Growing Up

I grew up in Germany, in a working-class family with six kids. Money was tight, so my dad fixed things himself rather than calling someone — and by the time I was a teenager, he had taught me most of it.

The house we grew up in, my dad built almost entirely on his own, with a handful of relatives and friends helping along the way — barely any hired contractors involved. He'd grown up on a small farm and lost his own father when he was still young, which meant he had to take care of most of the things himself. He later became an electrician to make a steady living, but that early responsibility never really left him, and it turned into an extraordinary amount of patience and attention to detail.

What I Learned

Whatever my dad taught me, he taught slowly and carefully, and he expected the same of me. That has stuck with me more than almost anything else — the belief that doing something right might take longer but it makes a difference, whether it's a repair, a project, or a promise you made to someone. Paying attention to detail, planning and organizing things became not just a deeply engrained skill for me, but also part of my value system.

My mom had to make a lot of sacrifices to raise six kids while my dad was at work. But her perseverance and never-ending love for us is what kept her going during tough times. Treating people with respect, following through on my promises, and holding myself accountable are traits my mom and dad always emphasized.

Bringing It Into Real Estate

Years later, working in the software industry gave me a different set of tools — how to dig into a data set and derive meaning from it, work through a complicated problem methodically, and communicate clearly with people who don't share my background. Between a childhood spent building and fixing things by hand, and a career focused on analyzing and organizing, I ended up with a pretty good foundation for real estate — whether I'm representing a client as their real estate broker or evaluating a property as an investor.

It's the same reason I'll always tell a client the truth about a property, even when it's not what they want to hear, and the same reason Cornerstone Investment Group doesn't take shortcuts on a renovation. "Seeing Potential, Creating Value" isn't just a tagline to me — it's how I was raised to do things in the first place.