Good morning.
Sticker Mule CEO Anthony Constantino gave his 79 customer-service employees an extra $2,500 each the other day. It was not a bonus for customer service but combat pay for having to deal with the vitriol sparked by his pro-Trump email to customers and post on X, calling for an end to political hate following the assassination attempt. “They were getting a massive amount of death threats and messages that I should kill myself,” Constantino told me last night. “If you read my actual statement, it’s a pretty reasonable position.” (He was right in tweeting that “awesome people, all over the world, love Trump.” And I’ll just add that awesome people love Harris, too.)
As former AT&T Business CEO Anne Chow discovered when she sent a heartfelt email to her team following the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there can be a fine line between values and ideology. Preserving democracy is a shared value. Having a boss who labels one candidate a racist is ideology. Sharing one’s political views can come at a cost. Palantir CEO Alex Karp, a Democrat, says cofounder and chairman Peter Thiel’s support for Trump has made it harder to get things done. Partisan politics have infiltrated the corporation, consultant Bill Schaninger notes, creating a similar divide to what we see elsewhere.
Then again, if you’re the leader of a scrappy company like Sticker Mule, adding hot sauce to orders while promising “custom printing that kicks ass,” maybe you’re okay if some customers are offended by your missive, arguing “business should not get involved in politics.”
In fact, Constantino would do it all over again. “Some people, if they hear you’re a Trump supporter, you just turn into complete garbage in their mind,” he says. “I don’t see Trump persuading his followers to hate the other half the country. I just don’t see that.”
People can share their views on such matters once they get to the polls. In the meantime, if customers don’t agree with Constantino, they can vote with their feet.
More news below.
Diane Brady
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This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Joey Abrams.
