Barry Allen is no superhero. But, if you are in a pinch, and need a jack of all trades around to get you through, you could do worse than having him at your side.
Allen is a business owner, but that’s the only easy thing to sum up in regards to the trades and skills he’s hustling on the daily. He owns and manages a semi-pro wrestling company out of Athens, Tenn. called EGO Pro Wrestling in which he wrangles the wrestlers under his care into the ring and bolsters them in the monthly seasonal matches. As a former wrestler, invested in the business with childhood/adulthood passion, EGO Pro is Allen’s child. In wrestling’s off season, he works the sci-fi/fantasy/horror convention circuit business with EGO Graphic, selling over 40 something different products that he creates from t-shirts, posters, pins, stickers, and anything else that he says: “hey, wouldn’t it be neat if we put this on this…” Then there’s the tier EGO Media, where the web design, video and audio production and promotion happens. Collectively it all falls under his EGO Entertainment umbrella. And all this doesn’t include Allen’s freelance work on “free” weekends as a DJ that mixes beats at convention events and Knoxville nightclubs and writes film reviews for new horror movies. In short? He’s a pretty busy guy.
The obvious question is does Allen have a “stop” button? He gives a loud guffaw at this. Determined to be a one-man-wrecking machine in all endeavors he has a hand in, who has time for such a concept?
“Being an entrepreneur is the best headache you can have,” Allen says. “You have to work way harder than working for someone else, just to roll the dice on making your electricity bill for the month, but I never have a day where I hate going to work.”
Allen says his most accurate job title is: “plate spinner.” He never gets bored between the steady supply of work and the time spent sitting and thinking on the business. Most of the skills in the brackets of his business are second nature to him, and his brain works in a constant state of generating new projects and ideas to keep the wheels spinning. It’s not unusual for him to go through several notebooks full of notes in a two week period.
While he can trace most of the skills and interests of his current line of work back to childhood hobbies and interests and the furthering of these, the ability to hustle with the best came early on while Allen was on the road with his wrestling career and one of his best friends and mentor, Paul Diamond, told him to “always be on.”
“There are so many jobs at a wrestling show. Don't stop and take a breath after you've finished doing just one of them. Learn about or do another until you have it down, then learn about another. Sooner than not, a promoter will realize you're a jack of all trades, and your value goes up,” Allen explains.
This concept he has applied to all of his life encompassing business.
The other surprising secret of his success? Cutting corners. Beginning with wrestling and spreading out from there, Allen learned that paying someone to do something that could be done on your own was throwing away money. The philosophy “know how to do everything, and you’ll always have a job” applies here, he says.
“Everything came together at my wrestling show, and after enough compliments on our production and promotion value came in, and few bad days at my "real job," I took a leap of faith in hopes that I could do what I do for me, for everyone else,” Allen says. “I've not looked back since.”
Not to say it’s not a job, with complications and disappointments like any other line of work. According to Allen, the worst of the worst job pitfalls include: potential clients not realizing the importance of quality, loyal family that inquires anxiously for your welfare (I call this the "I'd like to ask when you're gonna get a real job, but i wanna be supportive" question, Allen says), having ideas and realizing you’ve been beat to the punch, being constantly on guard for the public persona and face of the company, and the drawback of personal relationships being nearly impossible.
“On a good day, it's the best thing ever - when it's tough, you question what you've done with your life,” Allen says.
For Allen, the good has included love advice from Tony Todd of fame in “The Crow” and “Candyman,” negotiating business deals with Jay Mewes from “Clerks” and the late Roddy Piper, and late night bar discussions on “who killed JFK?” with household name horror movie legends Tom Savini, Sid Haig and Danny Trejo. Hearing customers gush over the art Allen creates, talking about horror movies and other geekery with new people and adding them to the friend network, and being stopped in Wal-Mart to rehash the latest wrestling event Allen has successfully executed are all high points.
He says: “Being responsible for something that people love is the best part of all of this madness.”
What Allen wishes people knew about his business goes back to a better grasp of quality over quantity.
“My dad instilled a simple thought in my head a long time ago. I've seen him take flak for it, and I've certainly taken flak for it over the year. He told me ‘take your time, and do it right the first time.’ If you spend an extra few minutes making sure it's just right the first time, it will even out in the long run from having to redo it later," Allen says.
This is something Allen reminds himself of when clients want products the next day and he has to let those jobs go by. But, in following this rule, Allen has done well enough for himself that he can pick and choose which jobs he wants to do.
