About Me

Principal, June 2022 – Present

I created the ARM Companies to reflect the pivot I made in my business during the pandemic.  While ARM Procurement Advisors is a great business that has provided great results for myself and my clients, I found myself falling back on skills and knowledge I developed in my career that weren’t related to procurement or real estate operations.

The ARM Companies brand helps me to market services unrelated to procurement that I started doing during the pandemic in a much more effective way.

I’ve done research projects for publicly traded companies, built marketing frameworks for law firms and 501c organizations, done market research and advisory for VC funded startups, been asked to speak to groups of investors on calls hosted by international investment banks, done presentations, speaking, training and more…this type of business activity just fits better under the ARM Companies umbrella, so I made the moves during the summer of 2022 to make it happen.

Principal, March 2019 – Present

In February of 2019, I received a phone call from Mark Benotti, a VP of Conifer Realty who I regularly worked with on their purchasing and capital projects…he just started a newly created VP position at Conifer as of VP of Procurement and Risk Management and wanted to sit down for 30 minutes over coffee.

That 30 minute coffee turned into an almost 3-hour-long conversation on their business and what I’d recommend he do to hit the ground running and improve their situation as it related to his position and their procurement operation.  During that talk, he said something to the effect of “you should be doing this full time”…2 weeks later the LLC was filed, I left my W-2 on April 30th and the rest is history.  Opening a business before I turned 40 was a nice checkmark off the bucket list for me.

ARM Procurement Advisors works with owners and operators of real estate to reduce costs by adding resilience and efficiency to their operations; reducing overhead and maintenance, extending the useful life of their spaces for their tenants between rehabs, reducing risk and improving compliance.  We integrate sustainable business practices into the operation without reducing profitability to drive many of these results.

This is where I developed The TCO Method™ and formalized it in a way that allowed me to write my book and create my educational courses and seminars on the system.

Partner, Jan 2019 – September 2022

This particular role was more of a social media marketing effort and an outlier on my journey, but one worth noting nonetheless. I took an opportunity to publicly share my industry insight as a subject matter expert and was compensated for content I created on the Quora platform.

This program is still in operation for other parts of the globe, but they ended the program for English-speaking regions and they have moved on to other forms of content monetization.

Director of Sales, May 2018-April 2019,

In April of 2018, I was approached by a third-party recruiter to interview with a local building product manufacturer to take a newly-created position to help their sales team succeed and grow their revenue, reporting directly to the CEO.

A sustainable and reclaimed wood product company producing flooring, siding, paneling, timbers and other products with a sister company that builds timberframe homes and spaces across the US was a definite change of pace, especially since they were on the road to being an ESOP.

I onboarded and helped develop and enable internal and external salespeople, helped make their Salesforce into a CRM tool that actually helped my team without micromanaging them, helped launch and market two new product lines, built relationships across the nation and expanded my skillsets into areas I didn’t realize I needed before taking the position.  In 12 months, we had over 35% Year-over-Year revenue growth between Q1 2018 and Q1 2019.

Despite being a short-lived stop in my career, running a team scattered across the US and Canada taught me the value of trusting your people and enabling them to succeed by removing roadblocks to their success, giving them the tools they need, and letting them focus on what you hired them to do.

Territory Commercial Sales Manager, February 2015 – May 2018
District Commercial Sales Manager, February 2010 – February 2015
District Pro Sales Manager, September 2007 – February 2010

In August of 2007 I received a call from a headhunter at The Home Depot who wanted me to interview for a District Manager position over Pro Sales as part of a focus shift happening since Frank Blake took over as CEO earlier that year.  I interviewed, negotiated and accepted the position.

Being brought into that position at 28 years old made me the youngest of my peers by a significant margin and raised some interesting challenges I hadn’t had to deal with on the same level as when I was running stores at 84.  Over the next 11 years,  my district went from seven stores to nine stores and then I picked up a second district while expanding the volume my key customers spent with me over tenfold.

Out of over 210 people nationwide in my role, I finished in the top 10 in the company for key customer volume, maintained the largest volume in my region, and built the largest property-management key account volume in the US and the world.  I was based in a tertiary market but was lucky enough to find and build relationships with clients whose portfolios spanned across 17 states and in total, managed more than 100,000 doors and tens-of-millions of square feet of commercial space.

This company, more than any other, prepared me for larger leadership roles and helped me develop the skills needed to consult for the real estate industry as a career. This position gave me the opportunity to work closely with all levels of leadership in my clients’ companies – from the owners and c-suite to regional and individual managers working across the spectrum of real estate up and down the east coast. I made it my job to understand their business needs and priorities and helped them solve problems in their operations.

Outside Sales, June 2004 – September 2007
Outside Sales Manager, June 2003 – June 2004
Store (General) Manager, May 2002 – June 2003
Co (Assistant) Manager, January 2001 – May 2002
Manager Trainee, November 2000 – January 2001
Part-Time Manager Trainee, May 1997 – November 2000

I wouldn’t be where I am today without the people at 84 Lumber that gave me a shot at my first job…one that ended up being my career.

As a senior in high school I applied and got a job at 84 for the summer…Chris Martin hired me in May and they let me come back the next year after my freshman year of college.  That second summer I ended up with keys, opened and closed when needed, made bank deposits and ran the store on weekends while learning as much as I could about the business. I learned more about work ethic, leading by example, and getting things done from Chris than anywhere else in my twenty-five year career. 

When I got a call about the opportunity to go full time and be a salaried manager at twenty-one, I jumped at the opportunity.  I withdrew from college, took a pay cut per hour to go full time, and less than three months later I interviewed with Bill Myrick (the COO at the time) and became the Co-Manager of a smaller store in the suburbs.  Six months after that, Chris passed away suddenly and unexpectedly from pancreatic cancer, leaving behind his wife and three teenage sons.   I was moved back to his store as Co-Manager, which had become the largest store in New York State, to support the new store manager as he tried to fill some very big shoes.

Before I turned twenty-three, I traveled to Pittsburgh with my girlfriend (now my wife) to interview with the EVP of Store Operations, Frank Cicero, and was promoted to Store Manager of a rural location a few weeks later.

After a year spent completely resetting the store and returning it to profitability, I was offered a position running an outside sales team doing twice the volume my store produced the next city over.  I accepted it, and a year later, when one of my salespeople moved to a new position as a buyer at the corporate office, I saw opportunity and took it.

I worked in outside sales for the next 3 years, working in the field with high-end custom home builders and remodelers, learning the ropes of being an outside salesperson working on commission but also the technical details of construction and remodeling so I could be an asset to my customers instead of just another sales guy trying to take their money.

I owe more to the leaders at 84 that supported me and helped me than I can ever repay, and I am eternally grateful for the opportunities I was given and education I received during my stay there.