I was born and raised in Wilmette, IL – a suburb just north of Chicago. The youngest of three kids, I always found myself wanting more attention than I was getting. This is probably what led me to break off and attend the University of Kansas in 1984 – while the rest of my family had gone to the University of Illinois. I was drawn to Kansas because of their Journalism Department’s excellent reputation which would help me fulfill my dream of becoming a sports writer.  After two weeks, my dream of becoming a sports writer was taken over by my dream to not have so much homework, so I found the easiest major I could find: Speech Communications with a minor in Drama.

These two majors combined to give me the skills to get a girl who didn’t like me to eventually fall in love and marry me.

In 1988, I graduated, took what I had learned, and began my sales career with a company that sold computer memory chips. In seven short years, the company went from three employees to three hundred employees – and I was the number one salesman. But I was also bored out of my mind. Without my next job in place, I quit in 1997 . . . but I didn’t care. It was a lucrative job, so my wife and I decided to take a year or two off to travel the world.

Four months later, I was broke.

Around that same time, a friend of mine who was starting his own mortgage company asked me to be a loan officer. I had bought a condo a year earlier, but didn’t really know how the whole money/loan process worked, so I figured it’d be a good experience until I found something better. Nine years later, that same company now boasts over one hundred employees, eight offices, and the ability to close loans in all fifty states.

PERL Mortgage is now one of the largest mortgage bankers in the country, but most importantly for me, I love this job because I’m able to help people find the right loan for the right situation (I know that sounds corny, but it’s true).

Dreams of being a sports writer have turned into writing mortgages, and I couldn’t be happier.  I can be reached from 6:00 AM until 5:00 PM at 773.413.6242, and after hours on my cell phone at 773.617.9738.