About Me
I was born in Toronto Ontario Canada and grew up in a small farm community 50 miles from Detroit Michigan. Spent the summers working and living on a farm where I detasseled corn, suckered tobacco, howed soybeans, and planted wheat, oats, barley just to mention a few. I quickly learned the ins and outs of animal husbandry as we had several hundred beef cattle as well as pigs and 52 head of milking cows. Spent some time attending Appleby College in Oakville Ontario and finished my formal education by graduating from Chatham Vocational School.
Upon graduating from high school attended Paul Smith’s College in upper New York State where I got a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management. Then went to work for a large hospitality company working in their high volume facilities on the New York State Thruway between Albany and NYC. During that time I took leave to attend the University of Windsor to get by BA degree in business.
Spent 12 years in the food business and then became a commodities broker at the Mid American Exchange and then the Chicago Board of Trade in Chicago. This is very fast-paced business that was like living in a pressure cooker. That career came to an end when President Jimmy Carter put on a grain embargo in 1980 against Russia for the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. A good example of what can happen when government gets involved in the free market trade. (As I write this piece the USA is in a tariff war with China).
I then was bitten by the real estate bug and invested in a small 3 plex in Northern Virginia that dated back to the Civil war – a dirt basement. This taught me all about toilets, tenants trash and turnover. From this small beginning, I went into multi-family units in Chicago where I did not realize how deeply engrained politics would be in the real estate business. Eventually, property taxes became so high was forced to sell.
After this, I learned about notes (mortgages, deeds of trust) and realized that one could generate good cash flow with all the headaches of owning the physical asset. The more I got involved it became apparent there were so many things you could do with notes that my eyes were open to great possibilities. www.notescreatecashflow.com services: 12 possibilities)
