About Socrates

About Socrates, the Company
About Socrates, the Man

Why we are called Socrates.

Since a time when Greek civilization and philosophy influenced the world, the idea of asking the right questions to get to the right answers (Socrates’ “Socratic Method”) has been a principle embraced in every culture and certainly ours.

As a company founded on questioning the way things have been traditionally done and to finding better ways to do them, Socrates is the perfect name for our brand. From this Socratic approach, we have built essential solutions that give our customers know how and control over their everyday matters, to either confidently handling them themselves or saving hundreds if not thousands of dollars working with outside professionals.

We picked Socrates because we like to think that we run our business along a values-based philosophy. A philosophy based on raising essential questions and providing the needed answers.

ABOUT SOCRATES THE COMPANY

Socrates Media, LLC of Chicago, Illinois, serves consumers and small businesses seeking solutions to everyday business and personal finance opportunities and problems. Socrates customers share a fundamental desire to save time and money. The Company publishes and markets needed information, education, products, services and software to residential landlords and property investors as well as offers personal legal and finance solutions to consumers and small businesses. Socrates delivers these value-priced products (sold by transaction, subscription and membership) through its Web sites (Socrates.com, CompleteLandlord.com and RentSlicer.com ), family of products can be found in more than 4,500 retail locations across the United States.

Socrates.com is the preferred destination for people seeking their own solutions to everyday business, finance and personal problems. The site offers a broad selection of do-it-yourself forms, kits, software, guides, books and completion services to help consumers and small businesses solve everyday legal, financial and business management matters. The Socrates.com site helps visitors “know how to do more and save.”

CompleteLandlord.com offers landlords and property investors a unique one-stop resource for information, tools and community. It’s the online destination thousands of savvy landlords and real estate investors depend on for real-world advice on managing rental properties and tenants as well as to find essential products and services. CompleteLandlord.com focuses on “helping tens of thousands of fellow landlords be more productive and profitable” to achieve success with their real estate business.

RentSlicer.com is where savvy tenants go to search for comprehensive rental vacancy listings and pricing information across different geographic areas. The site imports a broad array of rental listings into a proprietary database and uses a parsing engine to scan the listings for keywords. The result is an all-inclusive list of units categorized by price, type, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms and 18 other amenities (such as laundry, parking, etc). Visitors to the site can easily view statistics and reports on different neighborhoods/areas and plot rental properties with desired criteria on a Google Map. Visitors to the site can also sign-up for notification alerts when new properties matching predetermined criteria become available. This Web site gives renters “the final word on neighborhood rentals.”

“Socrates delivers what users want, where they want it, in the form they want it in and for the right value. We’re focused on delivering the support and service individuals want to confidently handle more and more legal and business matters themselves. For our company, in the self help category and through all our products, Socrates symbolizes this quest for “know-how” but made "e-z” in every way, shape and form.”

—Chairman/CEO Bill Lederer

Dr. Arnold Goldstein, Barry Chesler and the late James Tooker founded Made E-Z in 1988 to meet the expanding needs of the office product superstores. By the late 1990s, Made E-Z Products (formerly E-Z Legal Forms Inc.) had grown into the world’s largest consumer-branded publisher of self-help business forms, legal forms, software, books, kits and certificates.

Early History: The assets of Made E-Z Products, Inc. were acquired on August 7, 2003, to form the foundation for Socrates Media, LLC. Immediately after the acquisition, the company was relocated to the Chicago headquarters with a new management team.

Socrates Today: Made E-Z was the first company to offer prepackaged legal forms that are valid in all fifty states. These products are regularly updated by attorneys to ensure accuracy and compliance with current law.

Products: From an initial line of 50 forms, we now offer thousands of products in the categories of small business, personal financial, business legal, personal legal, real estate, human resources and contractors.

Distribution: With dozens of office product, book and software wholesalers throughout the United States and recently Canada, our products are carried in about 5,000 retail locations including office superstores, bookstores, stationery retailers, print shops and catalog retailers. Our major retailers include:

Executives and Contact Information
William A. Lederer, Chairman & CEO, Exec@socrates.com
William A. (“Bill”) Lederer has more than 17 years of professional investment and entrepreneurial management experience. His work has encompassed nearly 200 investments ranging from minority and controlling positions in start-up and growth-stage private companies to minority positions in public companies. He has also successfully founded and served as Chairman and CEO for several financial and operating companies.

He serves as Chairman and CEO of Socrates Media LLC, the leader in consumer and small business know-how solutions, and is a sought-after speaker and advisor on entrepreneurship and investment.

Lederer also manages, as Chairman and CEO, Minotaur Capital Management and serves as General Partner for the Minotaur Partners funds. Founded in 1987, Minotaur is an investment adviser and merchant bank.

