About Us
Life O’ The Party for balloons, décor and party entertainers of all kinds for any occasion: Birthday, Bar Mitzvah, Bat Mitzvah, Christening, Anniversary, Grand Opening, Corporate Launches, Corporate Meetings, Trade Shows, Conventions, Parades, Get Well, Thank You, Galas, Fund Raising and much more.
Established in 1980, Life O’ The Party has grown steadily to become the metropolitan area’s “premier” novelty telegram, balloon, DJ and entertainment company. Life O’ The Party for balloons, décor and party entertainers of all kinds for any occasion.
Event Planning, DJs & Entertainers
Give us a try and you’ll see why – Life O’ The Party has been making fun an art form for well over three decades.
Our thousands of satisfied customers will attest to the quality and reliability of our services.
The products and services we offer
Recommendations Received (218)
"great and professional guy"
"Mark has owned Life O The Party for over 30 years and he and his company are awesome. His..."
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"Mark has owned Life O The Party for over 30 years and he and his company are awesome. His business is in Hackensack and he is well respected in the commmunity. "
Products & Services
Life O’ The Party for balloons, décor and party entertainers of all kinds for any occasion: Birthday, Bar Mitzvah, Bat Mitzvah, Christening, Annive...
Life O' The Party offers both personal and corporate party planning services from birthday parties to holiday parties of all sizes.
Life O' The Party offers both personal and corporate party planning services from birthday parties to holiday parties of all sizes. www.LOTParty.com
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Recent Activity
If you applied for the SBA's EIDL program and you are like me, you will get NO warning at all that you qualified for the loan. I looked in my business checking account online on Sunday and there was the money from the EIDL just dumped into our account. No e-mail, no letter, no phone call -...
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If you applied for the SBA's EIDL program and you are like me, you will get NO warning at all that you qualified for the loan. I looked in my business checking account online on Sunday and there was the money from the EIDL just dumped into our account. No e-mail, no letter, no phone call - nothing. You may have been awarded this forgivable loan and don't even know it. Check your accounts!
2 Replies
Ms. Taylor, Let me apologize before I send this as it will be long. It is long because of my experience with the PPP application process confusing, frustrating and incredibly time-consuming. I have tried to get reasonable advice from my bank (Bank of America), the SBA and even my local...
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Ms. Taylor, Let me apologize before I send this as it will be long. It is long because of my experience with the PPP application process confusing, frustrating and incredibly time-consuming. I have tried to get reasonable advice from my bank (Bank of America), the SBA and even my local Congressman. This is a copy of the e-mail I sent to that Congressman, Josh Gottheimer just yesterday. Of course, I have so far received no response. My response to you is long and detailed as it will outline what I have been going through and why I am so frustrated at the process, questions and mistakes the application process has raised that I cannot get answers to just properly apply for the PPP.
Representative Gottheimer,
Thank you for your hard work on our behalf and for your now weekly phone call events. On these calls, I have been in the queue for the last three weeks to ask you and your guests some questions. I have not been offered the opportunity to ask my questions to you directly on these programs. I was told if I did not get to ask my questions, somebody would contact me by phone or e-mail. I was not contacted the first week. Last week I received an e-mail from a Kady Toledo from your office that was just a boilerplate message. It even had wrong information as to the phone number for the NJEDA we could contact. The phone number was to the State Assembly House and not the NJEDA. I sent Ms. Toledo a follow-up e-mail to alert her to the error.
I WAS contacted by your office by telephone, once last week and once this week, asking me the same things both times, “How is it going?” and “Is there anything we can do to help?” I spent at least 20 minutes with each of the young ladies who called, going over my concerns. They assured me they were taking lots of notes and would pass them on to either you or someone in your office to try and get me some answers to my questions. I have not received any answers to these questions. So, I am doing as you have implored us all on these weekly calls. I am reaching out to you via e-mail in hopes you or someone you know can direct me to someone who can help answer my questions.
My concerns are many and are the same today as they were to your staff over the last few weeks. They pertain to the PPP and how Limited Liability Companies (LLC’s) are being handled concerning potential compensation for LLC owners through loans and/or grants.