And while the term “five year plan” cues a sour face from Allen, he does have plans to make EGO Entertainment faster, better, stronger. This year was all about noticing the cracks in the foundation, slowing things down to rebrand and rebuild, he says.
Five years ago, doing everything he now does fluidly for a living was “a fancy dream.” Four years ago, he was putting the dream into motion. While it wasn't that long ago, it seems like ancient history, Allen says.
“If I were to really have a five year plan, it would simply be to be doing my best, being happy with where I am at 40 years on this planet, and hopefully not dead. Being dead would be really bad,” Allen quips in the morbid humor style he admires so much in the movie characters he emblazons on his merchandise.
Superhero? Nah. Nothing so flashy as that. Yet, Allen says he could live with one movie character comparison that seems to fit his mold: Han Solo.
“Han Solo will do anything to make a dollar, but he has a heart of gold. He's obviously done some things in his past that were of moral question, but he'd take bullet (or carbonite) for his friends, he adores the Princess, he knows how to deliver a really smooth line,” Allen explains in a tip of the iceberg show of his knowledge of the finer points of the Star Wars legend. “Han has great battle plans. He shows up at just the right moment to save the day, and he does dumb things too, because his heart tells him it's right, even though his brain should probably be screaming.”
Allen, as the guy who never turns off the personality and fuel that drives EGO Entertainment, makes sure to add: “Also, he makes a vest look dazzling, and in his off time he's Indiana Jones
Dr. Jones Comments
Erica Tuggle
Short Profile “Superhero Allen”
Jones-Essays for Publication
5 October 2016
Barry Allen is no superhero. But, if you are in a pinch, and need a jack of all trades around to get you through, you could do worse than having him at your side.
Allen is a business owner, but that’s the only easy thing to sum up in regards to the trades and skills he’s hustling on the daily. He owns and manages a semi-pro wrestling company out of Athens, Tenn. called EGO Pro Wrestling in which he wrangles the wrestlers under his care into the ring and bolsters them in the monthly seasonal matches. As a former wrestler, invested in the business with childhood/adulthood passion, EGO Pro is Allen’s child. In wrestling’s off season, he works the sci-fi/fantasy/horror convention circuit business with EGO Graphic, selling over 40 something different products that he creates from t-shirts, posters, pins, stickers, and anything else that he says: “hey, wouldn’t it be neat if we put this on this…” Then there’s the tier EGO Media, where the web design, video and audio production and promotion happens. Collectively it all falls under his EGO Entertainment umbrella. And all this doesn’t include Allen’s freelance work on “free” weekends as a DJ that mixes beats at convention events and Knoxville nightclubs and writes film reviews for new horror movies. In short? He’s a pretty busy guy.
The obvious question is does Allen have a “stop” button? He gives a loud guffaw at this. Determined to be a one-man-wrecking machine in all endeavors he has a hand in, who has time for such a concept?
“Being an entrepreneur is the best headache you can have,” Allen says. “You have to work way harder than working for someone else, just to roll the dice on making your electricity bill for the month, but I never have a day where I hate going to work.”
Allen says his most accurate job title is: “plate spinner.” He never gets bored between the steady supply of work and the time spent sitting and thinking on the business. Most of the skills in the brackets of his business are second nature to him, and his brain works in a constant state of generating new projects and ideas to keep the wheels spinning. It’s not unusual for him to go through several notebooks full of notes in a two week period.
While he can trace most of the skills and interests of his current line of work back to childhood hobbies and interests and the furthering of these, the ability to hustle with the best came early on while Allen was on the road with his wrestling career and one of his best friends and mentor, Paul Diamond, told him to “always be on.”
“There are so many jobs at a wrestling show. Don't stop and take a breath after you've finished doing just one of them. Learn about or do another until you have it down, then learn about another. Sooner than not, a promoter will realize you're a jack of all trades, and your value goes up,” Allen explains.
This concept he has applied to all of his life encompassing business.
The other surprising secret of his success? Cutting corners. Beginning with wrestling and spreading out from there, Allen learned that paying someone to do something that could be done on your own was throwing away money. The philosophy “know how to do everything, and you’ll always have a job” applies here, he says.
“Everything came together at my wrestling show, and after enough compliments on our production and promotion value came in, and few bad days at my "real job," I took a leap of faith in hopes that I could do what I do for me, for everyone else,” Allen says. “I've not looked back since.”
