth—all have to sell a car through franchises. And so because of this law, they cannot sell direct-to-consumer. This is a big problem.
So now the OEMs—the traditional automakers—are having to deal with this dilemma that they have to sell it through a franchise. And because of that, marketing is becoming very, very ineffective. Why? Because in the traditional way, you go on any automaker website, let’s say it’s Audi. You go on audi.com. You can’t buy a car. You’ve got to go to audi.com, then audioffers.com, which is based on the region. Then you’ve got to find a dealer that actually has the inventory. But you’re the one who actually has to do all the work to find out whether the dealer has the inventory or not. You go on Tesla, you can find the inventory, and you can purchase it right then and there. So because of that, that part of it is being completely disrupted.
But the other part that, Loren, that you’re saying, is this is an opportunity for COVID. And I know that this is gonna sound really crazy, but I believe this is a way for automakers to choke off the franchises. In the end, they’re the ones that decide whether they want to give inventory to the franchises. If they don’t want to give the inventory to the franchises, the franchises will die.
So you have this chip shortage. How much of it is going to affect which franchises that they’re going to actually give the inventory to, and which ones they won’t give the inventory to? And the ones that don’t get the inventory better sell ASAP, because the franchise markets are going to diminish in the U.S. It’s going to get smaller, smaller, and smaller, to some point that I believe the automakers are going to make a point to try to overturn that law to sell to franchises. I believe that’s going to happen.
Loren Feldman:
So does all that mean that you’re no longer gonna be able to rely on the car industry for the bulk of your business?
Diana Lee:
No, because of the innovation that we have, we’re able to actually go and work with the automakers, but we can also work with the agencies of record as well as the franchise markets. So we can position many different ways, and so we definitely have done that, which has helped us a lot. In addition to that, 30 percent of my business is DTC—direct to consumer brands—and that side keeps growing. So even though the auto side has been terrible this year, the other side has made up for the side that I wasn’t able to get.
Loren Feldman:
Next topic. It’s been about a week now since President Biden announced his vaccine and testing mandate, which applies to all businesses with more than 100 employees. And both of you fall into that category. You’ve had a little bit of time to think about it. I’m wondering what impact you think this is going to have.
Jay Goltz:
I’m trying not to think. That’s my new thing. I’m trying to just not think. I’m just waiting to see how it fleshes out. I mean, almost everybody who works for me in the retail side in the office is vaccinated. The people who I have working in the factory, numerous people, they’re not vaccinated. They’re all wearing masks. I don’t know. I don’t know if we’re gonna lose any people. I’ve got some really long-term people who really don’t want to do it.
Loren Feldman:
Is that your biggest concern? Because I know some business owners are very happy about this, in the sense that they want their people to be vaccinated, and they’re happy to have Joe Biden be the bad guy in this scenario. They don’t have to mandate it, because he did. What’s your concern?
Jay Goltz:
I don’t know. My concern is that a few people quit, and I’ve got some people who’ve been here for years.
Loren Feldman:
Because you’re losing people.
Jay Goltz:
Yeah, I’ve got people like one guy’s been here for 20 years, and he’s very valuable.
Loren Feldman:
Do you have reason to believe he will in fact quit?
Jay Goltz:
I have really not… I decided at this stage I did not want to interrogate anybody. But I did just say to him, “Hey, listen, is there any chance you’re going to get a vaccination?” He said, “No.” Now that was before the mandate thing. That was about a month ago. So I don’t know.
Loren Feldman:
How are you thinking about it, Diana?
Diana Lee:
In New York City, it’s impossible to go anywhere indoors without a vaccination card, so they’ve mandated it. It’s the law here to actually be vaccinated.
Jay Goltz:
In a store?
Diana Lee:
In a restaurant. Not necessarily a store, but if you want to eat at a restaurant, you have to show your vaccination card.
Jay Goltz:
Oh, it’s not like that here. Hmm.
Diana Lee:
Yeah, so here, I mandated vaccinations a little over a month ago, and it was because I was moving into the new space. I signed the lease. Shortly after that, I find out that One World Trade Center has also mandated vaccinations. They were one of the first to do it in New York City. And so once I found that, I realized I have this incredibly giant space, and now I can’t bring my employees in unless they’re vaccinated, and so that was super depressing for me. So at that moment, I mandated vaccinations because I needed them to come back to the office. So they come back Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
Loren Feldman:
How did they respond?
Diana Lee:
Only one quit. And I mean, amazingly, because they were so excited about the new space and how beautiful and everything it was, that it was a complete distraction. And so for them, I had almost everybody vaccinate. I had about four people in total that were going back and forth. One person quit. The other three didn’t vaccinate because of me. But they vaccinated because of the new office space. They said they love the office, and they’re coming to the new office no matter what. So they vaccinated.
