At a young age I learned some tough lessons on broken promises, lost trust, and self-worth.  It took years of experiencing the kindness and generosity of friends, family, and neighbors to rediscover how many wonderful people were in my life and learn to establish faith in friends, and build bonds of trust again.

I have had a long relationship with bikes.  When I was 10 years old, I held the record for longest wheelie on Live Oak Drive. I had a unicycle, a motorcycle, a couple of bicycles and I was the envy of the neighborhood. I had five siblings and tons of friends, and we spent the days going on adventures, riding our Schwinn Stingrays. We’d record our antics on my family’s Super 8 camera and didn’t get home until dark. When we did, we sat down to a family dinner. We were the TV-perfect nuclear family.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, my dad just stopped coming home and I learned quickly about divorce and loss. As a kid, I didn’t understand. All I knew was I had been gut-punched and hurt by people I trusted. My faith in others and my concept of family was shattered.  It became difficult for me trust others and created significant feelings of self-doubt and low self-esteem during a time in my life when I needed the guidance and mentoring of a dad.

I quickly realized that this also created a set of problems for my mother. She now had to go back to school and find employment, while we kids were responsible for getting ourselves to class and had to look out for each other. The financial straits we were in only made that feeling of betrayal worse. Still, we somehow managed to get by.

It wasn't until later that I discovered how much help we had. Friends, family, church members, and neighbors chipped in when they could leaving an occasional check in the mailbox or some spare cash paid forward. Eventually, my mother was able to open her own catering business from home. She worked incredibly long hours, and often asked me to help.  As I look back, I realize It taught me the importance of hard work and the power of entrepreneurship.

As a teenager I served a volunteer LDS church mission to Munich, Germany with 150 other volunteers from all over the country. My mission president, Robert Dellenbach, represented all the things I wanted to be in life. He was a force of goodness and quickly connected with me to reestablish the foundations of trust. Easing some of that pain inflicted by my broken homelife, he represented a man worthy of my admiration, and I strived to be just like him.

When I returned home, I met the woman of my dreams, and we got married. I began working as a house painter, running my own business like I had seen my mom do, and along the way I picked up expertise for many things. Working alongside skilled craftsmen I learned to tile a floor, put up a light fixture, build a deck, and even plumbing and electrical work and house framing.

Eventually, my father-in-law came to me with a business proposition. Neither my wife nor I made much money at that time, so he suggested he help us buy two houses. I could flip one and buy him out of the other with the money I made selling it... and I did! It was my first brush with real estate.

Since then, a kismet set of opportunities have come to me through hard work and my commitment to keep promises and build trust with people. My employment has always had an entrepreneurial theme to it; I have earned my securities licenses and worked in the largest investment firms in the country, built and run an outdoor apparel company,  worked for non-profit groups to help adults with disabilities find job opportunities, worked as the director of licensed merchandise sales for the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic Committee, developed websites and online merchandise strategies for professional sports teams and national brand franchises, hosted live on-air broadcasts for a home shopping network,  and flipped a bunch of houses along the way.  That last job led to me to some introductions and connections which brought me to finally getting a real estate license, even though I’d been buying, fixing, and selling homes for myself for many years! In the 18 years during which I’ve been licensed I have worked for two of the largest home builders in the nation, including a stint as the director of national sales learning where I trained, coached and mentored real estate agents from all over the country.  Over the years I have also helped more than 500 families buy and sell homes across the Twin Cities and Wisconsin.

I often reflect back on the kid I was doing wheelies up the street on my bike.  I still occasionally feel the pain of loss from my broken family and doubt my own self-worth.  But I’ve also had so many good people enter my life and found so much goodness and positivity by doing the right things.  I have found that acting with integrity and being the kind of person others will trust with one of the largest and most important financial decisions of their lives brings me joy as I work to make sure others can safely place confidence in me.

Now I get to be the father of the family I always dreamed of with a beautiful wife, four kids of our own and seven grandkids (with two more on the way). I still love riding my bike – though the wheelies aren’t really a thing anymore. I’m currently training for a 200-mile bike race with my son, but it’s not so much about winning for me as it is about enjoying the company and enjoying the ride.

Since joining the real estate industry, I’ve won quite a few awards. Most of them have to do with sales figures, however I don’t put a lot of stock in those. There’s one award, the “Super Agent Award” which means a lot to me because it’s an award you can only win when a client nominates you.  Winners are decided by the people with whom you’ve actually worked. I’ve earned that award now for the past seven years. Along the way I’ve built connections and relationships that have had a lasting impact, and I’m more proud of that than any other statistic. I have so many friends who are clients and clients who are friends that I forget which came first – the business relationship or the friendship. Whichever it was, I’m also proud of how many of them are repeat clients and how much referral business they send me.

People often ask what sets me apart from other agents. The answer is easy. The ability to negotiate great deals for my clients based on truth, trust and integrity.  I saw those traits missing from my family life as a kid, and I’ve worked my whole life to try to live those principles and make sure that I represent those qualities to my clients.