Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ned Barnett. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Ned, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about one of the craziest things you’ve experienced in your journey so far.
Perhaps the craziest thing that happened to me as a business owner/entrepreneur involved my first boss in my first job out of college. Frank and I had gone to the same school, but didn’t meet until we were both employed. I was the writer of two monthly publications, and he was my editor. We made a great team, and won the regional “Writer of the Year” award during our first year working together.
I relocated from Tennessee to South Carolina, and maybe four years later, I was the PR director for a county hospital, and Frank was in a similar role with the hospital in the adjacent county. We were forty miles apart, so competition wasn’t stiff, and we rekindled our friendship. Then he was promoted from hospital PR director to corporate VP of PR – he was with Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), then and now America’s largest for-profit hospital company. About a year after that, he learned that there was a position – VP of PR – at the Tennessee Hospital Association. He recommended me, and I landed the job, which dramatically re-directed my career for the next 30 or so years.
Two years into my time there, Frank asked me to ghost-write a book for all of their hospitals, explaining how hospital PR worked. This was my first book – I’ve now written 39 published books. A few years later, he left HCA to open his own PR agency in Chattanooga. Around the same time, I landed a position of Regional Marketing Director for a for-profit competitor of HCA, and I retained Frank’s firm to provide agency support to the 18 hospitals I was responsible for. Fast-forward another two years, and I decided to create my own agency, in Nashville. Frank and I (obviously) were targeting the same hospital/healthcare marketplace, and we should have been serious competitors – but Frank had a better idea. Instead of competing with me, he retained my agency to market and promote his agency. It was my second client, the one that kept us solvent.
A decade later, I’d relocated to Las Vegas when Frank’s agency landed a client that I would be the ideal account exec – nobody in Frank’s agency had my sets of skills. So he invited me to join his agency and made me a partner. While that business folded up in the economic recession following the 9-11 terror attack, but Frank and I each had our own small spin-off agencies. Once again, he suggested teaming up, and we were partners for the next 15 years, until his tragic passing from cancer.
He was my oldest friend, and my closest one. Every step of my career, whether he was my boss, my ally, my agency service provider, my client or my business partner, I learned from him every day, and he swore that he learned from me as well. This braiding of our varied careers over decades was crazy – but we just happened to keep reconnecting. Along the way< I won two national ADDY awards for Frank’s agency. In good times and bad (we each lost a child, tragically, at different times in our lives), our friendship triumphed over all obstacles, and along the way, we made quite a bit of money.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I got into public relations and marketing through the back door. My major in college required a foreign language, but no matter how much I studied, I never did well. Rather than risk flunking out, I changed my major to the one area not requiring a foreign language – the Journalism School. I took every writing course available, and graduated with honors – then landed my first job, as a writer – which was always my dream. I’d tell people that “when I grow up, I want to be six feet tall and a writer. Well, one out of two isn’t bad.
As I built my career, I realized that additional education wouldn’t hurt, so I did my masters work in Advertising, and later, I did a post-graduate independent study program in market research. Those both stood me in good stead. Because of my birth-date, I was always the youngest kid in the class, and in the work-world, I became the youngest person in several of my job positions. That challenged me, but I’ve always loved a good challenge – what I did was climb faster than most of my peers, and managed to earn awards and recognition for the innovative work I was able to do.
After a few starter jobs, I focused on healthcare marketing and PR, and for nearly two decades, that was my bread and butter. However, within months of the World Wide Web being launched, I’d begun working with high-tech start-ups (many were healthcare high-tech start-ups), which got me involved in Silicon Valley for a couple of decades.
Along the way, I wrote 39 published books – novels, how-to business books, ghostwritten books – which gave me a broad perspective of the industry (I won’t tell you how many I wrote that went unpublished <g>). As high-tech started to level off, I decided to focus my business on writing, editing and book marketing/promotion, leveraging my skills to work with aspiring writers as writing coach, editor, book promoter … Whatever they needed, I delivered. This led me to another literary service business, Path To Publishing, founded by the brilliant Joylynn M. Ross. Within a year of our first meeting, I was on her board of directors, and I was her senior marketing guy for all of her clients who needed book/author promotion, marketing and sales. Joylynn is the quintessential entrepreneurs, and she teaches an annual program on the business side of writing which is nothing short of the most amazing program I’ve ever attended.
When it was time for her business to grow, she asked me to put together her business plan and other tools needed to attract investors to take PTP to the next level. Along the way, I helped build the business from the ground up – even as I continue to provide services for specific authors and specific books. We make a great team, and I’ve found that my lifetime of experience in all aspects of marketing communications has played a major role in moving her minority-owned/woman-owned business to the forefront of literary entrepreneurs in America today.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
The first three decades in my career, I weathered recessions, market crashes, the bursting of the tech bubble, and a lot of other adverse economic conditions. None of those were “ideal” for an entrepreneurial business, but unlike many others who “gave up” in favor of a 9-to-5 job with a salary and benefits, I stayed at it. I opened my first business in 1986, and it has continued to evolve as I shifted market focus from high-tech/Silicon Valley to struggling gifted writers needing guidance and support.
I started that first business with a hope, a dream, and a “three-week” severance package from my employer. It lasted about two years, until the economic downturn in ’87, when I took another corporate job. In healthcare, there was huge turn-over, and in six years, I had three major players in that market (as employers) either get bought-out, downsized or go bankrupt. I had to be flexible. Sometimes I’d fill in the blanks with writing books. Other times, I’d return to academe as an adjunct professor. Did a lot of freelance writing, and worked with a lot of often “smaller” clients, with great needs and limited budgets.
Along the way, I raised a family, bought a few homes, got nailed during recessions, but always came through. The only way I survived was to focus on what market was hot “right then,” and serve it until it flattened out – at which time I’d shift gears and ride the next wave.
Also along the way, I’ve testified, twice, before Congress, i served for two years as PR advisor to the Drug Czar for Bill Clinton – because they had no budget for me, I found corporate sponsors to underwrite my service to them in launching a five-year, five billion dollar campaign to keep kids off drugs. At the time, I had two sons in high school, so the issue was close to home. When they moved on academically, I did the same, career-wise.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Because much of my early career involved working with non-profits, providing education, healthcare and other needed services to Americans regardless of their ability to pay, I find that I am fulfilled in my personal mission when I help others to reach or exceed their own personal goals and objectives. All writers have dreams (why else would they write?), and when I can help them succeed, I feel I’ve done something good. This, of course, means that I need to focus on clients I can get behind – fortunately, I’ve been lucky in finding just such individuals.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.pathtopublishing.com
- Facebook: Facebook pages for Path To Publishing and for Barnett Marketing Communications
- Linkedin: nedbarnett
- Twitter: nedbarnett
- Other: I get involved with social media when and if it will help my immediate clients. Otherwise, I find it cluttered and unlikely to do much to bring me clients – but I can turn that around and help my clients succeed there, and do so on a regular basis.