Jay Myers lives, learns, and teaches by example. And he loves to tell about all that knowledge he’s accumulated running his own successful business.
He’s just published his third book on his adventures as a company man, first for other firms and then running his own show, a production that became so successful that he sold his business (even though he resisted, a little).
The book, being launched this week, is Rounding Third and Heading for Home: The Emotional Journey of Selling My Business and the Lessons Learned Along the Way, and the grist for his tales are the obstacles that came at him like wild pitches — yes, he loves his baseball metaphors — and how he managed to use skill and a bit of luck to turn them into hits.
Myers founded Interactive Solutions Inc. (ISI) in 1996, an “audio-visual integration firm” that developed expertise in the swiftly evolving field of videoconferencing.
He recounts that in nine months, beginning with the day he got fired from his job, he put together his business starting with no money, secured/lost financing on the way, got a melanoma diagnosis, and endured a supplier embezzlement.
It did get better. He got ISI into distance learning and telemedicine and grew the company. Still obstacles found their way. In 2003, the accounting manager embezzled $257,000 and nearly killed the business. Then the Great Recession came along and messed up everybody’s plans.
Yet Myers — now a member of the Society of Entrepreneurs — was not going to suddenly turn risk averse. When the recession hit, he doubled down and doubled sales, coming out stronger than ever. He was deft at pivoting and reinventing.
And he wasn’t planning to sell the business. There were plenty of inquiries, but when one of the top companies in the field came courting, he had to listen, and he liked what he heard.
The process was both profound and instructive for him. “Selling the business is way more than a financial transaction,” Myers says. “It is a life-changing event.” After going through it, he decided he had another book in him. “I thought, ‘How did we get here? Why us?’ And that’s when I started reflecting on the lessons learned.”
The book is as much an encouragement from a mentor (he loves doing that) as it is a how-to when it comes to selling a company. The people he wants to reach are “working so hard every day to build their business and grow it. I want them to understand how you build value in that business.”
And that could be to eventually sell it, or maybe to hand it over to the next generation or the employees.
Rounding Third is an easy read, told in Myers’ engaging voice and chock-full of insights that have value whether you want to sell a business or just run a business well or even if you aren’t in business. Life presents obstacles no matter where you are and these are adaptable tips.
“I think one of the advantages I had in writing this is that I went into a fairly good amount of detail,” he says. “I got educated about this process because I had to understand what the endgame was.”
His first book, from 2007, was Keep Swinging: An Entrepreneur’s Story of Overcoming Adversity and Achieving Small Business Success. In 2014, he published Hitting the Curveballs: How Crisis Can Strengthen and Grow Your Business.
“I feel like I’ve stepped up my game considerably with this book because it’s so instructive. The other ones were storytelling and fun and inspirational, but this one, you can take notes and a small business owner can be helped with some options.”
Meanwhile, Myers is plenty busy now that he’s not in the CEO’s chair. He’s continuing to write for an industry magazine, he’s a volunteer mentor with the Service Corps of Retired Executives, and he also mentors through the Fogelman College of Business & Economics at the University of Memphis where he’s the executive in residence.
And he’s started a podcast interviewing business executives, including local luminaries such as Duncan Williams, Dr. Scott Morris, and Carolyn Chism Hardy. The podcast is titled Extra Innings, but the content is all business. Again, the die-hard New York Yankee fan loves his baseball metaphors.
