Telling My Own Stories

I've started an online version of The Book of Myself: A-Do-It-Yourself Autobiography in 201 Questions. My entries are below. If you want to answer the questions as well in an interactive blog, please go to The Book of Myself group on Gather.com at ONLINE BOOK OF MYSELF. On this site you can enter your own answers to all the questions as new ones are posted. As a reminder, The Book of Myself questions are split up into EARLY YEARS, MIDDLE YEARS, and LATER YEARS. Within each of these life phases are sections about FAMILY, FRIENDS, EDUCATION, WORK/RESPONSIBILITIES, and THE WORLD. Since I am 51 years old now, I can do the first two sections now. Grandpa Carl is the co-auther of The Book of Myself.  I will use excerpts from his memoirs for the LATER YEARS.  I'll jump around a bit through the sections to mix it up. Hope you enjoy it. David Marshall

MIDDLE YEARS: If I could have changed professions in midstream, I would have become:

Director of Digital Communities for a Book Publisher.  I actually did this.  After a 25 year career in the software industry, I decided to make a major career change when I turned 50 in 2005.  I was looking for a vocation where I could make a difference and change people’s lives for the better.  After spending two years writing a non-fiction narrative to help young people discover their voice and freedom, I joined Berrett-Koehler Publishers (BK), a small book publisher in San Francisco in October of 2007.  The mission statement of the company is Creating a World That Works For All, at the individual, organizational, and societal levels.  BK Life serves individuals with personal development titles on career and life planning. BK Business serves organizations with progressive management and leadership books.  BK Currents addresses social, political, and economic justice and global sustainability.   I joined the company to help it make the transition from printed books to the brave new digital world. Just like the music and newspaper industry, book publishing is going through a radical transformation.  These days, many people are starting to read on iPhones, Kindle, and Sony electronic reading devices.  Now BK sells e-books alongside every new printed book, and we are selling article-size content from our authors as well.  We are building an online community of BK stakeholders, which includes readers, authors, agents, printers, book designers, manuscript reviewers, and BK staff members.  We help authors produce videos, blogs, and podcasts and feature them on our website, bkconnection.com.  You can also see some of our BK Author Video segments on the Other Books section of this website.  We’ve also established a BK presence on Facebook, YouTube, and Scribd.    But one thing surprised me about the book industry.  I thought I would be slowing down by moving from the fast-paced software field into the more staid field of book publishing—but it has been anything but.  I’m working harder than ever before, but since I get such pleasure out of helping people grow, it hardly feels like work.  What was it that a wise person once said: “Do something you love, and you’ll never work another day of your life.”  That’s what it feels like working at Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

MIDDLE YEARS - FAMILY - The story about how I became engaged is:

In 1983, Kate and I were living in Mexico City working for Chase Manhattan Bank. We were twenty-somethings out to save the world and were madly in love. We had known each other for about eighteen months and had been living together for almost a year. We went to San Francisco to meet my brother and sisters. Several months earlier we had visited my mom and stepfather in Lima, Peru where I had purchased the engagement ring without Kate knowing. In San Francisco, we stayed in a funky Victorian hotel in the Haight Ashbury district. On the second day in the city I took Kate out for a hike at Lands End, which is a fantastic place at the northwestern end of the San Francisco peninsula to view the Golden Gate Bridge and the bay. I was so excited I was ready to burst. We hiked all the way down the rocks by the water on some pretty dangerous trials surrounded by poison oak. At the bottom, we had a picnic on the rocks with a gorgeous sunny view of the majestic bridge. I asked Kate if she wanted to make it permanent and gave her the Peruvian diamond ring. She said I had to get on one knee and do it right, so I got down and asked her to marry me, and she said yes. That was the happiest day in my life up to that point. There have been thousands of happy moments together since then, but that one sticks in my mind like it was yesterday.