Beginning in 2000, Minotaur teamed with Sam Zell’s Equity Group in controlling the ownership, turnaround and transformation of Rewards Network, formerly Transmedia and iDine (AMEX: IRN). Lederer’s responsibilities included assisting management in the integration of a major competitor, management recruitment, corporate planning, developing and implementing the firm’s e-business strategy and restructuring business processes. Rewards Network is now profitable, growing, well financed and dominant in its niche.

Lederer founded Art.com, an Internet-based company pioneering the delivery of online art, custom framing and art-related products in 1998. Art.com was nominated by Bill Gates for the Smithsonian Innovation Award and received Laureate status. It was the recipient of the respected Great Plains Pinnacle Award for Overall Excellence and the eMarketer Web Recognition Award. After receiving venture funding from Benchmark Capital, Softbank Technology Ventures and Sandler Capital, the company was sold to publicly-traded Getty Images for a substantial profit.

From 1977 to 1999, Lederer owned and managed Lederer Sales Group (LSG), one of the most respected manufacturer/publisher representative agencies in the Midwest. LSG represented major office, general merchandise and arts and craft suppliers to more than 1,000 retailers, wholesalers and catalogs.

Prior to founding Minotaur, Lederer was Vice President-Research at Sound Shore Management Inc., a successful multi-billion dollar equity investor. His earlier work includes experience as both a securities analyst and a manager of institutional portfolios for Management Asset Corporation, another successful billion-dollar equity investor.

Lederer serves on a number of boards, including the Ravinia Festival and Roosevelt University. He holds a B.S. in Marketing and Finance from the Walter E. Heller College of Business Administration, Roosevelt University. He lives with his wife and sons in Lake Forest, Illinois.

Company Headquarters
Socrates Media, LLC
736 N. Western Ave
Suite 360
Lake Forest, IL 60045
Phone: 312.762.5600
Fax: 800.282.7329

ABOUT SOCRATES THE MAN

How is his name pronounced? sok-ruh-tez (Hear it pronounced at Merriam-Webster Online.)
When did he live? circa 470 B.C. to 399 B.C.
Where was he born? Athens, Greece
What is he famous for? Socrates is credited with laying the foundation for Western philosophical thought. He believed that through a dialogue of questions and answers you could eventually arrive at the truth, because probing questions would reveal unsupported assumptions and misconceptions in each response. This give-and-take became known as the “Socratic Method,” and he used it mostly to examine moral concepts.
What else did he believe? He believed that philosophy was a proper pursuit for everyone and that self-knowledge was its starting point. The greatest source of confusion, he said, stemmed from our failure to realize how little we know about anything.
Who were some of his students? Plato, Alcibiades, and Critias
Did he write any books? Because Socrates believed that knowledge was a living, interactive thing and that arguing was superior to writing, he didn’t publish anything. Instead, much of what we know about him comes from the dialogues of Plato, his greatest pupil.
Why was he the “wisest man of Greece?” When the Delphic oracle proclaimed that Socrates was the wisest man of Greece, Socrates responded, “’Tis because I alone of all the Greeks know that I know nothing.”
What is his most famous saying?
- “The unexamined life is not worth living” is a paraphrase of a pronouncement he made while on trial. (You can read the complete quote in The Columbia World of Quotations.)
- “Know thyself” is often attributed to Socrates, as well as a handful of other Greek philosophers. But according to the ancient historian Plutarch, “Gnothi se auton” (“Know Thyself”) was originally inscribed on Apollo’s Oracle of Delphi temple. (See what the Delphic oracle had to say about Socrates in the next question.)
What are some of his other quotes? The following statements are attributed to Socrates:
- Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.
- Our purpose in founding the city was not to make any one class in it surpassingly happy, but to make the city as a whole as happy as possible.
- I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
- The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die and you to live. Which is the better, only God knows.
How did he die? Socrates calmly drank the hemlock poison he was given after he was convicted of, and sentenced to death for, several crimes, including atheism.
Where can I learn more? For more on Socrates, visit the following sites: Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Philosophy Pages, The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, and History for Kids. For information on Plato and his writings, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. And for fun, visit The Socrates Argument Clinic.
Are there books I can read about Socrates and his teachings? Here is a selected reading list: “The Last Days of Socrates,” by Plato; “Conversations of Socrates” by Xenophon; “Philosophy 101 by Socrates: An Introduction to Philosophy Via Plato’s Apology,” by Peter Kreeft; “On Socrates,” by Hope May; “Socrates’ Way: Seven Master Keys to Using Your Mind to the Utmost” by Ronald Gross; and “Socrates Cafe: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy,” by Christopher Phillips.