Goltz was revered in the industry. He had thousands of happy customers and dozens of happy employees, not to mention a lot of happy neighbors who were grateful for the role he played in the community. When he'd started his company, it had been a rundown neighborhood of decrepit buildings and empty lots. There was so little happening along North Clybourn Avenue that local hot-rodders could hold drag races on Friday and Saturday nights. "If you saw a guy running down the street back then, he was probably carrying someone's television set," says Goltz. "Now he's just another jogger." Indeed, by the late 1990s, North Clybourn had become a bustling center of commerce, lined with upscale stores and restaurants, and local people credited Goltz with sparking the change.
From any conventional standpoint, Goltz was wildly successful in 1997. But like many hard-driving entrepreneurs, he suffered from a major disability, namely his own blindness to what he had accomplished. In his mind, he was perhaps not exactly a failure but not much of a success either. He had a nagging sense of inadequacy, of not measuring up. In the wider world of business, his company--with $7 million in sales and about 75 employees--was "dinky," as he put it. He would look at the Forbes 400 list and think, I'm chopped liver. He would read about a Michael Dell or a Richard Branson and think, Is this guy really that much smarter than I am? He was so focused on his shortcomings that he couldn't see--or give himself credit for--the real contributions he had made to his community and the positive impact he had had on the people around him.
In a sense, he was a victim of the entrepreneurial renaissance that had occurred during the 19 years he'd been in business. There had been a time, after all, when "entrepreneur" was not a term of approbation. "In 1978, if you started a business, you weren't called an entrepreneur--you were called a loser," Goltz recalls. "Saying someone was 'a real entrepreneur' was an insult. You know, 'Cousin Benny. He's a real entrepreneur.' Like you had watches up your arm."
Within a few years, however, the image of the entrepreneur had changed. Suddenly the word conjured up Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Fred Smith. Entrepreneurship was cool. "Real entrepreneurs" were heroes, and Jay Goltz--at the age of 30--was one of them. After receiving an award from an organization called the Association of Collegiate Entrepreneurs, he was featured in a 1987 Forbes article about hot young company-builders the magazine labeled "bizkids." For the next 10 years, he played the part of a rising mogul, building Artists' Frame Service as fast as he could and launching half a dozen other businesses along the way. He wanted his company to get as big as possible, as fast as possible. He investigated the possibility of franchising. He considered becoming involved in a roll-up of framing shops around the country. He even thought about going public. Although he didn't take any of those routes, he didn't rule them out either. "I was haunted by opportunity," he says. "I was haunted by the idea that I wasn't doing as well as I could or should be doing."
Not until the harrowing spring of 1997 did it dawn on Goltz that there might be something wrong with his endless need to do more. "Successful entrepreneurs have a demon they have to get rid of," he says. "For me, it was having to do as much as I could. I always worried, 'Am I missing an opportunity? Am I leaving money on the table?' How do you turn that off? How do you keep the success bug from turning into the success disease?"
It was one of his employees, an older woman, who helped him begin to see his business in a different light. Her name was Lily Booker. She and another woman, Willie Hardwick, were retiring from Artists' Frame Service after eight years with the company. At their retirement party, Lily got up to say a few words. She talked about her introduction to Artists' Frame Service. She'd been with another custom frame company for 10 years before being laid off. "I was in my fifties," she told Goltz. "When you hired me, I never thought I'd get another job. I just want to thank you for giving me a chance."
Maybe it was the timing. Goltz himself was turning 40 that year and beginning to sense his mortality. In any case, her statement jolted him. "When you're growing your company, all you think about is the people you've failed with," he said. "At the time, I was licking my wounds from all the failures: managers I'd had to fire, poor kids I was going to save who kept screwing up and getting into trouble, longtime employees who'd been caught stealing. From Lily's comment, I realized it wasn't all failure. I looked around and saw a lot of people who appreciated their jobs."
