Author Bio

Hello Readers. Dayton Parks Story

A little about the path I’ve traveled

When I was 10 years old, I taught myself to type. My dad was a part-time writer of crime stories, and he had a manual typewriter that he let me use while he was at work. To help me, he bought me a typewriting book. I wanted to type just like my dad, so I practiced until I could type.

I remember one day he came home from work. There was a package from the post office waiting for him. He ripped open the package and inside was a copy of an Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. They had published one of his stories.

The next day I wrote my first short story.

My family moved every 3 or 4 years, so I attended 3 elementary schools, 1 junior high, and 2 high schools.

My high school career was uneventful. I kept writing, mostly emulating Stephen King and Dean Koontz, but I never tried to get anything published.

I wanted to go to college, but my family couldn’t afford it. So I went into the Air Force right after college. The Vietnam War was nearly over, so they sent me to Greece for 18 months as a radio operator, then to Sacramento to work in the headquarters of a bomb wing.

While in the service, I got married to my best friend. And she’s still with me!

College was my next stop. I had the G.I. Bill to help pay my school bill. But I needed more money to put me through college. To pay the bills, I started a business. It was a carpet cleaning company called We-Do Carpet Cleaning.

I spent four years at a Christian college. I graduated with a degree in theology and minors in English and mathematics. My intent was to serve as a minister, but after a year as an assistant pastor, I knew the ministry wasn’t for me.

So I worked as a janitor, then became a journeyman dental technician. A friend told me about a company called Mosler that was hiring and paid more than I was making at the dentist’s office. Mosler was a 150-year-old manufacturer of safes and banking equipment, so I went to work for them as an apprentice ironworker. In four years, I became a journeyman. I worked my way up to being an assistant branch manager, then a project manager of large products, and finally became a Senior Account Manager (fancy title for salesperson). Within a couple of years, I was the #3 salesperson out of about 120 salespeople. That year I won a Pinnacle Club national award for the highest sales volume in the company.

When working for Mosler, I wrote 3 novels. I farmed them out to dozens of publishers, but 2 of my books received rejections without comment from any publisher. One book received comments and suggestions from a publisher who told me my book was being considered and encouraged me to keep writing.

They didn’t buy it, but it was a big encouragement to have it considered.

Even though I was making a high income in sales, I wasn’t happy. I often thought of how much I enjoyed owning my own business while in college. So while working during the day in sales, I started a web design business at night. It failed. Then I joined a couple of MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) businesses. I wasn’t a great success at either of them, but I recruited over 100 people. I kept recruiting on one side and people kept quitting on the other. It was a revolving door, so I stopped working on MLM.

My next venture was an eBay business. With my wife as my partner, we bought home furnishings at wholesale prices and sold them on eBay. One of our high points was when the television show Lost contacted us and bought a lot of garden gnomes for one of their episodes. Watching a popular television show and seeing our products was exciting.

While selling home decor products made us a living, it wasn’t giving us the income we wanted. So we began searching for something that had the potential of making us a good living. We had a couple of criteria. The products had to have a high-profit margin, and they had to be durable so they wouldn’t break in shipping, and they had to be small enough and light enough to ship without spending a lot on shipping.

It was harder to find something that fit our criteria than we thought, but we were determined to find exactly what we needed.

I’ve been a lifelong motorcycle enthusiast, so I started buying some motorcycle gear at wholesale, then reselling them on eBay. Motorcycle parts fit all of our criteria. But setting up a dealership for one of our suppliers cost us $8,000. So we borrowed the money and became an official motorcycle parts and accessories dealer. Sales took off immediately. So we closed the home decor business and expanded our motorcycle parts, gear, and accessories business.

Over the years we sold over $5 million dollars of motorcycle equipment on eBay and a couple of million on Amazon. We had an online store and a brick and mortar store that also made us a million in gross sales.

And then the bottom fell out of the motorcycle industry. So rather than keep investing in the business, we closed it.

I retired, sold our home, and we bought a new truck and 30' travel trailer and the road, intending to take the next 10 years visiting America.

Today, we are taking a break from traveling by becoming a camp host in a state park.

So what does all of this have to do with writing?

Throughout my adult life, I’ve dabbled in writing. I wrote three fiction books (none published, although 1 got close). And when I was young, I wrote a lot of short stories.

And then, about a month ago, I found Medium. As I look back over my life story, two things stand out: 1. there has been a significant amount of failure; and 2. there has been some significant successes.

These two things are the flip side of the same coin. Call if fate, destiny, God’s leading, or “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear”, as one opportunity ended another one began.

I’ve spent the last month writing for Medium. And I’ve been using that time for introspection. I’ve read hundreds of articles and watched over 100 YouTube videos to learn all I can about Medium and how it works. And I have refined my thinking about what I should write about that will benefit others the most. I want to use my experiences to help other people who are just starting or at a mid-point in their life journey.

So I’m dedicating myself to writing about entrepreneurship and personal development.

I believe those are the two areas where I can benefit others the most.

This is where I would put “The End” but it is actually only the beginning.

Wow, my life story in under 1,200 words.

Thanks for reading.