The Lyric Keeper

When he was a young boy, Eric Barberio ’90 was sure one of the lyrics to the Steve Miller Band song “Jungle Love” said “Jungle Love, strawberry man…”

Today, at 40 years old, Barberio knows the correct lyrics are “Jungle love, it’s drivin’ me mad…”

As the owner of KissThisGuy.com, the world’s largest misheard lyric site, Barberio, a graduate of the College of Business Administration, would, of course, know the correct lyrics to this and countless other songs.

He acquired the site in November 2007 after noticing that in the 18 months he had been visiting it, it had not been updated consistently. He says it had become a favorite of friends and family, including his wife Jennifer and their daughters Mia, 4 ½, and Lauren, 1 ½.

(KissThisGuy.com, which gets about 1 million page views per month, is named after a misheard lyric from Jimmy Hendrix’s song, “Purple Haze.” The lyric actually is “’scuse me while I kiss the sky.”)

“We would consult it for fun,” Barberio said. “I got into it and realized, This site has an enormous opportunity to grow! There were so many songs and stories and people having fun. But I also realized it probably got bigger than the founders could handle.”

He decided to take action and established Humor Box Entertainment Co. to buy KissThisGuy.com. Since he took over, the site has added somewhere between 15,000-20,000 songs to its archive and hundreds of new members. Ad revenue, he says, is “headed north.”

“We are in the midst of introducing new features, like personal profiles for users to add and share their favorites, and we’re going to roll out widgets – portable code that’ll hold users’ lyrics so they’ll have them everywhere they go on the Web, like Facebook or MySpace.”

Barberio is keeping his ideas for the future of the site on the zeitgeist’s pulse.

“People want to socialize and misheard lyrics are a good common denominator. Everyone and their children mishear lyrics. It’s a bonding experience – I got into the site because of the fun I had with my siblings and now with my oldest daughter.”

He credits his business expertise squarely on the “fabulous” education he received at FIU.

“I remember the interaction with the faculty. I didn’t go to a high school known for academics, so FIU was hard but ultimately very rewarding. I really took advantage of the access I had to all these talented professors.”

‘A financial leader’

Barberio always knew what he wanted to do: be a financial executive.

“I wanted to become a financial leader. Growing up, my favorite TV character was Alex Keaton from Family Ties. I’m really happy I stayed with it.”

After spending roughly 15 years in financial management roles, ultimately becoming CFO of one of Kemper Insurance’s largest subsidiaries, he created a consulting firm to help large companies improve their financial and accounting operations. In the past several years, he began investing in or acquiring other companies.

Pursuing his dream has and continues to pay off for Barberio, who also is the chairman of Unove’ LLC, a company poised to become the largest franchisee of Rotelli, an Italian restaurant chain with more than 45 locations across the country.

(For this venture, he partnered with his oldest brother, Frank Barberio ’77, whom Eric Barberio did not know had graduated from FIU. “I’m the youngest of nine,” he said. “By the time I was born, Frank had already left for college.”)

He created Unove’ with the goal of not only leveraging his skills in management and corporate development but also spend more time on the creative side of business. Coming from an Italian family, he appreciates the cuisine, but invested in this franchise because he has confidence in the business model.

Additionally, he is a partner and practice director with the management consulting division of MSi Consulting.

“I wanted to do both, the corporate and the creative, and this was the best way to go.”

In his spare time, Barberio likes to flats-fish or kayak in the Florida Keys.

A proud Golden Panther, he is a member of both the Alumni Association and the CBA Alumni Association. He is working as an adjunct professor in the university’s e-Learning School developing an accounting compliance course.

By Martin Haro ‘05

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