"Stay consistent."
Mark R. Morris Jr’s career as a writer and storyteller began in his twenties, teaching theater arts at a private studio he later owned and operated for over a decade. From there, he started writing full time, and has produced over ten million words for clients across four continents and nearly all fifty states. He’s produced everything from product descriptions to over 50 ghostwritten books for his clients.
He now operates a ghostwriting and coaching agency working with business executives and entrepreneurs to tell their stories. His mission is to help 1000 people add their voices to the fabric of society by helping them shared their personal stories with the world.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Mark R. Morris Jr: Hi, I’m Mark. I live in Oklahoma City, where I run MRMJ Ghostwriting a writing and coaching service geared toward helping executives and entrepreneurs uncover the power in their own stories, and share those stories with the world.
Over the past ten years, I’ve been fortunate enough to write over fifty books with my clients, and spend hundreds of hours coaching others in the craft of personal story inventory, and storytelling.
2020 and 2021 threw a lot of curve balls into business on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past couple years, how can businesses thrive in 2022? What lessons have you learned?
Mark R. Morris Jr: For me personally, it was a very mixed time. I had some great opportunities, followed by lags in business that were difficult to overcome. If I’ve learned anything it’s that I need to diversify, both in my offerings and in the way I market my company. While the internet and online marketing has disrupted the traditional model over the past decade or so, the past two years have seen massive changes in how we navigate that world, and making sure you have more than one avenue of connection with your audience is essential.
The pandemic seems to keep on disrupting the economy, what should businesses focus on in 2022? What advice would you share?
Mark R. Morris Jr: I think the key factor going forward is going to be reestablishing customer care. It’s almost been crucial in every business, but right now people need to feel they are being heard and taken seriously. This goes for employment practices as well. Now is not the time to rest on preconceived ideas about how business works, as the models are shifting rapidly and those that do not pay attention are missing out.
How has the pandemic changed your industry and how have you adapted?
Mark R. Morris Jr: During the pandemic a large number of ghostwriting agencies popped up online, offering discount ghostwriting services, and making a lot of claims they can’t substantiate. Due to their marketing strategy, they’ve taken up most of the bandwidth in the limited search traffic for ghostwriters. I’ve had to double down on my direct marketing through social channels and work hard to build and maintain an audience for my content marketing strategies, allowing me to generate the business leads I need to keep me going. I’ve also had to differentiate myself to validate the higher price point I need in order to maintain and grow.
In my industry, I think books are playing an even larger role in personal branding and audience building than ever before. I’ve diversified my offerings to provide more in the book coaching space, as well as streamlining my ghostwriting process to take on more clients and deliver amazing results with less effort.
What advice do you wish you received when the pandemic started and what do you intend on improving in 2022?
Mark R. Morris Jr: Stay consistent. Like many, after almost two years of constant upheaval, I took a bit of a hiatus in 2021, and the social content marketing world changed. By not being as consistent in producing content, and staying in touch with my audience, I lost a lot of momentum and have had to work hard to come back from that.
In 2022 I plan to diversify my offerings and focus on staying consistent in my marketing strategy to maintain and build that audience. I’m also implementing some better processes in customer relations that I think will pay off in more word of mouth and referrals from my clients.
Online business surged higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for 2022?
Mark R. Morris Jr: 2020 was incredible, particularly on platforms like LinkedIn where I do a lot of my business. As people have moved back out into the real world, it seems the numbers have dropped back down. For those of us using content marketing strategies, I think 2022 will be more competitive in terms of competing for audience attention and require more attention to detail about the types of content being used and the messaging they contain.
The pandemic brought businesses online for their marketing that had never been there before, creating even more competition for the dwindling eyeballs on screens. This makes targeting, understanding your audience, and being able to fine-tune your content even more critical than before.
How many hours a day do you spend in front of a screen?
Mark R. Morris Jr: For me, that’s pretty much an all-day event. When I’m not working on social, or marketing, I’m working on client writing and developing assets to use in client books, blogs, podcasts and keynote speeches. I would say seven to ten hours a day you’ll find me online, or at the very least monitoring marketing campaigns on my smartphone.