Not to say it’s not a job, with complications and disappointments like any other line of work. According to Allen, the worst of the worst job pitfalls include: potential clients not realizing the importance of quality, loyal family that inquires anxiously for your welfare (I call this the "I'd like to ask when you're gonna get a real job, but i wanna be supportive" question, Allen says), having ideas and realizing you’ve been beat to the punch, being constantly on guard for the public persona and face of the company, and the drawback of personal relationships being nearly impossible.
“On a good day, it's the best thing ever - when it's tough, you question what you've done with your life,” Allen says.
For Allen, the good has included love advice from Tony Todd of fame in “The Crow” and “Candyman,” negotiating business deals with Jay Mewes from “Clerks” and the late Roddy Piper, and late night bar discussions on “who killed JFK?” with household name horror movie legends Tom Savini, Sid Haig and Danny Trejo. Hearing customers gush over the art Allen creates, talking about horror movies and other geekery with new people and adding them to the friend network, and being stopped in Wal-Mart to rehash the latest wrestling event Allen has successfully executed are all high points.
He says: “Being responsible for something that people love is the best part of all of this madness.”
What Allen wishes people knew about his business goes back to a better grasp of quality over quantity.
“My dad instilled a simple thought in my head a long time ago. I've seen him take flak for it, and I've certainly taken flak for it over the year. He told me ‘take your time, and do it right the first time.’ If you spend an extra few minutes making sure it's just right the first time, it will even out in the long run from having to redo it later," Allen says.
This is something Allen reminds himself of when clients want products the next day and he has to let those jobs go by. But, in following this rule, Allen has done well enough for himself that he can pick and choose which jobs he wants to do.
And while the term “five year plan” cues a sour face from Allen, he does have plans to make EGO Entertainment faster, better, stronger. This year was all about noticing the cracks in the foundation, slowing things down to rebrand and rebuild, he says.
Five years ago, doing everything he now does fluidly for a living was “a fancy dream.” Four years ago, he was putting the dream into motion. While it wasn't that long ago, it seems like ancient history, Allen says.
“If I were to really have a five year plan, it would simply be to be doing my best, being happy with where I am at 40 years on this planet, and hopefully not dead. Being dead would be really bad,” Allen quips in the morbid humor style he admires so much in the movie characters he emblazons on his merchandise.
Superhero? Nah. Nothing so flashy as that. Yet, Allen says he could live with one movie character comparison that seems to fit his mold: Han Solo.
“Han Solo will do anything to make a dollar, but he has a heart of gold. He's obviously done some things in his past that were of moral question, but he'd take bullet (or carbonite) for his friends, he adores the Princess, he knows how to deliver a really smooth line,” Allen explains in a tip of the iceberg show of his knowledge of the finer points of the Star Wars legend. “Han has great battle plans. He shows up at just the right moment to save the day, and he does dumb things too, because his heart tells him it's right, even though his brain should probably be screaming.”
Allen, as the guy who never turns off the personality and fuel that drives EGO Entertainment, makes sure to add: “Also, he makes a vest look dazzling, and in his off time he's Indiana Jones.”
This has so much potential. Right now, it feels jumbled and a bit confusing. Let’s make this decision: what is the focus? Is this about a guy with a crazy job who shows that you still have to treat it (wrestling) like a real business? Is this about Barry? Is this about the business? In other words, what is your angle. Once we decide this, we can work to shape the paragraphs and decide which parts need more depth.
In many paragraphs, you just have too much going on. We’ll need to find a way to express the multi-layered nature of his work without piling it on too thick.
To start, you need a basic description of his company. A basic description of wrestling and how it fits into his world. A description of him that clues us in on the focus of your paper. Let’s chat about this and we’ll get this in shape.
Third Revision
“Barry Allen’s Business: Bouts in the South”
Two men brawl. One in overalls throws the man wearing spandex shorts onto a table. The table is flung to its side with a huge smash. A metal chair is hoisted overhead, but the man in spandex is retreating back into the ring now and his opponent must pursue. It’s Saturday night wrestling at the Athens, Tennessee armory and the crowd doesn’t know what’s coming next.
Before my anxiety can run analysis of the possibilities of what could have happened with that flying table, I catch the eye of the guy in charge, promoter and owner of EGO Pro Wrestling: Barry Allen. He’s grinning, mile-wide, and his curly mass of jet black hair is perfectly in place even in the humidity of this snug space. He waggles his eyebrows. This is the superhuman code that mortals like I understand as well. It conveys the message: “Everything’s under control.”
Barry Allen is not a superhero. In a pinch though, you could do worse than having him at your side. Furniture flung pell-mell, bodies being assaulted mid-air; it’s all part of his business plan.