Jay Goltz:
So the one that quit, what was the reasoning why they quit? I mean, do you know?
Diana Lee:
So they spoke to our HR team, and apparently she had mentioned that she felt very uncomfortable about getting vaccinated. She was scared about what was inside the vaccine. She was very, very skeptical, in terms of whether we had enough scientific proof whether it was safe or not. So that was her biggest fear, I think.
Loren Feldman:
Diana, it sounds like the President’s mandate will have no impact on you whatsoever. You’re not going to have to test anybody or anything. But Jay, you may have to test some people. Have you thought about how that would work?
Jay Goltz:
I’m waiting to see what they’re saying. Are they going to pay for this?
Diana Lee:
No.
Jay Goltz:
Did you hear that? Is that a fact? Because I’ve been told they haven’t come out with the details yet. That’s what I was told.
Diana Lee:
Yeah, but I think it doesn’t make any sense, right? Like, if they really want you to vaccinate, they’re going to make it super painful if you don’t. So they’re gonna make it inconvenient. They’re going to make it costly. They’re going to make sure that the person is going to try to pay for most of it, and I believe that’s probably where it’s headed.
Loren Feldman:
That’s actually—what you’re describing—what Delta Airlines did. They added a $200 a month health insurance supplement for people who aren’t vaccinated. And apparently it did prompt a lot of those people to go and get vaccinated.
Diana Lee:
Exactly.
Jay Goltz:
Wait. Walk me through that.
Loren Feldman:
Delta is charging unvaccinated employees a $200-a-month surcharge for health insurance, because their costs are higher from people getting sick. And that is having the intended effect of encouraging a lot of those people to go ahead and get vaccinated.
Diana Lee:
And I think that’s right, because at the end, the business owner actually ends up having to pay for a lot of the health insurance. And so because of that, the health policies are going to go higher.
Jay Goltz:
That’s a slippery slope. So then if that makes sense, should they be charging $200 a month for people that smoke?
Loren Feldman:
People do.
Jay Goltz:
Do they?
Loren Feldman:
That exists.
Diana Lee:
Oh, I didn’t know that.
Loren Feldman:
We’re just about out of time. I want to do one more thing real quickly. I would be remiss if I did not follow up with you, Jay. Last time you were here, you told us a completely bizarre story about your dealings with your phone carrier, AT&T. They had managed to over-bill you by, I think you said, between $80,000 and $100,000.
Jay Goltz:
Yeah, it was a six-figure number.
Loren Feldman:
And they were telling you they would work it out. But ultimately, you had to go to arbitration and they forced you to eat a percentage of it.
Jay Goltz:
Not a lot. I think they refunded 90 percent of it.
Loren Feldman:
But still.
Jay Goltz:
No, believe me. It didn’t feel good.
Loren Feldman:
While not contesting the fact that they had just double-billed you, overcharged you for it. And you ended it by telling us that it was happening again and that they were threatening to shut down your phone service.
Jay Goltz:
No, they didn’t threaten to shut it down. They shut it off. My phones got shut off one day.
Loren Feldman:
Have you sorted this out? Where do you stand?
Jay Goltz:
This time, they’ve got a manager on it. They swear the credit’s coming, and we should sit tight and they know about the other thing. The part that I didn’t fully understand when you asked me last time, and I don’t know that I gave a thorough answer. Your question was, “Why not just change phone carriers?”
Loren Feldman:
Yeah, why are you still using AT&T?
Jay Goltz:
Because you’ve got to understand, I’ve got my showroom, my offices in Lincoln Park, an upscale part of Chicago, and then I’ve got the factory warehouse in a lower-income area that doesn’t have as much fiber optics, that doesn’t have the attention they get where I’m at here. We’ve tried to go to Comcast, and it fails. So whether it’s because of copper wires or infrastructure, there’s some reason why we need to use AT&T, because we did try to leave.
Loren Feldman:
Are you sure?
Jay Goltz:
No, believe me, nothing would make me happier, but we’re stuck. I kind of am sleeping at night. They’ve got a manager on it. They’re giving us a refund. Ask me in a month.
Loren Feldman:
Diana, have you ever heard anything like that?
Diana Lee:
I’ve never. I probably would lose it
Jay Goltz:
It actually is funny you say that. I said, “If I wasn’t doing this for so long, I would have lost it.” Just like, I’ve kind of gotten used to it. It is what it is. I would have gone ballistic 30 years ago, but like what am I gonna do about it? So it is what it is.
Loren Feldman:
My thanks to Jay Goltz and Diana Lee. As always, thanks for sharing, guys.
