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Ari’s
first real job, where he earned a regular paycheck, came when he
went to work for a fast food restaurant called Gino’s at age 16.
“We sold burgers like McDonalds as well as Kentucky Fried
Chicken. I quickly worked my way up to being the Chicken
Man. I
was proud to be the guy making the chicken and being part of the
team making $2.65 an hour plus meals,” Goldberger said.
There
were lots of other odd jobs along the way, including stints as a
mall security guard, vacuum cleaner salesman and beer vendor at
Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium. There was also a summer job
with the city road department where Goldberger one day found
himself working side by side with a guy who had done prison time
for murdering his wife with an ax. “He had found her in bed with
someone else. Hardly said a word to me all day,” Goldberger
recalls. A gig as a busboy at the Playboy Hotel and Casino proved
more lucrative (and a lot less stressful). “I thought I was rich
with $30-40 in tips in my pocket every night!,” Goldberger said.
Ari
worked as hard in the classroom as he did out of it and wound up
graduating from Vineland High School with honors. That earned him
a place at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia (an Ivy League oasis that U.S. News & World
Report ranks as one of the top four colleges in America, along
with Harvard, Princeton and Yale). “I was excited when I
was accepted to Penn in 1979,” Goldberger recalled. “I started
out as a pre-med student, much to pleasure of my Uncle Rudy, who
was chief of pathology at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in
New York. He helped pay the tuition which my parents couldn't
afford.”
Statue
of school founder Benjamin Franklin in front of College
Hall at
Goldberger's alma mater - the University of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia.
“College
was a shock for me. I came from a small town and Penn was loaded
with all these rich kids. One friend’s dad owned a multi-million
dollar boating business, the father of another owned AAMCO
Transmission. Kids of diplomats, noted authors, you name it. Boy,
did Penn warp my sense of reality! I kind of felt inferior because
my folks were not of that “upper crust.” Little did I
know then how lucky I was and how special my parents’ unique
experience was,” Goldberger said.
Pre-med
did not work out for Ari. When he got a C in Biology 101 he
started having second thoughts about his career choice. He took some
business courses and did well enough in those that he was allowed
to transfer into Penn’s world famous Wharton School of Business.
“When I got that letter after my sophomore year, I was on top of
the world, as I felt Wharton was the key to future opportunity,”
Goldberger said.
With
his move to Wharton, Ari’s entrepreneurial spirit flourished.
“I ran an ad in Rolling Stone magazine selling “General
Hospital” scrub shirts. I figured that the TV show
couldn’t claim exclusive rights to a term like “General.”
I received dozens of orders and checks in excess of $3,000, all
made out to “General,” which I assumed I would have no problem
depositing in a bank account. Boy was I surprised when the
bank said I couldn’t open an account and deposit checks based on
a DBA (Doing Business As) without formally filing with the state. The
bank manager ultimately gave me a break and I fulfilled the
orders,” Goldberger added.
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“I
ran a business with a partner in my junior year at Penn called
University Maid Services. We hired maids to clean dorm rooms
and made a profit. When the help did not show up, we got
down on our hands and knees and scrubbed toilets and bathtubs.
I have never minded getting my hands dirty and doing every part of
a job of a business I have run. At the end of my senior year, I
ran a business called University Movers, which charged a fee to
move students to school from their homes in Boston and Philadelphia. I subcontracted movers in Boston and used Federal
Express for the first time,” Goldberger said.
“I
took a semester off from school my senior year to expand my maid
service to serve Center City Philadelphia. I called it
“The Maid Brigade, a housecleaning task force to meet all your
needs in the fight for cleandom.” I got the phone number
925-MAID. This was in 1984 and I strongly believed then in
the importance of a good name and number for a business – much
like the importance of domains today.”
“Around
this same time, my Dad had stopped working for the trucking
company and began helping with a kids clothing store my mom was running
called Ruth's Kiddie Corner. The store was in a farmers market
called the Pennsauken Mart. It had 250 businesses, mostly composed
of small ma and pa stores. My parents were able to eek out a
small living from this. I started helping them and tried to
give the store more of a professional modern look and style."
