08/28/2018
When I was 8 or 9, I wanted to put together a fun fair at our house in a suburb of Chicago (where I grew up and lived for 28 years) - like they had at the grade school, only better. My mom was indulgent enough to let me try and I got my 4 brothers and sisters and the neighborhood kids excited to take part, and also to help out in making it happen. We had a bean bag toss, face-painting, a ring-toss, a super-wet-slide, and my VERY favorite - the "haunted house" in the basement, complete with a bag filled with tomato-sauce and spaghetti for "guts", jello balls for fake eyeballs to feel , and our own creation, The Green-Mint Monster. Which was just a person in a green blanket with a flashlight under the chin. But for us young kids, it all worked! AND we got a nickel per game and a dime for a haunted house visit. I have come to see that as my very first Production - AND my genesis as an entrepreneur, since I was happy to count the money as well as create the fun fair.
In high school, I tried working with my brother on his Sunday paper route but I discovered it was much more fun to spend weekends playing my violin in the orchestra for the school musicals and to work sound and lights and staging for other school presentations- it was like the fun fair! I loved all that entertainment, and music and excitement. I never wanted to be on stage - only behind the scenes, making things happen, and figuring out how to avoid potential problems. From Jr. year in high school and through college, I was actually even hired- for real pay - to play in pit orchestras for musicals and variety shows. It sure beat baby-sitting.
I eventually got an MBA in Entertainment Management/ Music Business, learning how to put it all together - the business end and the production and promotion parts. You see, I loved playing my violin - I still do- but I never wanted to make it my career. Your hobby should almost never become your career. But it's always great to incorporate it into your work and life if you can.
I was looking to work for a large venue like a University auditorium or a Staples-Center or Greek Theater type place, or to tour with a rock band, but as it happened, I got hired as the Assistant Manager and Director of Operations & Production for the Wichita Symphony - which meant I had to move to Kansas.
I loved my job, still got hired to play my fiddle occasionally, and eventually free-lanced in Production with other major orchestras which took me on tour to South America and to Europe which was great….but I was restless. My free-lancing had given me the confidence that I could move someplace new and make money and be ok, so I moved to Kansas City where my younger brother lived and, after getting a couple part-time jobs, I got busy marketing myself to companies that produced events at hotels and for festivals, and to companies that filmed TV commercials and their managers. I did that for almost5 years when I was hired by CBS to work on a movie they were filming in the Kansas City area. After that experience, I knew I had to try my luck in LA. In fact, my need to try and to grow bigger and do more was so acute that I felt if I did NOT go and produce something in TV that a part of me would die….and I also was determined not to die with ANY regret that I had an opportunity to chase a dream - and never took it. That is still part of my personal philosophy to this day.
I arrived in 2000. I worked hard, networked my butt off, and got work on CBA and PBS TV series, and also events and shows for MTV, TV Land, Nickelodeon, commercials and short films, VH1 and Comedy Central. I was able to work my way back up to being a Production manager, in charge of the budget, the spending and hiring some crew. But after 4 years, it was too much of a grind. I had gotten my real estate license earlier so I could sell timeshares as a side gig, and decided to make the career switch in 2004-5 into mortgage loans. It fit my love of numbers and my love of helping others, so into this new world I went- and I found I really liked it and was pretty good at it. It also happened at the beginning of the run-up of property values and flips and the Wild Wild West in real estate! Quite the learning experience!
It made me want to invest, too, and to learn all that I could about how to do it and how to flip and then when the crash came, how to do short sales, and lease options to help people in foreclosure - it was quite a time to learn and do a ton. I created my LLC for investing, Big Fiddle Properties, and combined doing loans with buying, rehabbing, selling and holding rentals, which I have done for years now. In 2013 I switched to doing hard/private money loans only though, as there were tons of investors looking for those loans and it was much faster to get the loans done. In the last 6 years I have also really enjoyed networking with others in the real estate area and also helping others to learn some of the nuts and bolts (ins and outs) of investing, which I still do now, teaching a class and doing private coaching along with brokering hard money loans through my company United Equity Capital, in Los Angeles. I am blessed.