Allen is a business owner, but that is the only easy description of the trades and skills he throws down. He owns and manages the semi-pro wrestling company out of Athens called EGO Pro Wrestling. As a former wrestler, invested in the business with lifelong passion, EGO Pro is Allen’s child. In the off season, he works the sci-fi/fantasy/horror convention circuit with EGO Graphic, selling over 40 different products that he creates including t-shirts, posters, pins, stickers, and anything else he can dream up. Then there’s EGO Media, where the web design, video and audio production and promotion happens. Collectively it all falls under the umbrella called EGO Entertainment. And all this doesn’t include Allen’s freelance work as a DJ that mixes beats at convention events and Knoxville nightclubs and writes film reviews for new horror movies. In short? He’s a pretty busy guy.
Does Allen have a stop button? He gives a loud guffaw at this. Determined to be a one-man-wrecking machine in all endeavors he has a hand in, who has time for such a concept?
“Being an entrepreneur is the best headache you can have,” Allen says. “You have to work way harder than working for someone else just to roll the dice on making your electricity bill for the month, but I never have a day where I hate going to work.”
Which is a strange thing to hear from someone who will also admit he has a love-hate relationship to where he works: a quintessentially southern sport in the deep South. The pride you feel in beating another human senseless somehow only truly shows through here. From the “Southern ‘rasslin” tactics that the bigger wrestling acts he employs feature to the easy advertising at the “cultural melting pot in the South” (i.e. Wal-Mart) guaranteeing his audience for the night: for better or worse, Allen runs a southern business.
Just about every aspect of his show has something to do with Southern location, Allen says. The mix of Southern rock he plays pre-show, the heroes of the ring that are touted for their hometown nature or hillbilly roots, the entrance music of “Rocky Top” for one favored wrestler, and the fact that the wrestlers with Southern merchandise make the most in selling extras at halftime: it’s a vein that runs deep at EGO Pro shows.
“If it has a Confederate flag on it or the guy is wearing Carhartt’s and work boots, they buy it up and get it autographed,” Allen says.
Even as someone completely oblivious to the rules and order in the world of wrestling, I can see these concepts in action in my first experience at a match. Much of the excitement that thrums through the air in the darkened armory, that has been transformed into a ring for the weekend, is based on some deeply Southern held ideas of pride, tradition, honor, and ‘defending your turf’.
“From a business standpoint, I'd rather have a southern crowd than a northern crowd any day of the week,” Allen says. “Northern crowds are wrestling nerds. They think they know everything, and in general they're annoying people that you can't really relate to at all. A Southern crowd is 80 percent families. Not only would I rather sell four tickets at the door than one, but also I would rather have little kids going crazy because they love the guy in Dragonball Z tights wearing a tiger mask, than a 30 year old guy who lives in his mom's basement golf-clapping when he sees a guy nearly die, and then doing a write up on the Internet later where he complains about someone's ‘work rate.’”
It’s no secret that there’s still division between Northern and Southern life, and no surprise it comes out in the ring. The division affects those living in the South in terms of their public persona as well. How can I show my pride in where I live without coming across as “one of those Southerners” associated with the waving Confederate flag, the dog tied on the porch, the worn denim coveralls, and so on?
For Allen, this is the part where the hate of the love-hate of the South comes in.
“It’s so hard, simply because I try to erase any thought that I am from the South. I think, for those living elsewhere, there’s the idea that if I'm from Tennessee then I should be sporting some overalls, a floppy sunhat and be barefoot.”
For Allen, like many of us Southerners, the background noise becomes the effort to break away from this stereotype and allow others to focus on the rest of who we are.
These skills and interests of his current line of work are the part of him that traces back to childhood hobbies. For instance, the ability to hustle with the best came early on while Allen was on the road with his wrestling career and one of his best friends and mentor told him to “always be on.” Accepting any opportunity to work is a concept he has applied to all of his life encompassing business, and it’s let to success.
The other surprising secret of his success? Cutting corners. Beginning with wrestling and spreading out from there, Allen learned that paying someone to do something that could be done on your own was throwing away money. The philosophy “know how to do everything, and you’ll always have a job” applies here, he says.
“Everything came together at my wrestling show, and after enough compliments on our production and promotion value came in, and few bad days at my ‘real job,’ I took a leap of faith in hopes that I could do what I do for me, for everyone else,” Allen says. “I've not looked back since.”
