My Improbable Journey

OK, by now you know who I am. Now comes the part where I bore you to tears with my life story.

The Overview

My work is helping other digital entrepreneurs write and publish premium content. I write for digital entrepreneurs who want to defy convention and live according to their own rules, build an empire, and rule the universe!

I write a free letter for digital business owners and a premium letter called Growing Your Premium Empire for those entrepreneurs who want to, well… build an empire and rule to world.

I was born in Savannah, Tennessee and lived in 4 states by the time I turned 13 in Southern California. I now live on the central coast about 80 miles south of San Francisco. I’m a single parent with a 15 year-old guitarist at home who changes his hair color more of than he changes his socks, I’m afraid. But it wasn’t always this way…

From Window Washer to Foot Surgeon

I grew up -for the most part (from age 13 to adulthood)- in Southern California in La Canada-Flintridge, an upper middle class suburb of Los Angeles that’s now home to the Hollywood crowd who need to get away from the craziness of Tinsel Town. My first real job was, ironically, as an independent contractor washing windows for two retail stores. My entrepreneurial roots were sprouting even then.

My father was in aerospace and we’d moved around the country a bit (Alabama, New Hampshire, Texas) following the contracts that his company won for helping place men on the moon and later, vehicles on Mars. (When boyhood friends asked the inevitable question, ‘what does your dad do?’ I always had fun responding “he puts men on the moon.”

After high school I attended college in San Jose, California and then graduated from university in Riverside, again in the southern part of the state. It was there I discovered my long-dormant intellect and a passion for writing. I repeatedly took on more academic units than humanly possible (some semesters I had as many as 24 units spread across three institutions), I wrote for and edited the college newspaper, and finally graduated with distinction with a degree in biology in three years instead of the traditional four. My daughter was born just 36 hours before I delivered the student graduation address for the Class of 1984. I then headed to medical school in San Francisco where my life began to unravel.

Divorce #1 occurred and I reluctantly lived apart from my two young children; this remains the hardest thing I’ve ever had to endure. Medical school was intellectually demanding, but living apart from my children induced a kind of emotional deprivation. My ex-wife remarried and it seemed to me that her husband made it his mission in life to make mine miserable. Water under the bridge now, as they say. I get along fine with my ex-wife, her husband…not so much.

From Foot Surgeon to College President

Four years of medical school will either turn you into a clinical practitioner with a love for people and a healthy amount of compassion or the opposite -a scumbag with a medical degree.  I worked with plenty of the latter through my years in medicine and though I departed clinical practice after a few years, it was entirely due to one factor: I didn’t belong there.

I embarked on a medical career for one reason only: the intellectual challenge. For four years I was challenged every day to retain ever increasing amounts of information. I was adept at the physical aspect of surgery and the technically gentle touch it required. But when it came to making a career out it, the challenge was no longer there. The intellectual component I craved and thrived upon was left behind in the institutions where I trained: Stanford University Hospital, San Francisco General Hospital, USC /L.A. County General Hospital, and a prison hospital. It wasn’t long after completing my medical residency that I left for the more stimulating environment of academia.

I obtained a position teaching anatomy & physiology and environmental science at a local college. I thrived in this atmosphere. Eager minds craved the knowledge I possessed and I spent the next few years dispensing it. It wasn’t unlike writing prescriptions every day, except what I was writing out were scripts for a future based on academic endeavor. My students called me Dr. Morris or Dr. M mainly because in the academic setting it’s customary to afford a lettered individual with the respect the degree commands. No one calls me that anymore, and in fact, on the rare occasion that it does when I run across a former student, I ask them to please call me Barry. It’s my name, after all.

From College President to Yard Duty Supervisor

After a few years teaching, I was asked to fill in for a departing Dean. I accepted and this quite unexpectedly turn into a ten year period in administrative roles: Dean of Students, Dean of Health Care Programs, Dean of Day Programs, Academic Dean, and later, even College President (though this latter title had more to do with running the business side of things).

Throughout this period of my life, I’d been challenged on the home front by my second wife’s issues. Out of respect for my youngest son, I’ll not go into great detail, but I can say that our fifteen year marriage ended sadly and in a manner that resulted in my being awarded full physical custody of his young life. He and I started over with little more than the clothes on our back and a roof over our heads.