MIDDLE YEARS - FRIENDS - One big misunderstanding I had with a friend was:

J. was my first mentor in the software business in the early 1980’s and became a true friend over the years.  He was a marketing genius and about twenty years my senior.  We traded roles through the years.  First I worked for him at Peachtree Software in Atlanta, and then he worked for me at BMW Software in San Francisco.  We were very close.    In the mid-1990’s, he asked me help him pitch a new business concept to a large mutual fund company in New York City.  I was in the San Francisco area managing an entrepreneurial venture and said I could not fly to the East Coast unless he paid my expenses.  He agreed.  The overall presentation did not go well, although my part was a hit.  After the trip I sent him my bill, which was about $600 for airfare, hotel and transportation.  He did not answer.  I wrote, emailed and left messages on his phone over the following twelve months, but never got a response.  For me, it was not the money per se, but the lack of communication.  He just dropped out of my life.    I have not spoken with him in over ten years.  A mutual friend says J. was undergoing to major life changes at the time and was embarrassed to communicate with me.  And I was too pig headed for many years to reach out to him.  This year I resolved to contact him and hopefully renew our friendship.  I will not ask for the money back.  I have forgiven him even if he doesn’t seek my forgiveness.  His friendship is much more important than the $600.  I wish I had woken up sooner.

MIDDLE YEARS, EDUCATION - One book that had a very strong impact on me was:

ONE UP ON WALL STREET by Peter Lynch, who was famous for beating the market with his Fidelity Magellan Fund in the 1970's and '80's. He argued that common investors could beat Wall Street professionals by holding individual stocks instead of mutual funds, and by watching everyday things around them.  For example, he said when he noticed his wife and daughters bringing home fist-sized plastic eggs with panty hose in them, he found out who was making the so-called LLEGS, then bought shares of the company and made a bundle. He advised readers to "water the flowers and kill the weeds," not the other way around, a trap most beginning investors fall into.  People hate to sell losers so they hang on much too long, while selling the stocks that have done well to lock in small profits, thereby forgoing much larger profits if they had let the stocks run.  He spawned a whole generation of amateur investors in search of the elusive "10-baggers", Lynch's term for stocks that increased ten-fold from their purchase price. This book affected my investing philosophy for almost 20 years.  It served me well in the 1990's because I was in the information technology business and invested heavily in this segment.  Unfortunately the Internet Boom brought down all the tech stocks starting in 2000, so the Lynch strategy was devastating for my portfolio from 2000 to 2004. Starting in 2005 I diversified into a combination of asset classes that more or less match the global market, including large cap, mid-cap, and small cap stocks, international stocks, bonds/preferred stocks, REITs, and gold.  A little bit of segment specialties are thrown in like commodity hedge and energy, both oil and new energy sources such as solar and wind.  I still speculate on 5% of my portfolio with individual stocks, but everything else is in electronically traded funds (ETF's) or individual bonds.  I don't believe in bond funds, since they don't guarantee principal like individual bonds.  The best book I have found on the wisdom of asset allocation and indexing the market instead of investing in individual stocks or high-priced managed mutual funds is THE FOUR PILLARS OF INVESTMENT, by William Bernstein,  It is on Amazon, Barnes&Noble.com or in your local library.  This book is one of the top-5 recommended investment books by the Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Clements, and the book that legend John C. Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group, says he wish he had written.  I recommend this 2002 book MUCH MORE highly than Peter Lynch's 1970's book. Following the advice of THE FOUR PILLARS, you won't beat market, but nobody really does this anyway long-term.  Bernstein proves it statistically, and even shows Peter Lynch could not sustain his Magellan record over the long term.  But the good news is that you won't lose your shirt and you will always do as well as the overall market, which goes up given enough time.  When one asset class gets clobbered, you can sleep well knowing that one of your other asset classes is doing well to make up for the one that is suffering.  Reallocate once or twice a year but don't try to time the market, which leads to high transaction fees and ultimately to lower returns. And stay away from high priced brokers.  Be content with 6% to 8% instead of gambling to get 15%+ and then end up with -30% or worse.  I got greedy and paid the price. Good luck with your own portfolio. FOUR PILLARS OF INVESTMENT on Amazon

LATER YEARS, WORK/RESPONSIBILITIES – I have always been interested in this hobby:

Note from David Marshall:  This entry is from "Just a Country Boy," the original memoirs from my grandfather Carl E. Marshall that inspired us to co-write "The Book of Myself".  He wrote it a couple years before he died in 1994 at the age of 91.  I will be drawing upon "Just a Country Boy" for the "Later Years" entries in this online version of the book.  This is a picture of Grandpa Carl and me in his later years.  "How did we ever get into camping, or RV-ing?  I always liked the outdoor life and by the early sixties had traveled many miles and seen a lot of our country.  I had been to Washington, D.C, New York, Chicago, and many other cities.  All of these trips were in conjunction with my career (statistics professor at Oklahoma State University), and paid for out of state and national funds.  It was obvious I liked to travel - especially if someone else was paying the bills.  My wife Gladys did some traveling, if it was paid for by someone else.  We could never have paid for our travels ourselves in the early years. "In the summer of 1960, Gladys went to visit our son in Germany.  While there, he took a furlough from his chaplain post in the U.S. Army and decided to see part of the country with his mother and family. They couldn't afford to go first class, so they decided to rough it.  They took a tent and sleeping and cooking equipment and many other essentials.  The 'hit the road' and spent a month camping and seeing the sounds and sights of not only Germany but several adjoining countries as well. They had a ball.  I had lived with Gladys for nearly forty years, and didn't know she liked to camp! "By the time we retired we decided we had to try camping.  I bought a Dodge truck and put on an eleven and a half foot slide-in and 'hit the road' a few days after I retired.  Our first trip was to Colorado to a meeting and on to Casper, Wyoming, to visit my sister Fern.  We later traded our slide-in for a fifth wheeler, and for the next twenty years we didn't look back. "We have traveled and camped in every state of the Union, the southern provinces of Canada, and the northern states of Mexico.  We belonged to three different traveling groups:  ITTC standing for International Travel and Trailer Clubs, and two chapters of the Good Sam Clubs - the Chiefs centered in Tulsa and the local Cowboy Country Chapter of which we were charter members." Carl E. Marshall, Ph.D., February 1992

MIDDLE YEARS, EDUCATION - A very difficult educational experience for me was:

I applied to Harvard Business School in early 1985. In April a thin envelope arrived from Cambridge. Not a good sign. Only thick packages offer admission. But it wasn't an outright rejection. I'd been put on the wait list. That meant for me to get in, other more promising students who'd been accepted to Harvard had to turn the school down. I hoped these students preferred the sunny California skies at Stanford to the cold Massachusetts winters. I waited and waited. No word for months. By late summer, I'd given up hope. Finally, in the third week of August, I got a call from the dean of admissions that I had been accepted into the Class of 1987 at the Harvard Business School (HBS). I was thrilled -- but scared to death. Sure, I was a summa cum laude from San Francisco State University, but this was a whole different league of academic rigor. I'd read that the incoming students were in the top 1% in their high school and undergraduate classes, and were not used to failure. But many of us would fail at Harvard. Since HBS grades on a relative curve, the bottom 10% "hit the screen" after the first year of the two-year MBA program. "Hitting the screen" means you are asked to leave because 90% of your fellow students are smarter than you. That's quite a jolt to the ego when you've always been on top. There are only three grades at HBS: Excellent for the top 20%, Unsatisfactory for the bottom 10%, and Pass for the middle 70%. On a bright September morning, in my first day of class with 90 other students in the amphitheater classroom, our marketing professor confirmed it. "Look around the class today, because nine of you will not make it through the year." After the first week of classes I was convinced that I was the dumbest student in the school. I had never been around so much brain power in my life. I figured everybody was in the high-IQ Mensa association except for me. My wife and I were newlyweds and were talking about having our first child. But I didn't want to start a family if I was about to get kicked out of Harvard. We agreed to wait and see if I survived the first semester before any earnest babymaking. The next four months were pure hell. I had never studied so hard in my life and usually slept only fours a night. For the first time ever, I got a tutor. We had three or four case studies per day, each of which took up to three hours of preparation. They were about real-life business situations where we had to recommend solutions. In each class the professor started by randomly calling someone to present the case to the other 90 students for ten minutes. This was the "cold call" we all dreaded. A poor performance on a cold call could doom a student in the class. Nobody could be adequately prepared to present all three classes with equal quality, so we played the odds. You could hear a pin drop when a student was caught unprepared and whispered, "Pass." That brought a flunking grade and brought you closer to the screen. I am happy to report that in February of 1986, after the first semester grades came out--we decided to start a family. I passed all my courses and even got the top 20% grade in my Organizational Behavior class. Our daughter Emily was born that November and she was in my arms as I walked across the stage to receive my MBA diploma in May of 1987.