Even though LLC’s are a major part of the small business economy, their ownership has been often overlooked as to how we should handle answering application questions regarding potential compensation for LLC owners.
We are not sole proprietors. We are not gig workers. We are not restaurant industry staff. We are often not part-timers. By law we cannot be payroll employees. Because of this, we seem to be too often forgotten in terms of needing some assistance of our own to keep our businesses running and to actually help put food on our own tables.
In personally filing for the PPP, the SBA’s EIDL, and NJ Unemployment, I have found there really isn’t a place for answering (in any of these applications) where we really stand in the hierarchy of financial assistance.
Our employees are getting paid via unemployment insurance. My NJ Unemployment application was denied.
Now along has come something new in the last day or so, the PUA loan. It is so new there isn’t even an application or instructions for it. This might be some help for LLC ownership, but who knows?
Our employees will also have the privilege of participating in the $600 per week provision in the CARES Act. All LLC ownership will not.
In filing now FOUR different applications with my bank for PPP (the application and the application process keeps changing) it became clear in only the very last application (partially shown below) our bank (Bank of America) is only interested in potential funding for our employees who can be listed on our federal Form 940, but not ownership. See Line 1 under Payroll Costs:
However, the US Treasury issues updates literally almost every other day, changing their own interpretations of what we can and cannot do when applying for PPP. Some of their documents are lengthy, confusing and difficult for even seasoned financial professionals and their companies to understand (i.e. CPA’s), who then have to interpret them for their clients. Clients like me.
With constant updates by the US Treasury, it has become impossible to honestly answer the PPP application without somehow leaving out something that may be important or, putting in something that may actually be illegal to do. After all, these are legal documents we are signing when we apply, right?
A perfect example to completely refute Line 1 of the Bank of America application (I referenced as an example above) is the update from the US Treasury just yesterday. I would hardly expect you or your team to read this whole file, https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Interim-Final-Rule-Additional-Eligibility-Criteria-and-Requirements-for-Certain-Pledges-of-Loans.pdf
However, if you could please just refer to most importantly a few brief sentences:
Page 8 section d, number i
Page 11, Section f, number ii
Both of these points speak specifically of “owner compensation” as opposed to payroll and they say owner compensation SHOULD be used in our calculations on the PPP application.
This should mean the PPP applications and compensation/forgiveness formulas for some if not all of the banks (mine certainly included) have to be changed to reflect not only Payroll/940 employees but people like me and my partner in our LLC, as well.
As I stated previously, we have already applied for the PPP because well, there was simply no time to delay, as I read just this evening that the $350 billion in funds for PPP are already gone.
Bank of America (in the words of two representatives I spoke with), “will not offer any guidance concerning these loans.” They have no information for us other than to fill out the application and requested addendums and sharing of our Form 940 with them. All of which we have already done several times.
Even if we are awarded this loan, I was told today, again by a Bank of America representative, at no time in the process will we be able to speak with anyone regarding specifics about anything relating to this loan. This includes even at the time of funding and beyond. I did what they asked, I only used our payroll figures from the Form 940 in the application. If I had been able to include myself and our other owner (my wife) that would have more than doubled our total financial package request. This would have immeasurably helped us fund our business and our family, as my wife and I have not had any personal compensation in almost 6 weeks.
This does not even begin to answer things like properly dividing up the 75% vs 25% breakdown for any forgiveness of this loan. Where would LLC ownership fall in that? What is a utility as part of the 25% forgiveness opportunity? Is it just gas and electric (e.g. PSE&G) or does it include telephone and Internet? The telephone and Internet companies are utilities, but are they included utilities? Regarding this question, the US Treasury also partially addressed this in the latest update (link above) by including gasoline for vehicles as part of allowable utilities. Though I had not heard that before, will the arbiter we have to report to for these forgiveness formulas and loan abide by this? Nobody knows.
