1985 – Ambitions and A Cold Call - After one year in practice he opened a second office in Holiday, and a third in Port Richey, Florida. He rotated himself through those locations, spending three, two and one day respectively in each location.  Real estate captivated his interest, and he purchased his first and last new car a 1985 Lincoln Mercury Cougar.   Two years later, broadsiding another car, it was a total loss, but Gary and the other occupants were unhurt. Eureka Moment #1 - Gary rented a wooden billboard on US Hwy 19, south of Tampa Road where the Triple AAA building now resides on the west side of the roadway.  A salesman from 3 M National (“Outfront Media”) cold called him and he inquired as to the billboard business.   The rate on the billboard Gary rented was $ 750 per month, and this conversation followed: “How much for the big steel billboards?” Dr. Barbosa asked. “$ 2,000 per month,” the salesman proudly claimed. “For one side?” he was astonished. “Yep! One side,” he grinned knowing that Gary could never afford that.  The salesman looked through his sales material and paperwork in his satchel. “You are telling me that if I owned one billboard, I would be making $ 4,000 per month?” The salesman looked up at Gary while pulling out a contract, “Yep, but you’re a doctor, you’ll never do that!” Gary grinned, took his contract, read and signed it.   He thought to himself, ‘Wrong thing to say to a kid from New Jersey.’ 1986 – Triple Nightmare - They say things happen in threes, on January 28, 1986, the following occurred: 1: The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff.  Gary had been a huge fan of the space program since July 1969 when they landed on the moon.  At 13 years of age, he stayed up until 2 AM taping on his Norelco (“the shaving company”) Cassette Recorder - the TV broadcast of the event.    His mother gave him a model of the Apollo Saturn 5 - four-foot-tall moon rocket model.  He still has it, mounted horizontally in his current office. 2: Gary received a letter from his malpractice insurance company, stating that he was considered a poor risk due to his advertising, something that doctors did not yet accept as the norm.   They cancelled his coverage, putting his hospital privileges in jeopardy.   This was his competitors’ first attempt at ridding themselves of competition since the insurance company board of directors all hailed from Pinellas County.   He had no malpractice cases pending or filed against him and his practice was less than two years old. 3: Returning to his rental condo, his 1974 Chevy Malibu that his mother purchased from a junkyard, which he drove to Florida with his fiancé was towed away as a vagrant and he never saw it again. He enrolled with another medical malpractice insurance company, that was not owned and governed by local disgruntled colleagues.    His hospital privileges were un-interrupted until one of those local colleagues happened to review his surgical case work at “Mease Hospital, Dunedin, Florida”.   Being old school and vehemently opposed to his prevalent billboard, his review resulted in Gary being put on probation and supervision at that hospital.  He still retained privileges at “Tarpon Springs General Hospital”, but from his competitor’s political pressure and the thought that “doctors who advertise could not be good doctors,” permeated that hospital and he was again put under review due to adverse peer pressure. 1987 – Friend and Generous Colleague - Gary befriended Dr. Salvatore Delellis, DPM, another colleague who treated him as a brother, who he had met prior to opening his office.  Dr. Delellis opened Dr. Barbosa’s eyes to the economic and convince benefits of in-office surgery.   Gary upgraded his office and began to perform his own sterile in office surgery with good results.   One such case involved a cook, “Angelo” from Tarpon Springs who had a broken ankle.  Since this patient had no insurance, he could not find a doctor who would take him.  He presented at Dr. Barbosa’s office.  Once the swelling went down, Gary fixed the ankle in his office operating room using plates and screws.   Sometime later, Dr. Barbosa removed the screws and plates.  Although Dr. Barbosa was never paid for the surgery, Angelo came back six months later and invited Dr. Barbosa and his wife to his restaurant for dinner.  That was the most complex surgery that Dr. Barbosa has ever performed in his office, and it was done using local anesthesia, without an assistant.   1988 – Sales Gimmicks - After four years in practice, the economics were not as robust as he was led to believe in medical school.  Gary realized that the “be a doctor and be rich” scheme pitched by medical schools at the time, was just a sales gimmick.    By the time he took care of expenses, he made just a bit more than the average “Joe”.   Granted he loved surgery, and he was good at it, but he wondered, “Is this it?  Is this what I spent my life working so hard to get to?   What about those billboards?  If he could put up one billboard and make $ 4,000 per month, that would go a long way to boosting his income.”  Let’s be honest, people get educated because they want to better themselves economically.  This is why his mother pushed education, she wanted a better life for her children than being a blue-collar laborer or a blue-collar entrepreneur.   