Like so many young people, Eric Glaser, 34, saw his dreams dashed a few years ago when the dot-com bubble exploded.
“I’d made more money overnight than I’d ever made before,” said Glaser, who did publicity in the entertainment and technology fields for nine years. “And suddenly I had this mortgage and I wasn’t sure what to do.”
Glaser’s solution? He listened to his father and followed his mother, Bobbi Glaser, a real estate broker and agent who has been with Pacific Union Realty in Marin for almost 25 years. Now Eric works for Pacific Union in San Francisco.
“Eric’s heard about real estate all these years, the terminology, and what it means to be in the business,” said Bobbi Glaser, who has also taught high school English, managed a large real estate company, and written a real estate column for The San Francisco Independent. “And he has a background in psychology and a MBA and is a people person. He has all the qualities of a good real estate agent.”
Eric Glaser said he learned those qualities intuitively. “I don’t remember being aware when I was younger of what my mother did on a day-to-day basis,” said Eric, who advertises with his mother and soon plans to co-list a house with her. “But today it’s great to have her as a mentor. She’s very organized. Occasionally I’ll call her and ask her how she’d handle a situation.”
Ellen Bob rarely has to phone her mother, Shirley Bob, about work matters. For the past 23 years the two of them have owned and operated bob and bob, a Judaica emporium in downtown Palo Alto.
“It’s a delight to work together,” said Shirley. “We get along beautifully. When we started the business, we had different plans to departmentalize the store. We allocated different responsibilities so we don’t step on each other’s toes.”
Both agreed that having separate space is the key to their successful working and familial relationship. Shirley is mainly responsible for buying Jewish ritual items, jewelry, and party ware, while Ellen handles the media and purchases the books and CDs.
“We understand each other,” Ellen said. “We have an easy mother-daughter relationship. I had no business experience when we started. My mother’s taught me everything I know about retail.”
“I also brought three babies to work with me over the years and she’s taught me a lot
about parenting,” Ellen continued. “When one of my kids was sick, the boss didn’t care if I took a day off because she cares about my children as much as I do.”
The only real downside to their partnership, Ellen noted, is that since “we can see each other all the time, we don’t necessarily have the time to do the family thing. One of my kids can get an ‘A’ on a test and we might not discuss it.”
For Paul Sanderson, working with his daughter Jennifer in the financial sphere has helped bring the family closer together.
“Clearly, as business develops, this is one way of making sure we’re not too far from our grandchildren when they come,” said Sanderson, a financial consultant at Praxis Group.
The small Walnut Creek firm, which consults with individuals, endowments and foundations, is affiliated with Smith Barney, “but we pretty much act as independent consultants,” said Sanderson, a former professor of political economy at the University of Toronto.
Jennifer originally planned to become a physician, according to her father. But he suspects “the combination of economic and professional pressures on doctors, combined with organic chemistry, convinced her to look at economics.” After graduating magna cum laude from UCLA in 2002, she began working with her father. Jennifer was married in September and lives in San Francisco, while her parents live in Alamo, not far from the office. Her mother, Donna, who is in real estate, drops by a couple of times a week.
Working with his daughter is “absolutely fantastic,” said Sanderson. “It’s a mixture of pride and delight and surprise at times. She can be challenging. We have discussions and debates on how best to solve problems. She usually defers to my judgement, but she does a fabulous job on her own. She’s a new and improved version of the old man. She has a very analytic mind and I think you need that if you’re going to be independent and objective in this field.”
The only clashes between Mikhail Treistman, 69, and his son, Sam, 35, were minor and involved ordering additional products for their store, Tel Aviv Kosher Meats in San Francisco. Mikhail was definitely old school and Sam, with his business-oriented degree from San Francisco State University, preferred a more modern approach.
“My father’s thinking was you buy a lot at a better price,” said Sam, who started working with his father when he was nine, taking orders, cutting deli meats, and getting chickens for customers. When he was 12, he began using the saw and butchering meat. “My philosophy was to order less and have more cash flow on hand. I also pushed for specials more.”
Sam returned to the store in 2002 after being axed from several computer-related jobs during the dot-com blowup. His full-time arrival came none too soon because Mikhail was seriously injured about a year ago in a robbery at the store and fell into a four-week coma. Now Sam, father of a 3-year-old, works six days a week, about 70 hours, which doesn’t include purchasing the store’s supplemental items, such as soft drinks and packaged goods.
“I see my father 2-3 hours a day,” said Sam of his father, a fourth-generation butcher from Odessa, who is now semi-retired and still recovering from the attack. “But he taught me lessons of life. He taught me what it takes to raise and feed a family while running a business. It’s tough to balance family and work.”
But the biggest gift Mikhail shared with Sam was about tolerance. “My father was always kind, smiling and had 1001 jokes for everyone. People might come in the store upset, but they’d leave happy. His attitude goes beyond the business.”
Janet Silver Ghent contributed to this report.