What about the hiring back of our staff? All of our employees have been laid off because we have no business and our company is a non-essential business. We may not have any work for another three to four months at best. What if we try and hire back our staff and they decline? One now former employee already told me she won’t come back because for at least the next eight weeks she will be making much more money by NOT working, as she receives her Unemployment benefit coupled with the additional $600 per week the federal government has promised through the CARES Act. Her words to me were, “Unemployment is very important to me.” Now whether she is right or wrong in thinking as she does, how would that employee be handled in the 75% calculation for forgiveness of the PPP loan? May we hire someone else in her stead and still have that new salary be included in the forgiveness portion of the PPP loan? Again, nobody knows for sure.
I apologize, as I am sure I have gone on long enough. However, rest assured I have many, many more reasonable questions concerning this one loan, as do my accountants.
I have not written you to ask for answers. I have written to you to ask for direction; leadership if you will. Where does someone like me with no customers, no business, no employees, and no unemployment compensation for myself and my wife (with bills to pay) be allowed to go to try and remain a viable business? Just sending me to a Web site as Ms. Toledo did with more applications to fill out does not get my questions answered so I can make a reasonable decision about what financial vehicle may or may not be best for me to not only apply for but (more importantly) to answer the application questions correctly and honestly?
I have also written to you to shine a light on how difficult it is for any LLC owner or owners to again, correctly and honestly apply for many loans and then use the funds for what they are intended – to hire back staff, try and stay open and (hopefully) have some or all of the loan forgiven to help fund our economy, while relieving some financial burden from business owners like myself. It can’t be forgotten that businesses like mine have no business at all now. We have no income but we have debts to pay, whether or not we have taken on any kind of debt in the form of loans or grants in the past. Though my company has never had to resort to loans for cash flow or payroll in our 40 year history, we have to somehow continue to pay our bills (warehouse rent, truck payments, taxes, insurance, utilities, etc.). We also must continue to refund customers their deposits and/or full payments for events that will now never take place. All the while we dig ever deeper into our business checking accounts that will soon be empty.
Restaurants have been given the yeoman’s share of publicity to help save them. Every day I receive e-mails begging me to donate to restaurant staffs to help pay their bills. Go Fund Me type pages have been set up for many such food establishments. Can you imagine if a business like mine that sells balloons, décor and employs hundreds of party entertainers did that as well? The outrage and disgust I would be met with at the gall of us asking for money to help our staff or the ownership while the poor people in the restaurant industry suffer! Well, they actually are suffering the very same fate as we are, aren’t they? Believe me, I have nothing against the restaurant business or any other suffering industry, but so many of us are all suffering just the very same fate. Maybe to different degrees but pretty much the same and all for the very same reason, this worldwide pandemic.
Before this crises emerged, I believe there were well over 2,000,000 LLC’s in this country. That seems to be a pretty formidable group that, for now, has had its employees taken care of and its leadership overlooked. Can you help us Representative Gottheimer? I hope you will.
You have my e-mail and in my signature you have my office phone number. I am rarely there because of the situation we are all in at this time. You or your staff can certainly reach me by my cell phone at any time if you so desire. My cell number is xxx-xxx-xxxx and it is on 24 hours a day.
I thank you in advance for your time, your consideration, and your concern for constituents like my wife and me.
Sincerely,
Mark
Mark Zettler, President
Life O' The Party
201-342-2121
www.LOTParty.com
https://twitter.com/LifeO_TheParty
Like us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/LifeOTheParty
Proud Member of:
ILEA - The International Live Events Association
President, New York Metro Chapter - 2004-2005 (Chapter of the Year)
www.ileahub.com
IBA - International Balloon Association
Convention Director - 2005-2006
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Our experience (38 years in business), professionalism, work ethic, huge inventory, large area of service and fair pricing is what we bring to every event.
Mark Zettler, President
Life O' The Party
201-342-2121
www.LOTParty.com
www.twitter.com/balloonexpert
Like us on Facebook at:...
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Our experience (38 years in business), professionalism, work ethic, huge inventory, large area of service and fair pricing is what we bring to every event.
Mark Zettler, President
Life O' The Party
201-342-2121
www.LOTParty.com
www.twitter.com/balloonexpert
Like us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/LifeOTheParty
