On weekends I dusted off my DJ skills and worked as a wedding DJ for the top company in Las Vegas.  It allowed me to work at nearly every hotel on the strip at that time. I figure I've DJ'd for about 130,000 wedding guests between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.  For extra income I had some crappy jobs like loading trucks with sound and lighting equipment, moving the symphony around, and as the group coordinator at a water park on the strip.  For a while I had a job filling orders for sex toys from a website!  I was at an airport location working a job doing morning traffic broadcasts when 9/11 took place.  It was a very scary day to work at the airport.   I left Vegas and some good friends behind to take a shot at TV.

A high school friend and I had a buddy who had become a bigshot producer in Hollywood.  He hired us as punch-up writers for a show called "Hidden Hills" on NBC.  We were also hired to help save the "Tom Green Show", but when we showed up on Monday morning the show had been cancelled and the cast locked out!  Once we left a bowling ball with our phone number scrolled on it instead of a business card to get the attention of an NBC executive... we got the meeting with her!  We eventually worked on the pilot for "Rodney", a sitcom on CBS featuring comedian Rodney Carrington.  I'd say we were responsible for 60% of the jokes in that first episode.  On that show I got to meet Mac Davis who played the grandfather of the shows family.  He told us stories about working with Elvis that made all of the crap in L.A. seem worthwhile.  My writing partner and I chose separate addictions to manage the stress which led to the end of our partnership and my work on the show.  I guess that's a pretty typical Hollywood story.

T​he L.A. drug scene was wild. I befriended a $3000 a night call girl and former porn star, knew people in the Italian, Korean, and Mexican mafias, and had a drug dealer who was a shopaholic with a movie producer husband who took her daughter out on "deliveries".  With a permanent DJ setup in our living room, the loft I shared with my cousin was party central downtown. The building had armed guards since I lived with the toy district on one side of me and skid row on the other. We even ran a weekly underground club downtown in a Mexican restaurant after hours. I worked as a wedding DJ and videographer for living which is when I started teaching myself to edit. After enough drama I finally went cold turkey which took a week on the couch followed by 6 months in AA.  My closest friend was a young woman who had been an escort and stripper for many years, but we helped each other get sober, quit the life, and move out of L.A.  I got to see her reconnect with her family, graduate college, get married, and have kids.  We remained friends for 12 years.​

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After sobering up I left L.A. and started Legacy Productions in Seattle where my focus turned to non-profit work, since my father had been a fundraising consultant as well as a philanthropist.  Ten years later I was ready to write a book teaching others how to create fundraising videos that really work!  "Secrets to Big Money Using Video" is available on Amazon.  Together, my father and I have helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars for non-profit organizations all over the country. It's a legacy we will always share.  I was embedded for a month at a camp for kids with cancer, spent the night on the street with homeless teens in Seattle, had heart to-heart-talks with women rescued from prostitution, and braved the wilds of Georgia to tell the story of a kid who helps veterans.  What I've learned is everyone carries trauma, gets kicked by life, and needs a hand up now and then.  My hope is that the work I have done with my father will help to bolster the social safety net that our nation's nonprofit organizations provide.  You never know when it will be YOU who needs their help. 

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After the financial crisis of 2008, I designed and built a photobooth (3 of them) with my family members to earn income.  ePod Talking Photobooth was the only photobooth that talked back to you based on the face you made in the last photo.  I used cart software from my radio days and a hidden webcam to make it seem like the booth was responding autonomously using clips from movies and TV shows.  The company lasted for 7 years and was eventually sold.