For Allen, the good of jumping into this line of work with both feet has included receiving love advice from and negotiating business deals with celebrities that were his teenage idols. Hearing customers gush over the art Allen creates, talking about horror movies and other geekery with new people and adding them to the friend network, and being stopped in Wal-Mart to rehash the latest wrestling event Allen has successfully executed are all high points.
And while the term “five year plan” cues a sour face from Allen, he does have plans to make EGO Entertainment faster, better, stronger. This year was all about noticing the cracks in the foundation, slowing things down to rebrand and rebuild, he says. Five years ago, doing everything he now does fluidly for a living was “a fancy dream.” Four years ago, he was putting the dream into motion. While it wasn't that long ago, it seems like ancient history, Allen says.
“If I were to really have a five year plan, it would simply be to be doing my best, being happy with where I am at 40 years on this planet, and hopefully not dead. Being dead would be really bad,” Allen quips in the morbid humor style he admires so much in the movie characters he emblazons on his merchandise.
And part of this “five-year plan” too is the coming to reconciliation with the person he is and the place where the lives.
“I used to resent the fact that I was basically trapped in the South; feeling like I could not move away because I'm rooted here. And, that feeling was terrible, because I felt like that was a death sentence that meant I could never do something like I am doing now. Then I realized it's actually a huge plus,” Allen says.
The South has a substantially lower cost of living, and this allows Allen to do a plethora of things for a cheaper rate than just about anyone else in the country, and still markup to make money, while not hitting the cost for similar service from someone living in Los Angeles. This fact alone has allowed him to secure several actor accounts.
And so while he admits it grudgingly, Allen still admits: “Living here is probably the key to my success. If I was based anywhere else, I don't know that I'd be anywhere remotely as successful. Same with the wrestling shows. At this point, the wrestling shows are my living, breathing, business card, and I don't know that it would have had the opportunity to be the monster it is today, if not for being based in the South.”
Does that make Barry Allen a superhero of the Appalachia? With a backstory rooted in the foothills and superpowers tied to the ley lines? Nah. Allen wouldn’t agree to anything so flashy as that. Yet, Allen says he could live with one movie character comparison that seems to fit his mold: Han Solo.
“Han Solo will do anything to make a dollar, but he has a heart of gold. He's obviously done some things in his past that were of moral question, but he'd take bullet (or carbonite) for his friends, he adores the Princess, he knows how to deliver a really smooth line,” Allen explains of the Star Wars legend. “Han has great battle plans. He shows up at just the right moment to save the day, and he does dumb things too, because his heart tells him it's right, even though his brain should probably be screaming.”
Allen, as the guy who never turns off the personality and fuel that drives EGO Entertainment, makes sure to add: “Also, he makes a vest look dazzling, and in his off time he's Indiana Jones.”
Profile (Original vs Revised)
This piece was a fun one to write. I met Barry a few years ago, and ever since then I have been interested in how he got into his business and how he keeps it all straight. I wrote many a profile when I worked for the newspaper, and therefore though I had a good hold on what writing a profile would be. Yet, after working with this piece throughout the semester, and even now realizing it can go through several revisions and still not be “done,” I have learned to what heights a profile can aspire to. Reading “Orchid Fever” gave me this perspective in full. One human can be so complex and interesting so as to write hundreds of pages about them. The profile is high art in condensing what you get into the most interesting and focused bit. To this end, I still struggle in my profile (and much of my writing) to maintain a clear focus. I get wrapped up in the story and allow the interviewee to lead the story. Further, I enjoy the art of storytelling too much and therefore embellish on parts in ways that seem gratuitous and halt the story. While I enjoy profile writing and the interview process, I have gained perspective of the reader in having my pieces edited this semester and I hope to carry this into the next drafts of the paper.
For the second revision on my profile, I also went back to Barry and asked for more information on his Southern heritage and what he thought of it. He was reluctant to provide this, and I took that into account in my writing. I am aware of my slant in my writing now and am going to try and remain neutral in my writing and let the reader decide in future revision who the person I am talking about is, rather than telling them who I think he is. Also, in revision, I added my own experience of watching a wrestling match into the narrative.
Now, after third revision, this piece feels like it’s the closest to being done out of all of those I have written. I would like to interview one of Barry’s wrestlers to bring in more of that perspective of being a southern wrestler, and replace some of the less interesting details of Barry’s profile with this. I do like how my flow and tone has developed though, and was extremely pleased when the Southern element of the story was able to shine through. I hope I get to fix these minor things and take this one to publication.
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