Bio

I was an IT and Finance professional in another life. My professional life spans more than 4 decades. Nope, not quite a centenarian yet. I just started life very early. I graduated high school at 14 and passed the CPAs by 19 but waited to be licensed until voting age.

My first job was with a multi-national conglomerate in Philly manufacturing, distributing and exporting industrial, agricultural, animal and human health products worldwide. At this job, I conceptualized "thinking out of the box" (although we did not have this one liner then, I only called it problem solving) and revolutionized the financial reporting and cash management functions, eventually adapted worldwide, and, started trading foreign currencies, US$$$, Italian Lira, Indian Rupee, Japanese Yen, German DeutscheMark, British Pound, and the HongKong$$$ two decades before the foreign exchange markets were established.

From there, I transitioned to another multi-national conglomerate in the entertainment industry, covering hospitality, print publishing, motion picture, recorded music and music publishing where I was awarded a scholarship for my post-grad studies. When my company returned to New York, I stayed in CA because my son decided to enter the seminary and contemplate the priesthood.

I then took a job with the fourth largest real estate developer west of the Miss. where I started as a staff accountant and in 3 months was promoted to CFO. I left this job to work as an outsourced CFO to help start-ups and med-sized companies who otherwise could not afford to hire top performing professionals.

Having satisfied my desire to experience start-ups and med-sized companies, I decided to go back to a domestic multi-billion dollar corporation. Because my interest was stoked by the real estate gig, I took a job with the largest mortgage banker worldwide where I re-engineered some of their business processes and introduced efficiencies that optimized resource utilization and maximized profits. A few of the more significant projects I completed was participation in mitigating fatal loss to the company from the Y2K bug and participating in the development of the IT infrastructure, loan origination and loan servicing applications for the joint venture in the UK. Shortly before I had to leave the Company because of exacerbation of symptoms from multiple injuries, I unearthed annual savings in the $5million - $90million range annually from operations in another department, not the IT Dept. Sadly, I couldn't stay to complete the project because I couldn't survive the worsening commute from Simi Valley to Calabasas.

Having been around the block many times, it is my hope that the coaches and the DG family will find me very humbly willing and able to learn and gain the same successes they have achieved in the real estate investing business, because I need all the help I can get. When it comes to business, finance and IT, I confess to being anal, but I am hoping that all you learned pros wouldn't mind helping me bridge this divide.