Conversations with Morgan Burrows

Today we’d like to introduce you to Morgan Burrows.

Hi Morgan, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My longtime business is Medical Billing services for private practice specialists. I got started in that at 17 when I worked in an office my mom was the RN and office manager for. I started out requesting insurance authorizations. At age 19 I began working for HCA verifying eligibility and benefits. At age 21 I landed a roll as a manager for a solo Ophthalmologist. From there I taught myself medical billing through the issues and errors we had with the outsourced billing service and brought it in house under my responsibility. From there I outgrew the roll and provider’s willingness to compensate fairly. I did his billing remotely while working for another office in the area. That didn’t go so well and was around the time I graduated from college with the University of Phoenix online. After graduation I uprooted my life and moved to Los Angeles. The above story started in Beaumont Texas then I went to college in Huntsville at Sam Houston for a year before moving to Dallas and transferring to online education. I had intended and was accepted to UNT Denton, however, I hadn’t secured a job by the time school started so I switched to online education and ended up sticking with it although I did move to Dallas soon after the semester started.
Los Angeles has been quiet the whirlwind. I moved here in 2013 and have been here since. I started out in a Dermatology practice as a contract laborer. He is still a current client after all of these years. I grew my business mainly through his referrals and some indeed job ads. Doctors are a special breed of people, they really do not take to traditional marketing.
This long timeline of billing has lead me to crave something different and new for myself. Pickleball really blew up around 2020 during COVID and continued growing. Lots of people were trying to figure out how to profit from the explosion, but it wasn’t until 2023 that I had a half-baked conversation with a new friend about starting our own club. A year later we came across that topic again and decided to start researching. She wasn’t able to move forward, but she gave me the courage and motivation to continue the project on my own. I’ve secured 90% of the funding I requested in round 1, signed a lease in June after 10 months of hunting and fighting with ownerships. It has been quiet the journey to get a lease. LA is not for the faint hearted. There are many varying interests overall in this process between myself, real estate agents, and owners. Now we are in construction, which is a whole new level of patience. I think I put together a good team and found good reliable and trustworthy people. I think people show their true colors very quickly. Some would say I’m a good judge of character. I’m also driven, Type A, and light hearted. There’s always a solution, if there isn’t I work until I hit a wall or I find a way to climb over it and keep going. Or, I change direction. I’ve been through a pre-construction process once before when I attempted to build a house in Idyllwild during the COVID years. By the time the architect was finished and plans were approved the prices had more than doubled and the project didn’t make financial sense anymore. TBD on how this will finish, but there’s no out of this project because I have a 15 year lease, investors, and my own cash and time committed to this project. It brings me a ton of joy and excitement. Contrary to the “art of the steal,” I respect professional’s pricing and rarely fight them for a better pricing. That may sound counterintuitive in a project, but as someone who has been undercut and undervalued in the healthcare industry, I think it’s a sound way to treat professional who will feel respected. When it comes to supplies and finding the right fit, that is a different story. Researching, connections, and asking questions gets me really far.
At heart i’m an entrepreneur. It doesn’t stress me out, it excites me to jump into a massive project like this. I have a firm belief in economies of scale so going big was the only option in my plan.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My husband would say that life goes my way often. Not to say I haven’t had struggles with a hole in support from my family since I came out at 15, but my positive outlook on life has kept me going and moving. My mom has always been there in her own way, which has been better than nothing. I have a keen ability to compartmentalize. Not suppress and ignore, but to really put something in a box and move on until it’s necessary, relevant, or needed to look at again. My family now consists of my husband, best friend, and a wonderful group of friends.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Maybe i’m taking this in my own direction since i’m not an artist, but I have vision. I have the ability to visualize a space, life, activities, the future, and really paint that picture in my mind. I can put myself and others in a space to imagine how they will utilize it or not. Part of being an entrepreneur is art. Being creative with financing, investing, projects, etc. My ability to see a space, measure it out mentally, and visualize what I can make it has been a tremendous help. Where others see flaws I see potential and possibilities. I’m a very imaginative person. I grew up watching and reading anything fantasy related. I remember when Harry Potter first came out. It was like the book came to life before my eyes in many of the ways I envisioned while I was reading it. That still holds true today. Some people star off into space, but i’m in my mind visualizing space and recreating it over and over until I get the right picture.

Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
There’s no amount of research or preparation that will truly allow to you feel secure in any project. Learn, research, figure it out, and the biggest one of all is take the leap. If you never leap then you never find out.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.billingcircuit.com
• Other: https://www.picklealleyla.com