To say that my career had met a speed bump is to over simplify the obvious. For a number of years I’d hidden the domestic issues I faced at home and that growing set of challenges only ushered me into a full clinical depression. It wasn’t for another eighteen months following the end of my second marriage that I was able to embrace the vibrancy of life and love again.

Though I’ve made the decision to remain single, I’m able to enjoy the company of women and friends in a way that I haven’t experienced in decades. It is good for Justin to see his Dad healthy again and it’s good for me to live life with the purpose and direction that I’ve created.

During the first six to nine months following the end of my marriage to Justin’s mother, I worked as a Yard Duty Supervisor at his elementary school. He was beginning second grade and his new school was just a mile from where we were living. Each day I’d walk the mile to the campus at 11a to supervise the kids in the lunch line and then monitor their playground activities. I was peacemaker, referee, and policeman all rolled up into one.

The benefit of working this simple, uncomplicated, and stress-free job was two-fold: I got to see Justin in the middle of the day and we both needed that additional contact as we were pretty fragile beings at that time. Secondly, it got me out of the house and out of my own head. The walking each day was a health benefit and actually aided in my recovery from depression.

However, for a former surgeon who thrived on the intellectual challenge of academia, I was slowly recognizing that I needed to reinvent myself if I was going to build a new life for Justin and I. I couldn’t remain a Yard Duty Supervisor getting by on $9/hour for very long. In short, it was honorable work but it wouldn’t support me living in the San Francisco Bay Area.

About this time I attended a court-ordered Parenting Without Violence class. At first I was insulted that the court ordered me to endure this. I hadn’t been the one to resort to violence, even in self defense.

I paid the fee and attended the 12 weekly sessions. And it was another kind of lifesaver thrown to me while drifting in the shifting currents of life. It was there I relearned how to be an effective parent. The experience completely changed how I viewed the world and how I viewed my place in it. I’m certain this wasn’t the experience of others, but for me it was a pivotal moment in my life. I embraced a lifestyle that rejected violence in all forms including corporeal punishment of children and violent communication.

From Author to Digital Entrepreneur

For about a year I worked again in education in a management role but ultimately the one-hour commute took its toll on me and Justin. Each morning I’d leave the house at 6a and not return until 7p. I had to arrange for before-school care and after-school care and it seemed like we only saw one another for a few hours before starting the cycle all over again.

I started networking online and, having always been a writer, started a copywriting service. It soon grew into a marketing business helping other freelance copywriters use online business strategies to grow their own businesses. I wrote and published my first book, Becoming Irresistible: How To Pack Your Copywriting Business with Five New Clients Every Month.  It sold moderately well and even today, though a bit dated now as online technology have evolved tremendously, it contains the basic small business marketing foundational advice that will never be ineffective.

I began writing and teaching courses online, offering copywriting coaching, website writing and coaching services, and enrolled in a year-long intensive online marketing program to keep my own skills current and feed the ever-hungry intellectual craving for information and growth.

I wrote and published Online Rockstar: The Digital Entrepreneur’s Guidebook to Building an Online Business that Rocks, this time in eBook format and it didn’t sell as well. Although it was better than Becoming Irresistible in my own view, it didn’t meet the needs of my readers. Lesson learned, to say the least.

As a digital entrepreneur, I’ve had several blogs and websites over the years. I’ve engaged in intensive Internet marketing trainings and I continue to experiment on this site. The experiments are my laboratory so to speak. It’s where I test things and report back to you about what results I recorded.

From eBook Author to Premium Content Publisher

More recently, my experiments have shown that writing and publishing eBooks isn’t a viable mode of generating ongoing revenue. Most traditional publishing methods generate one-off sales. That’s to say that I write a book and a single reader buys it. In order for this to be a money-making activity of any real validity, I need a lot of readers hungry to that eBook.

But as I said before, it’s not a reliable source of revenue unless I have tens of thousands of buyers. So instead of writing eBook after eBook and generating a one-off sale to thousands of readers, I’m focusing on publishing premium content to a smaller number of readers who are willing to pay a fee for receiving the information.

For more information on premium revenue models, see this post on the Graduated Subscription Model and the my eCourse description for Get Paid To Write.

[This page is an ongoing piece...check back often for updates.]