A few weeks later, Alfred Chandler, a DuPont heir and one of the most esteemed professors at the Harvard Business School, invited me into his office. (By now the administration was allowing me to take most of my courses there, even though I was an undergraduate.) “Jonas,” he said, “in class you seem like a bright young man and I’ve heard you run a decent-sized business. Could you describe it to me?” I proudly told him, in detail, about the mail-order business. How I conceived the ads, tested them, found the merchandise; I told him about the agency, the shipping, everything. When I was done, he told me, “Really, you can do more with your life than that. Why, you’re just one step above a pushcart peddler.”

That hurt. More deeply than Professor Chandler could have imagined. Yeah, I was frustrated with the mail-order business. At best it was selling junk, and at worst it could get you into serious trouble. Not only that, but I wasn’t there to watch it. Someone else was always losing the orders, not watering the trees, or failing to order enough decorations. The someone else was always in New York and I was always in Boston. I could have solved at least some of my problems by doing one simple thing: moving the mail-order business to Boston.

But I couldn’t. For one thing, I didn’t want to unemploy my old staff or break my family ties with New York. This was only part of the story, though. The bigger part is that I couldn’t decide what I was. Part of me wanted to be a young, rough-edged hustling businessman, but part of me really did want to be Harvard—educated, cultured, above the fray, someone Professor Chandler could be proud of. I was leading a double life. And it was putting a tremendous strain on me. I wasn’t giving all my heart to the mail-order business, but I wasn’t giving it to Harvard, either. Everything was half-baked, tasteless, unsatisfying. Psychologically, I was coming apart. It had to be one way or the other. I chose Harvard. Who knew what a bad choice this would turn out to be?

I’ve since come to believe that the best thing in life is not to be compartmentalized. Not to be one person at work and a different one at home. Cheap one place, charitable elsewhere. Intellectual here, crude elsewhere. Associating with one group of people as co-workers and an entirely different type as friends. Not me. Not anymore. More than half of my friends work at IDT. My jeans are the same in both places. My house is not too much fancier than the office. I try to be consistent wherever I am.

I’ve read that Himmler would leave a concentration camp and hand out candy to the children gathered outside. He was obviously good at compartmentalizing. Not me. I won’t buy a cheaper component at work if it comes from a totalitarian country any more than I’d buy “Made in China” shirts at home. It’s not even that it’s a virtue. I just can’t take the strain of living behind different masks.

When it became clear to me that I couldn’t live in two worlds, I chose Harvard, sort of. Sort of, I say, because I still wanted to be in business. Only this time, I’d go into a Harvard business. I’d hire Harvard men. We’d do Harvard-type things. No more pushcart peddler for me. We’d try again to be a legitimate advertising agency. I’d spend the summer working in New York, and then try to continue from Cambridge in September. I hired three sons of Harvard to begin my challenge to J. Walter Thompson and Young and Rubicam.