EARLY YEARS, FAMILY - If, growing up, I had any trouble with Dad, it was in this area:

My father had an infuriating way of disappearing into his own private place, where he couldn't hear a word I said, even when I stood right beside him. He was usually studying for a sermon or a lecture at his desk in my parents' bedroom. As a proud third grader, I rushed right up to his elbow after dinner to report on my news of the day. It always went the same way: "Daddy?"  No answer.  "Daddy?" "Mmm." "I got an "Excellent" on my reading test today."  No answer. "Daddy." "Mmm." "Can you hear me?" "What is it, son? " "I was telling you about my good grade today." "That's nice." "Thanks Daddy, I'm going to bed now."  No answer. He didn't notice when I turned to leave. I always glanced back just in case. He never looked up. I backed out of the room both sad and peeved. After a while I learned to catch him when he came in the apartment door or was in the bathroom shaving. His ears opened up during those moments and we talked, father and son. But I never tried to speak with him again when he sat at his desk with his important papers and underlines. That was his other world, where sons did not exist.

EARLY YEARS, THE WORLD - Some of my favorite Hollywood actors and actresses were... I liked these qualities about them:

As I kid, I knew my favorite actors by their screen names. In most cases, I didn't even know their real names. I grew up in a tough neighborhood and dreamed of getting out. When I watched TV, I transported myself to places with laughs, adventure, magic and super powers. Granny of The Beverly Hillbillies, played by Irene Ryan. I liked her because she didn't need to be like everybody else. No pretensions - just honest down home goodness. She knew who she was and let everybody know it. She was small but had a big personality, just like my Texan grandmother. I liked Bob Denver first as the beatnik Maynard G. Krebs in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis and then as Gilligan. He seemed so full of wonder and innocence. Not a mean bone in his body. The Howells and Ginger never corrupted him. Superman, the TV show version with George Reeves, was my favorite show as a kid. I always wanted to fly and leap skyscrapers in a single bound. I loved how Superman always saved Lois Lane and cub reporter Jimmy Olsen. When I heard the actor had died, it made me realize that there were real life people behind my screen heroes. Samantha of Bewitched was mesmerizing. Elizabeth Montgomery played the role with such grace and strength. I dreamed of having her magical twitch. She was too good for Darrin; he was lucky guy. Many years later, even the Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman, whom I also adore, could not hold a candle to Montgomery in playing Sam. Deputy Barney Fife of The Andy Griffith Show, played by Don Knotts. He was a dope who got into lots of trouble because he was always in his own imaginary world, but he made me laugh. And I longed to live in a little town like Mayberry. I also liked him when he played a man who turned into a cartoon fish in The Incredible Mr. Limpet. Curly of The Three Stooges was my favorite stooge. He was played by Jerome Lester Horwitz. I was always disappointed when I saw episodes with Shemp or Joe as the third stooge. Curly gave me belly laughs and I loved that he stood up to Moe even when Larry backed down. When I heard the actor died young (48 years old) it made me sad. Moe and Larry were never the same without Curly. I had a crush on Barbara Eden of I Dream of Jeannie. I was a pre-teen in love. I just couldn't take my eyes off her Arabian costume. I figured Captain Tony Nelson (Larry Hagman) must have been the luckiest man in the whole world. I loved it when she folded her arms and nodded her head to work her spells. James Bond -As far as I knew, Sean Connery WAS James Bond. He was so unflappable and debonair. Nothing seemed to phase him. And the girls swooned over him. I wondered if I would ever be that popular. Col. Wilhelm Klink of Hogan's Heroes, was my favorite guy to hate, but in a good way. The actor, Werner Kemperer, played Kink with such over-the-top schmaltziness that I enjoyed seeing him get bested by Hogan at the end of every episode. But strangely, sometimes I felt sorry for Klink, since he could never win, even the smallest battles. Lucille Ball of I Love Lucy was a creative inspiration for me. How did she think up all those outlandish schemes? Sometimes I pretended I was sick so I could stay home and watch Lucy get into another crazy fix with Ethel and then see Ricky go ballistic when he found out. I liked it that Lucy wasn't a typical June Cleaver or Donna Reed housewife. Captain Kirk of Star Trek, the original 60s TV series. I never missed this show. I didn't even know it was William Shatner, but I loved how Kirk always figured out a way to get out of trouble by the end of the show, and that he held his own against Mr. Spock, even though Spock had special Vulcan powers. Chalk up another one for the human race. By the way, I love Shatner now in Boston Legal.  What a rascal!

