Construction, Healthcare, Commercial Real Estate: My Life Has Always Been About Helping People Build.

There’s a reason I chose to write this blog about my relationship with my father.  He was the first person who taught me what it meant to build something.

Before healthcare, before business ownership, and before commercial real estate, I spent years working alongside him in construction, learning lessons about doing the right thing, resilience, work ethic, problem-solving, and creativity that would eventually shape every chapter of my career. More on this later. 

Today, I have the privilege of meeting new clients every day as a Commercial Real Estate Advisor, helping businesses navigate major decisions and create opportunities for growth. I became a physical therapist many years ago because I wanted to help people get stronger; not just recover, but rebuild and come back even better than before.

That same passion for helping people improve their lives and reach their potential is what still drives me today in my consulting work with businesses.   But somewhere along the way of being a PT, my work started to evolve.

I am grateful for being a business owner at 3DPT, and thankful for Jeff Sallade and Ken Guzzardo for the company they started. Because for me, treating patients turned into opening locations, floor plans, negotiating leases, building teams, managing growth, and making high-stakes decisions around space, timing, and risk. Without realizing it, I was becoming something I didn’t yet have a title for:

A business owner. An entrepreneur. A builder. A networker. A problem solver....

What I eventually realized is that my connection to real estate had started long before healthcare. I grew up working alongside my father in construction, rehabilitating properties from the age of 12 (probably even long before that) through graduate school. If I wasn't in school or playing sports, I was working with my father on the job. In construction, there was always something about the intersection of vision, structure, and long-term value that pulled me in. I loved seeing what something could become with the right plan, sound execution, and a lot of hard work. 

\Watching a neglected property transform into something valuable taught me lessons that stayed with me: patience (something my father never had :-D ), resilience, problem-solving, and the importance of having pride in building something that lasts. My father taught me a lot, not just about how to frame or put up sheetrock, but about toughness, work ethic and making sure clients were taken care of. 

Right as I was finding my groove and being able to work without his supervision, a sudden incident happened which would have a major impact on me.

More than 20 years ago, while working with my father on a construction job, he was rushed to the hospital for emergency open-heart surgery. I was still in college, and overnight, the business suddenly became my responsibility.

What started as my usual summer job quickly turned into managing projects, communicating with clients, solving problems on the fly, and carrying responsibilities I wasn’t fully prepared for, all while worrying about my father’s recovery.

It was one of the hardest experiences of my life, and truthfully, I got my ass kicked in the process. But looking back, that experienced shaped me in ways I couldn’t have understood at the time.

It taught me what pressure really feels like. It taught me accountability, adaptability, and how to lead when uncertainty leaves you no choice but to step forward. More importantly, it taught me empathy. When you’ve experienced stress, responsibility, and the fear of letting people down firsthand, you begin to understand people differently.

That perspective made me a better physical therapist because I understood that people weren’t just dealing with pain or injury, they were often carrying fear, uncertainty, and pressure in other parts of their lives too. Patients don’t just need expertise; they need trust, communication, and someone who understands what it feels like to navigate difficult moments.

Years later, those same lessons became incredibly relevant as I built and expanded businesses of my own. Opening locations, analyzing financial projections, hiring teams, signing leases, and making decisions that impact employees and families gave me a completely different perspective on what business ownership actually demands.

And ultimately, it shaped the way I approach commercial real estate today!

Because when you’ve personally carried the weight of building something from scratch, you understand that real estate decisions are never just about square footages, showings or commissions. They’re about risk, timing, growth, people, and the future someone is trying to create.

And it's mostly all about people.

The same skills that made me effective as a clinician and operator, systems thinking, empathy, strategic planning, and understanding what it truly takes to run a business, are the same skills I now bring into every real estate conversation. Clinical thinking became strategic thinking.

The framework I once used to evaluate patients, understanding the full picture, identifying root problems, and building long-term plans, is the same framework I now use to help businesses make real estate decisions. In other words: I am extremely process orientated but have room for flexibility to build and problem solve along the way.

Operator experience became perspective. I know what it feels like to sign on the dotted line, take on risk, and bet on a vision before the outcome is guaranteed. When I advise clients, I’m not speaking theoretically. I have lived it.

And empathy became trust. Healthcare teaches you how to communicate clearly when people are suffering in pain and emotional. That matters just as much when business owners are making decisions that impact their future, their employees, and their families.

My mission hasn’t changed as I aim to help businesses achieve their growth goals and build a strong foundation for future success.....because shared success is the best kind of success. 

And as Father's Day approaches in a few weeks, I want to say how thankful I am for my dad always willing to teach me, challenge me, look out for me, and for the time he inadvertently put me in charge of the his construction company :-P It has all helped me in every aspect of life today.