Local Book Now Sold By Major Retailers

On October 25th, Jay Myers presented at our EmergeMemphis monthly brown bag luncheon his new book, “Keep Swinging: An Entrepreneur’s Story of Overcoming Adversity & Achieving Small Business Success.”  Please read the article below for more details.

Memphis businessman Jay Myers decided in 2004 to write a book about his professional career for much the same reason he launched his cutting-edge venture Interactive Solutions Inc.

He believed the shelves at book retailers already are plenty stocked with biographies of larger-than-life corporate executives and histories of multi-billion-dollar enterprises.

So just like he did with the company he started in 1996, Myers wrote his new book, “Keep Swinging: An Entrepreneur’s Story of Overcoming Adversity & Achieving Small Business Success,” to fill a void.

Written from experience

Working with New York-based freelance writer Darren Dahl, Myers weaves a candid and at times suspenseful portrait of his company’s evolution. New York-based publicity firm Planned Television Arts is touting the book, and it’s now available at major retailers including Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.

“You look at the numbers, there’s just so many small businesses that fail, there’s so many of them that struggle, there’s so many of them that are just trying to make payroll,” said Myers, who built his videoconference technology company into what today is a $14 million business.

Its main office is in the Forest Hill Technology Park near Collierville. Among other awards it has garnered, his company has landed on Inc. Magazine’s “INC 500″ list twice for being one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S.

Some of the services ISI provides include selling and maintaining videoconferencing, distance learning, telemedicine and audio-visual products. In a way, entrepreneurship is in Myers’ blood; at one time, both his father and brother served as president of the Better Business Bureau of the Mid-South.

“The typical business book out there talks about the great success a business owner has had and is filled with celebrity names, but just to have a regular person’s perspective on the struggles of a small business - I thought that was important,” Myers said. “This also talks about mistakes we made, which were numerous, and how we fought our way through them.”
Words from the wise

The story itself follows a roller-coaster arc of emotion. Its thrilling highs include the time Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson called Myers while flying in his private jet. Wilson had just finished reading about Myers’ company and wanted to stop by Myers’ office for a chat.

ISI’s pleasantly bewildered president and CEO recalls sitting with the phone still in his hand, after Wilson hung up, listening to the dial tone.

Wilson, whose hotel chain is one of the most prominent business success stories to emerge from Memphis, had phoned Myers while his jet was somewhere over North Dakota. He showed up later that afternoon and stayed for about an hour. Before Wilson arrived, Myers asked his secretary to go out and buy a camera.

One of the things Wilson told the young CEO before he left was, “You hang in here. You’re going to make some money in this business.”
‘An inspiring reality check’

“Keep Swinging” not only spells out how Myers went about making that money, but also how he came close to losing everything in one blow.

The book’s opening scene takes place in 2004 in a Memphis courtroom. Judge Bernice Donald of U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee is preparing to sentence ISI’s former employee, Linda Merritt, for bilking more than a quarter of a million dollars from the company.

Myers and his wife, Maureen, are seated on the first-row bench in the courtroom. Myers squeezes his wife’s hand. He thinks back on how crushed the episode left him in 2003 when he discovered Merritt’s fraud, for which Donald sentenced her to 100 months in prison.

The episode was such a shared trauma for ISI employees that someone prepared T-shirts that read: “I survived 4/29/03.” It is still a point of pride for Myers that his workers stuck with him and no one left the company in those uncertain days after the embezzlement was first made known.

“Jay’s story is an inspiring reality check into the ups and downs of starting one’s own business from scratch,” said Gwin Scott, president of EmergeMemphis. “‘Keep Swinging’ is not descriptive of striking out, but about getting to the plate and maximizing opportunities and experiences.”