Get to Know Me - My Introduction

Hello Hivers,

My name is Barry Friedmann. I am 65 years young and have learned a lot in my time in this world of ours. I started my career in the printing industry, taking over a business that my brother had started, but was struggling to handle due to ill health. The business was still in its infancy at the time and, after my parents separated, I had to earn a living to support myself, so I looked around for a job and got one within less than a week, as a storeman.

After a few years, I wanted to improve myself, so looked for alternative employment. I found a job in an instant print store in Johannesburg, South Africa, where I was born and grew up. After a few months, the owners decided to open a new store and I was offered a partnership in the new store, plus I got to run it and manage it as I saw fit. This store had the fastest growth rate of all the stores in the group so far, and my partners were very happy with my progress.

I then decided to migrate to Australia, initially to Perth, then later to Sydney. I started off working for one of my ex-partners who had migrated before me and, as happened in South Africa, I was offered a partnership in a new store, which I took up. I established and ran that store and built it up to be the fastest growing and most profitable store in the group.

I then sold my interest in this store to pursue my interests in the digital world, as I could see this becoming the way of the future, and I started a payroll bureau, working from home. This saved me a number of hours of travel every day and allowed me to stay at home with my growing family - my wife and my first son at that time.

My payroll bureau grew bigger, with all new business coming from word-of-mouth and no advertising. Then, the internet came into being and I joined my first internet company - connecting via a phone line and modem in those days. When cable became available, I was one of the first people to subscribe and I have been happily connected ever since. I loved being able to connect with people all around the world and eventually to run my entire business using this technology.

In 2016, I sold my payroll business, as I wanted to concentrate my efforts on online entrepreneurial activities. Since then, I have bought many shiny objects, doing quite well with some and not so well with others. It has been a hard journey for me and I have had to learn to be far more focused on what I am doing, considering there are no deadlines or targets for something to be achieved, so not as much motivation to get specific tasks done. I found this very hard for quite some time, but have gradually learned to school myself to settle down and get things done.

I have tried MLM in my time, as well as affiliate marketing and other online methods of making money. I have learned some great strategies in SEO, paid advertising and seen some good methods of getting to the top of the search engines. Traffic has been my nemesis. as I am not a patient person, but I also don't have heaps of money to throw away on advertising that does not work. I am very pleased to have been introduced to Hive.Blog and to start to dabble in crypto. To this point, I had not been very interested in crypto and shunned anyone who brought the subject up with me. However, I did follow one person's advice a while ago and made a handsome profit on a small investment, so this has swayed my thoughts in the right direction.

Covid-19 has changed my world, as it has most other people in this crazy world of ours. I decided to just stay indoors during the initial stages and only went out to buy food, see the doctor or go to the chemist to get a script made up. Thankfully, Australia managed to get some control over it for some time, and we only see occasional outbreaks periodically, when incoming travellers are not careful enough to protect others, and have shared their infection with others, causing an outbreak and getting many people to have to lock down.

I am looking forward to sharing my interests with everyone else on this platform and to learning all about my fellow hivers and their interests. It should prove to be an interesting journey!