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1984
flyer for Goldberger's maid service |
"It was a big thrill for
me that my family had its own store!
My dad was his own boss and no longer had to work for the
“man.” I called the store Kidz and designed a
logo, painted the store, bought nice fixtures, helped them expand and
negotiate a new lease. I was so incredibly proud when that
new store was complete. I felt that finally my parents could
be on their own and not have to worry about finances, and it was
very gratifying to me that I had helped with this,” Goldberger
said.
When
Ari graduated from Penn in December 1984 he didn’t follow the path a
lot of his classmates did. “I still preferred running my own
business as opposed to working for anyone, including the Big 8
accounting firms and consulting firms that hired Wharton grads. It
just wasn’t my scene,” he said.
Ari
did take a brief stab at it though, taking a job in the associate
buyers program at the Hecht Company, a department store chain in
the Washington D.C. area. “I didn’t last long there as I
didn’t like working for people. It just brought me no
pleasure, and I felt that I should be back with my parents
building Kidz into a retail empire. My Dad reluctantly agreed to
have me work for them, but kind of gave me a hard time (probably
rightfully so) for graduating from arguably the best business
school in the world – and working at “the Mart.”
He didn’t understand the gratification I derived from being a
part of my own thing and helping my parents gain some financial
independence. I know it pained him for me to not be working on
Wall Street or something. Both my parents are very proud of
what I’m doing now and that is extremely gratifying,”
Goldberger said with a smile.
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Logo
Ari designed
for family business |
“I
helped improve Kidz and convinced my parents to allow me to open
up a second location in another farmers market. Boy, was
that a failure! I visited the market on a Saturday and it
was so crowded I thought it would surely be a success. Later
I learned that the only reason it was crowded that day was because
they were having a baseball card show. The market was pretty much
dead the rest of the time and the venture was very unprofitable.
Ultimately, we closed the store.”
This
was Goldberger’s first brush with failure but as I noted
earlier, failures are often the best learning experiences for
entrepreneurs who go on to achieve great success. You have to be
resilient, keep plugging away at the ideas you believe in and
learn from your mistakes, which is exactly what Goldberger did.
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“As
store owners, we received free monthly trade magazines touting the
latest fashions. I was amazed that the magazines could get
$2,000-3,000 for a full-page ad. We also attended trade
shows which I knew were profitable. It was 1986 and the VCR
had become a staple in everyone’s home. I thought it would
be neat if I could come up with a video concept that was an
alternative to both the trade magazine and trade show. The Kids
Video Fashion Show was born. For the next several months
I ate, slept and breathed this idea. I touted it as the
first trade show buyers attended from the comfort of their home or
office,” Goldberger said.
“I
developed a demo and brochure and shipped it to all the major
children’s wear manufacturers. While there was some
interest, I did not have the funding or infrastructure to take it
to the next level. The lesson I learned from this was that good
ideas were not enough for a successful business. I decided I
did not want to be this guy who just came up with great ideas but
had nothing to show for it.”
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“Around
that time, I was watching the Senate confirmation hearings on
President Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork for the Supreme
Court.
I was very interested in the Senators’ discussion of
constitutional law, and felt that maybe being a lawyer was
something I was cut out for. I liked to argue, defend
people’s rights, and it was a profession in which I could work
for myself. I took the LSAT’s and was accepted to a number
of schools, ultimately selecting Rutgers in Camden,
New Jersey. I
continued to work for Kidz and ultimately took over the business
in 1991, doubling the size of the store and renaming it New Kidz
at the Mart.”
Goldberger
operated the business until 1993 when he finally gave it up to
concentrate on his new life as a lawyer. Of course, life has a way
of throwing you curves from time to time that take you to places
you never expected to go. For Ari, one of those curves brought him
into the domain business.
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Judge
Robert Bork
at 1987 Senate hearings that influenced Ari Goldberger's decision
to become an attorney. |
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Continue
to Page 3: Legal Battle Leads Goldberger into the World of Domains
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