The Road to CFI

At 3:45 one morning, I drove my Volkswagen Rabbit into a parking garage in Boca Raton for an opening shift at the athletic club.

Inside, I would clean, fold towels, respond to members, and do whatever else the house needed.

I had managed people, served customers, earned an MBA, and started over more than once.

I had taken this job because I needed work and a place to rebuild my body and mind.

Those early shifts helped me understand how much a place can affect someone’s daily life.

The environment, the people who welcome them, and the work behind the scenes all shape the experience.

The possibility of being known without having to perform became central to the idea of CFI.

What brought me to that garage also explains the work I want to do next.

I began working at the age of twelve as a golf caddie.

I later worked at McDonald’s, catered events, hosted, bussed, and served tables in restaurants, taught myself design software, and created ads for New York City nightclubs.

I earned a degree in visual communication and worked as a graphic designer, with guidance from Susan, a designer trained at Parsons in the 1970s, before computers became central to the profession.

When one business closed, I went back to serving tables.

At a small fine-dining restaurant, a manager named Brianne showed me what hospitality could look like from the inside.

She cared about the staff and paid attention to where the business was heading.

When she moved to another restaurant, she asked me to design its menu.

I eventually joined the team.

That place also became part of my personal life: I met a woman there, and we fell in love.

Later, I became creative manager for a sports nutrition business associated with Everlast.

I learned from the CEO, Peter, whose presence stayed with me.

When that chapter ended, I felt the familiar shock of losing work I had put myself into.

I moved into commercial real estate sales partly because I thought money might offer the security that creative work had not.

I learned to sell and earned more than I had before.

I also learned how easily a number on a deal can become more important than the people doing the work.

I left after a dispute over a major transaction.

The transaction was valued at $67 million.

More jobs followed: design, restaurant management, real estate, inventory analysis, education advising, marketing, business development, sales, and service work.

Some roles ended because businesses closed, changed hands, or cut positions.

I quit others.

In one, I made a mistake that contributed to the outcome.

The full list is long; the lessons repeat.

A manager can make someone feel capable or disposable.

A workplace can invite honesty or train people to hide mistakes.

A beautiful room can still feel cold when nobody takes responsibility for the people in it.

I saw businesses deliver service through procedures while missing the person standing in front of them.

I also saw how much one attentive person could change a day.

I took a facility operations job at an athletic club in December 2025.

Within weeks, overwhelmed by childhood pain I was still carrying, I checked myself into a wellness center and stayed for three weeks.

I had already spent time in therapy, but I needed a more intensive place to pause and deal with what was happening.

I talked, listened, rested, and began to face conversations I had avoided.

Afterward, I returned to my work, and the financial obligations were still waiting for me.

Wellness did not settle everything in three weeks.

It gave me a place to start acting differently.

I returned to the club in January 2026.

From April through June, I worked in restaurant management and used the income to pay off credit card debt that had accumulated because of identity theft and fraud.

That job ended amid low restaurant sales.

In July, I returned to the club full-time, and I have worked there since.

There was no neat career path to put on a résumé.

There was, however, a pattern I could finally see:

Across all those jobs, I kept returning to the work of receiving people, noticing what they needed, bringing order to a space, and helping them feel at ease.

Moving between those environments taught me to adapt, learn unfamiliar procedures, and do the work in front of me.

I bring experience in both managing a business and carrying out the everyday tasks on which it depends.

I have had more than thirty jobs over roughly thirty years.

I do not offer that as proof of expertise or as an excuse.

It is part of the record.

I am responsible for my choices, including the ones that cost me.

I also know what I learned by seeing so many kinds of work from the floor rather than from a presentation about it.

I want to build CFI as a private sanctuary and second home for its owner-members.

Its purpose is to help people live with greater autonomy, competence, and connection.

A member should be able to arrive strong, tired, uncertain, or simply ready to enjoy the day.

They could train, recover, work, eat, learn, ask for help, help someone else, or rest without having to explain themselves.

The setting matters:

A beautiful, quiet space with serious training, recovery, food, and rooms for conversation and rest.

The culture matters more.

Discretion, cleanliness, direct communication, respect for staff, self-management, and care for other members have to be practiced every day.

The people responsible for the house must be present and accountable.

No member should have to perform vulnerability to belong.

When someone needs clinical care or specialist advice, qualified professionals should provide it.

A building or a membership fee cannot make someone dependable.

A well-run place can make it easier to look after their health, follow through on commitments, learn, and show up for others.

CFI will have to earn its reputation through what it does every day.

I want to build the first house with committed partners and make the economics strong enough to sustain the people and place behind it.

I do not yet have every answer about funding, property, or execution.

I expect the plan to change as we learn.

The purpose should remain clear.

I think about CFI on a fifty-year horizon because it represents an approximation of the life I hope to have ahead of me.

It is a personal horizon, not a forecast or a timetable for opening the first house.

I want to begin as soon as the right opportunity and resources make it possible.

The fifty-year outlook describes how long I am willing to care for the work, improve it, and remain accountable for what I build.

It does not give me a reason to postpone the first step.

If I am fortunate enough to have those decades, I want to use them well.

Life has an unknown ending.

CFI is something I want to bring into existence while I have the time and ability to do it, and then help sustain for the people who depend on it.

For employment, I want us to establish the responsibilities, compensation, schedule, reporting relationship, and what good performance would look like.

You should understand my background and CFI ambition.

I should understand the business’s needs and the commitment you expect.

The role must make practical sense for both of us.

For a CFI partnership, shared enthusiasm would be a starting point.

We would still need to test the property, funding, operating model, and demand.

My contribution would draw on the concept, my service and management experience, and my willingness to take on the daily work.

I would need partners with complementary expertise, resources, and the ability to challenge the plan.

I do not present myself as an experienced property developer or as someone with every financial and technical answer.

Before any partnership commitment, we would need to agree on contributions, authority, ownership, compensation, milestones, and how disagreements or an exit would be handled.

I am looking for a working relationship in which the expectations are clear and each person’s contribution is respected.