Jay’s Books

The Street-Smart Entrepreneur

This highly recommended book is full of sage insights for entrepreneurs and managers. Covering a range of topics which include tips on interviewing prospective employees, marketing and finance, successful entrepreneur Jay Goltz is insightful in his advice.

With a table of contents and index, the book is constructed in an anecdotal fashion. Goltz waxes philosophical about a variety of subjects in a common format; he shares "What I Used To Think" and then "What Nobody Told Me" before summarizing his experience in a lesson - hence, the subtitle of the book.

He is brutally honest. For example, in Lesson #38 he tells the entrepreneur that "You could be the worst person to do the hiring at your company." In Lesson #37 he shares his successful hiring experience in using the BATH test to make a good hiring decision. I found Goltz's Lesson #7 insightful when he concludes that "Two out of three ain't bad when you're talking about price, quality, and service." His Lesson #67 about giving year-end bonuses is instructive.

There are many people with whom I'd like to share the insights in this book, but they'll have to buy a copy. I'm not giving mine away.
-- From Independent Publisher

Small Giants

Jay Goltz and his company, Artists Frame Service, are one of 14 featured companies in Bo Burlingham's book, "Small Giants: Companies That Choose to be Great Instead of Big".

For all you harried entrepreneurs out there, Bo Burlingham has a reassuring message: Relax. Bigger isn't necessarily better. The wonderful stories in Small Giants show you how to prosper by retaining the vision of excellence that got you into business in the first place.
-- Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of Confidence

It aims to do for small private companies what In Search of Excellence did two decades ago for big public companies: shine a light on a handful of business practices the author admires, and which he believes are the reason some companies consistently do better than others.
-- Joseph Nocera, The New York Times

Giving

Jay Goltz, CEO of Artists Frame Service, was singled out by Bill Clinton in his new book, "Giving", for his pro bono consulting work with the Urban Enterprise Initiative.

Bookstore shelves are crammed with offerings by presidential candidates, but now we have the first book of the season by a candidate for first spouse. Bill Clinton titles his thin volume Giving because it extols the virtues of volunteering time and money to worthy causes. But it could just as well have been called Adjusting, as the former president seeks to define his new role while Hillary Rodham Clinton pursues his old office.

"Now that we've switched places," he writes, it is his turn to influence events without government portfolio. And perhaps from a perch no man has ever occupied. In Giving, readers and voters in effect get a preview of what a Bill Clinton-run East Wing might look like -- focused on fighting poverty, disease and climate change around the world and rallying the mighty and the meek to noble goals.
-- Peter Baker, The Washington Post