EARLY YEARS, FAMILY - One of Mom's traits I admired was:

People Skills - Mom was, and still is, a natural born extrovert. As a shy kid growing up, I was always amazed watching my mother work a room of strangers. Within minutes she would be laughing with new acquaintances and making them feel at ease. Maybe it was her southern charm--she grew up in Texas--but socializing seemed to come so easy to her. As a young adult I asked her to teach me how she did it. She responded that she didn't know how to teach it, that it just came to her. But I watched and copied and learned a great deal. As an adult I can now "turn on" my extrovert switch when I need to, but I can never match the grace and confidence she radiates when meeting new people. Shopping - Mom was a shopping magician. Dad was a Methodist minister with a small stipend. With six mouths to feed, money was tight. Nevertheless, Mom always found a way to get us kids new clothes and supplies before school started, and always had enough left over for our Christmas wish list. I was an active kid and went though pants and shoes like a meat grinder. She watched for bargains and hustled us all off to the Sears headquarters store on the West Side of Chicago on sales days. When we arrived home with stuffed shopping bags, Dad got mad and told her we couldn't afford our new treasures. But on the first day of class, I always had fresh clothes and sneakers to start the year. Thanks Mom.

EARLY YEARS, FRIENDS - My best friend during childhood was:

Mark P. was my best buddy. We grew up in Chicago but were both from the deep south. We were preachers' kids (PKs). I met Mark in first grade at six years old—and we are still close today. We went to the same elementary school and then split up for a while until high school. When we were seven, we ran away from home together, but were caught and returned to our parents. Mark saved my life when I was eight, and I returned the favor a few years later. In ninth grade, while the Vietnam war raged nearby, we spent a year in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia without our parents. We got into so much trouble that we were ordered back to the States the next year. But it was a time of cultural and political awakening for both of us. We traveled to Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan and the Philippines by ourselves. We grew up a lot that year. Mark and I were in different cities after that, until he visited me in San Francisco soon after I finished college in 1979. I was selling high fashion women's shoes at the time and invited him to join me in a Saturday blow-out sale at the Stonestown shopping center. The rest is history. Mark went on to became a great salesman, moving from shoes to TVs and stereos, and then from microcomputers to enterprise software. We worked at six companies together during our careers. Now he sells mortgages in Atlanta. Quite successfully. I remind him that he owes it all to me and those high fashion pumps. I'm so glad to still have a close friend today who goes almost all the way back to the beginning of my life. He knows me like few others do—the good, the bad, and the ugly. And the trust runs deep.

EARLY YEARS, EDUCATION - One of my most memorable teachers in elementary school was:

Mrs. DeMars was my teacher in third grade, and I was in love. I was ten and she was about thirty-five. She was tall, blond and wore skirts just above her knees. I had an unbelievable crush on her. She was married and had kids of her own, but I didn't care. I did everything I could to win her over. I washed the blackboards, took messages to the office, and helped tutor some of the slower kids in class. When I split my arm open by running into a glass door, she helped me treat the wound. When she held my arm to change the bandages, I got all woozy inside. I think she knew I was infatuated with her but she never said anything. I soaked up all the learning she could dish out. She told me I could do anything I wanted when I grew up. The last day of school I told her that she was the best teacher ever. She whispered I was the best student ever. I'll never forget Mrs. DeMars.

EARLY YEARS, WORK/RESPONSIBILITIES - This is the profession that I often mentioned when people asked me what I was going to be when I grew up:

As a PK, or preacher's kid, I figured I'd be a minister like my dad and grandpa. Even my mother attended seminary. That's where my parents met. It was destined that I would follow the family tradition, so I thought at ten years old. My parents were both active in the ecumenical movement during my formative years. I learned a lot about both Protestant and Catholic traditions. Every Sunday we visited a different church in our city. My family's denomination was Methodist but we went to church every day so I related to Catholic kids who attended daily Mass. We had a little chapel in the seminary where we lived, and on weekday afternoons I practiced preaching in the empty pulpit with my buddy Mark, whose father was also a minister. I ended up in the software industry instead, but every time I see a preacher or a priest, I wonder. . . .