The majority of executives use stories to persuade and communicate in the workplace. Can you share with our readers examples of how you implement that in your business to communicate effectively with your team?
Mark R. Morris Jr: My team gets rebuilt for almost every project. The designers I use for nonfiction are not the same as the ones I use for novels and short story collections, the editors tend to specialize as well, and even in marketing, the industry I’m in is very bespoke. So, I have to build a project narrative of what we want to accomplish for nearly every single client book, blog or podcast we are launching.
By using storytelling, which is my native language, we’re able to shortcut the communication process and express desired outcomes in a highly connective way that includes a high level of emotional content, making those needs not just known, but felt by the stakeholders. It’s a unique experience.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as the real challenge right now?
Mark R. Morris Jr: RIght now I think in the wider business world, there’s been a critical breakdown in communication between employers and talent. While the bottom line must be served for businesses to exist, I think all stakeholders need to be heard better than in the past and the concerns they have taken seriously, if business owners and executives want to maintain and grow their companies into the future.
Those companies that adopt a responsive mentality and take labor seriously will win big as the talent pool continues to shift, while those who refuse to evolve, I foresee will have a lesser and lesser share of the market.
In my own industry, I think this plays into the ghostwriting agencies I mentioned before. While low rates are attractive to client authors, for the writers and other creatives actually providing on-the-ground services, they make it difficult to commit to a long-term stay. I think these middle man type companies are likely to be shortlived as more and more clients find the shortcomings in their service, and begin to share those stories.
In 2022, what are you most interested in learning about? Crypto, NFTs, online marketing, or any other skill sets? Please share your motivations.
Mark R. Morris Jr: I am curious to see how NFTs play out in the written content realm. I’m waiting for the dust to settle a bit, as the fraud gets sorted out of the system. As for Crypto, I spent almost two years creating content on a site that actually paid in crypto and I think if regulation can be kept as minimal as is safely possible, it could be a powerful force for bringing people who’ve not traditionally had any stake in financial realms, into the marketplace. It’s fascinating.
I’m looking forward to learning more about Web 3.0 and seeing how it impacts book publishing and marketing. My goal in that is to move toward producing more of my own projects to establish more sustainable sources of passive revenue.
A record 4.4 million Americans left their jobs in September in 2021, accelerating a trend that has become known as the Great Resignation. 47% of people plan to leave their job during 2022. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. Do you think leaders see the data and think “that’s not me – I’m not that boss they don’t want to work for? What changes do you think need to happen?
Mark R. Morris Jr: I wrote a book with a client on the emerging “contingent workforce” almost six years ago now. This is not really much of a surprise. The pandemic basically accelerated a process that was already in motion since we moved out of the information age into the attention economy. These things were not new, but recent generations have decided that the status quo is simply not a good enough excuse to accept nonoptimal working conditions and job relations.
Everyone always wants to believe themselves as the hero of their own story, so I think it’s natural that employers often don’t see their own toxic tendencies. I think capitalism needs to take a good hard look at itself and decide, what end are we here to serve? If we continue to choose the enrichment of the upper echelons, over building a more just and verdant society, I think the changes we’ve seen are only the tip of the iceberg. This unrest, coupled with technologies like crypto and NFTs which are decentralized, and harder to corporatize could spell the beginning of the end for the market the industrial revolution raised, and a new way of doing business could come out of it.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Mark R. Morris Jr: Ooh, that’s fun. The ability to read the algorithm of the various social platforms. I’d use it to build a massive platform for change and diversity in storytelling. I think we’ve dumbed the public narrative down to the lowest common denominator, and consequently have accepted a lesser range of options for how an acceptable life can be lived.
What does “success” in 2022 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Mark R. Morris Jr: My vision for this year is to move beyond the $100k, into the mid-six-figure range income-wise. Not because of the money it represents, or the power, but the freedom of movement and expression that come with it are very appealing to me. I want to scale my passive income and coaching to supersede a lot of the implementation I’m doing now and give me more flexibility.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Mark R. Morris Jr for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Mark R. Morris Jr or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
Disclaimer: The ValiantCEO Community welcomes voices from many spheres on our open platform. We publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not commissioned by our editorial team and must meet our guidelines prior to being published.