His family did well as blue collar entrepreneurs.  They amassed a Gulf Oil station, one of the largest tow truck operations in Newark, New Jersey having a contract with the New Jersey turnpike, an auto body shop, trucking and warehousing businesses. It seemed an empire was in the making.  At the time, the success that his family had accomplished due to the expanding importance of transportation, made him feel immortal, that his family with persistence and hard work would be the next Rockefellers.  Life had different destinations. He obtained a lease for his first billboard on US Hwy 19, north of Moog Road, in Pasco County, Florida.  A bank loaned him the funds to build it, only because he was a “doctor”.   He purchased the sign from a billboard builder in Tarpon Springs, Florida, only for the company to go bankrupt.   He had to re-purchase his completed sign from the opportunist who purchased the assets, then he had to overpay him to install the sign. The State Troopers stopped his construction, since he did not have a permit from the Florida Department of Transportation.   “What permit?”  He inquired and discovered that in addition to the local building permit from Pasco County, he needed another permit from the State of Florida.   Luckily, he meet the requirements relative to the sign’s location to other billboards and his first billboard was up and running.   However, the dream of $ 4,000 per month quickly evaporated when he could not lease the sign to advertisers. He discovered that to lease billboards you need to cover more of an area than just one sign.   With luck, he landed his first advertiser, a real estate dynamic duo, Kathy and Bernie Progen.  It wasn’t  $2,000 per month, but it was $ 495 per month for one side of the sign, and it was a start. His daughter was born the later part of the year.  His family life began, and the responsibility became very serious. With all the custom single family home building along the west coast of Florida, he built a custom model home at 1460 Sail Harbor Circle in Tarpon Springs and lived in it.  He called his company Classic Estates, Inc., but the economy took a downturn, and the custom single family home market collapsed.   He focused on his medical practice and billboards, while he struggled to hold on to the expensive model.  He did meet prospective buyers who previewed his model home, who today are his life-long friends.  They purchased the house at the end of the street from the then eccentric, outlandish landscaper/nursery owner / home builder, Jim Williams.  For years, Jim threw the biggest Christmas Party in Pinellas County history at the famed Belleview Biltmore Resort.   This was Florida’s largest wooden building built in 1896 by railroad tycoon Henry Plant.   A who’s who event, where men dressed either black tie or suit and the women looked like they were attending Cinderella’s ball, gowned, primped and gorgeous.  The guest list totaled 1,500 or more, and all those who experienced the same looked forward to it annually.  Jim would end the party as he did every year by saying, “Thanks for coming, tell your friends to come next year.”  1989 – Billboard Maneuvers - With all the trials and tribulations in building his first sign, he purchased a billboard on the then vacant southeast corner of Alderman Road and US Highway 19 in Palm Harbor.   That sign was rented out for $ 2,000 per month per side and he realized his goal.   Fueled with success, he then purchased two billboards on US Hwy 19 from Larry and Richard Dimmitt, owners of Dimmitt Automotive.  The first sign was on their Jeep Dealership on US Hwy 19 in Tarpon Springs and the second on US Hwy 19 in Holiday at their BMW dealership. Four billboards started to generate positive cash flow over and above the debt service and expenses, but it was nowhere near enough to change careers.  His medical practice was primary and the signs secondary.   He was still struggling to keep up the mortgage on his model home.  1990 – Grow or Die - His son was born in the summer, and he was on the perverbal trend mill of life, supporting a family of two children and his wife, three medical offices, three employees, four billboards and a model home that was breaking his back.  He built another billboard after purchasing a sliver of land resultant from DOT taking at the northeast corner of Ulmerton Road and US Hwy 19, prior to the building of the overpass.  He needed a lawyer for a height variance due to the planned overpass, and his fifth billboard was operational, followed by his sixth at the northern apex of US Hwy 19 and 66 Street.   He purchased that property as well and rented it out to an adult bookstore, while he built his sign.  That was blind luck, but every dollar was salvation.  These two signs were down the street from the headquarters for Clear Channel Outdoor, so he basically built those signs in their backyard, and they were pissed at their real estate department for missing these two sites. Due to the debt of two properties and two additional billboards, cash flow improved only slightly.  He leased the signs between patients, and ran the six-sign company himself, along with running his medical practice and making rounds at the hospital.   He rarely saw his kids awake, and his wife seemed exhausted being a mother.   