Every Business I've Built Started With the Same Question
I spent the better part of three decades building and selling companies, structuring financial instruments on Wall Street, and now developing workforce housing in Northern Arizona. The industries look nothing alike on paper. But the principle that drove every decision in each of those chapters is exactly the same: before I commit to anything, I ask who this actually serves in the long run. Not in the short run. Not at closing. Long run. That question has been the throughline of everything I've done, and it has saved me from more bad decisions than I can count.
I didn't arrive at that belief through theory. I learned it by watching what happened when it was ignored. Early in my career in plastics manufacturing in Canada, I worked at a small company and moved into an executive role relatively quickly. The acquisition by Menasha Corporation was a meaningful milestone, and it forced me to think carefully about what it meant to hand something over while retaining a stake. You can't do that carelessly. You have to believe the organization you're joining shares your sense of what the business is actually for. If the answer is only "return," you're going to have problems.
That lesson shaped how I built my own plastics manufacturing company afterward. I started it at $500,000 in annual revenue and grew it to $25 million over 10 years. A lot of that growth came from decisions that weren't the fastest path to profit. Hiring the right people over the cheap ones. Investing in operations before the margin justified it on paper. Saying no to customers whose volume was attractive but whose demands would've compromised quality for everyone else. Each of those calls was an answer to the same question: who does this serve, and does it hold up over time?
The same thinking drove my work in structured finance. When I founded and managed an investment fund around long-term lease assets, I was dealing with Wall Street buyers who expected rigorous credit enhancement and careful packaging. That work required discipline and patience over speed. The assets had to be structured honestly, not just attractively. I believed then, and still do, that the moment you optimize a deal only for the person closing it, you've built something that eventually falls apart. Structured finance has a long memory.
Now I'm applying that exact principle to a 47-acre workforce housing development near Sedona. The project isn't complicated to explain. Teachers, nurses, tradespeople, first responders, and hospitality workers who keep this region running can't afford to live here anymore. They're commuting long distances, and employers are struggling to hold onto them. This is a community problem with a real, buildable solution. But the question I keep asking myself is the same one I've always asked: does this hold up for the people it's supposed to serve, not just for the people developing it?
That's why the design emphasis is on walkability, green space, and quality construction rather than squeezing as many units as possible onto the acreage. Workforce housing gets a bad reputation because too many projects treat it as a lesser product for a captive market. I don't accept that. A family that works hard deserves a place they're proud to come home to. That's not idealism. It's what separates a development that strengthens a community from one that just fills a gap temporarily.
I've also found that this philosophy changes how people around you work. When your team knows the standard is long-term community impact rather than just closing numbers, they bring different energy to problems. That was true in manufacturing. It was true in finance. And it's proving true again here in Arizona, where the feedback from local business leaders and community members has reinforced that this kind of housing is genuinely needed and genuinely welcomed when it's done right.
I earned a third-degree black belt in Taekwondo, and the discipline that requires isn't so different from what good business demands: you don't cut corners in training and expect full performance when it counts. I carry that into every project. My hope is that this development becomes a model worth pointing to, a real example of what it looks like when workforce housing is built to last rather than just built to sell.