He kept his money matters private, since he did not think she could handle any more stress. When they discussed the size of the family he had always wanted, she cut Gary off at two and stated that she would not have any more children.  Himself coming from an Italian family of four, that was hard to take, but he capitulated. Today, that is one of his biggest regrets. 1991 - Commandeered Employees - He wanted to spend some time with his family, he hired a saleswomen (“Carol Donzolski”) from Clear Channel and a secretary (“Andrea Luby”) to help run the sign company.   He purchased another billboard at the southeast corner of Countryside Blvd and US Hwy 19 in Clearwater from Republic Bank and another on US Hwy 19 north of Drew Street, where the famed stain glass image of the Virgin Mary appeared.   Eight signs became eleven as he purchased and built more billboards on US Hwy 19 in Pasco County.  That company was Ads & Images, Inc., which today owns easements under 13 billboard signs, whose rent from OutFront Media will continue in perpetuity. The cash flow was just over expenses, and the jumbo mortgage on his home was draining him.  He did not want to sell the home at a loss, so he kept up with five employees, eleven signs, three medical offices, and a two- child household.   His wife questioned and doubted his effort in the billboard business and “nagged” him, saying that he to school to become a doctor not a billboard guy.  Just what he needed after busting his ass all day.  As luck would have it, the negative statements never stopped.  They fueled his resolve as he dealt with her lack of vision and no appreciation of his hard work.   Gary came from three generations of entrepreneurs, people who do whatever it takes to be successful. His wife came from a family who went to work for a paycheck, never borrowed any money except for their primary home and a car or two.   Two people could never have been more different.   They shared none of the same goals, and ambition was a dirty word to his wife.  She could not understand his insatiable drive to succeed, but she has finally embraced it due to the lifestyle it has provided, that she now enjoys.  It just took 30 years for her to see the light.  1991 – Luekemia – After having taken over the family- owned Gulf Oil gas station in 1982, the year his grandfather, Mathew Barbosa passed, his brother Joseph Mathew Barbosa, who worked that automotive and fuel business for years was diagnosed with Lymphoma a curable cancer of the liver.   He received his last injection for that disease, which inexplicably lead his body to create excess amount of white blood cells as if his body was fighting that last double dose.   He contracted leukemia, for which he entered treatment. 1992 - Transplant – Gary’s brother’s condition worsened, and his failed treatment led him to a final alternative, “Bone Marrow Replenishment”.    Through extensive research he chose Omaha Medical Center as the then best hospital for treatment.   His siblings and Gary were tested, both his sister, Laura and Gary were a match.  His sister living at home in Toms River, New Jersey with both his mother “Bonita Barbosa” and grandmother, “Marion Ansaldo”, was unemployed and very available for the transplant, while Gary was up to his neck in medical practice, family matters and managing a billboard business.   However, it was decided that Gary would be the best choice, since his sister was not dependable and could not be trusted to be in Omaha when needed. In Omaha, he was tested further and stayed with his brother and his wife.  His brother’s physician was younger than himself and he had asked that doctor the same question that his patients had asked him. “How long have you been doing this?”   The physicians and hospital wanted Gary to stay for two weeks while they used radiation and chemotherapy to “nuke” and kill off his brother’s own bone marrow.   Gary told them he had to get back to his crazy world which would fall apart without him, they hissed and hollered.  They stated, “If you do not come back, without your bone marrow, your brother is dead.”     Gary assured them that he would be back the day before the procedure.  As a practicing physician they took his word and he returned to Omaha, Nebraska the day before his procedure to extract his bone marrow. 1992 – Procedure – After meeting his brother and his wife at the airport, Joseph looked like he had been on the beach in Florida for two weeks.  His skin was burned red by radiation, and his hair was mostly gone.   The next day the physician explained the procedure prior to taking Gary to the operating room. “They are going to tap into the crest of the ilium (“hip bones”) using two cannulas (“drills”).  Two sites are required on each side.”    He asked, “What approach?”   “Posterior (“back side”) two to the right and two on the left.” Gary had four quarter inch holes drilled into his hip bones on his back side.  He walked out of the hospital with a walker, ironically just like some of his patient’s.   He smiled at the thought of it, a Podiatrist who needed a walker.   The pain was mitigated by oral medication, and he walked like Frankenstein for a week.   Luckily, he had been consistently working out and running, and his body was prime to be a donor. It would be a matter of time whether the bone marrow would be successful or not.  His brother’s life hung in the balance.   Gary flew back to Florida, to his peverbal life on a treadmill.