Art Consoli's Background

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After politely being asked not to return for his sophomore year in college, Art settled into a job at the local post office where the pay and the hours matched his desire to have a good time and not take anything too seriously. One of his father’s auto repair shop customers, an executive at Johnson & Johnson who had watched Art grow up over the years, decided to take action. “Report to J & J’s personnel office on Monday at 9a.m. I’ll be damned if I’m going to see you waste your life. They’ll put you through some tests and we’ll find a job that’ll challenge you.”

Within a week Art was figuring out how to get raw materials and finished products from a stateside J & J plant to a subsidiary in Venezuela.

Three months later his boss told him that he had been accepted into Johnson & Johnson’s prestigious management trainee program. He was the first non-college graduate admitted and in order to stay in the program he had to get a degree. He began night school the next semester.

Almost immediately Art began developing his problem-solving skills and quickly gained a reputation as someone who could go into any situation, figure out what was wrong, and come up with a solution. He moved through a number of Johnson & Johnson companies to positions of ever-increasing responsibility. In his last assignment as a project leader with the management information center, Art found a company outside of J & J that wanted to buy the new forecasting system that had been developed at the center. His vision of heading up a new J & J company, to develop and market management information technology was squashed when the powers-in-place said the corporation was not interested in selling the system.

Realizing his future would be found elsewhere and eager to live somewhere new, Art accepted a position with an industrial building developer and public warehouse operations corporation, The D. H. Overmyer Company. The company offered him several locations. He picked the division that was losing the most money, Phoenix.

“Both my wife’s family and my parents thought I’d lost my mind, “ Art explains. “They couldn’t understand why I would trade a promising career with a great company to move 2000 miles away and work in a business that made money by being very good at borrowing money.”

Fifteen months later an entrepreneur was born. Several employees returned from lunch on payday and told Art that the bank wouldn’t cash their checks; there was no money in the account. When he called the home office to find out what was going on, Art was told that the company had filed bankruptcy that morning. Not only were the paychecks going to be rejected, but all the checks written and cashed in the last few days were going to bounce. This was a big problem for Art – he had recently deposited checks for several months’ expense reimbursements, his quarterly bonus, and his salary for the month (totaling about $50,000 in 2006 dollars).

When he told his wife what happened she asked where he was going to get a job. He recalled his response. “I don’t have time to get a job; I have to make some money – now.”

Thirty-three years later his knowledge and experience came together to help others. He wrote the book, “How to Evaluate and Profit from a Business Opportunity – The Entrepreneur’s Guide.”

Chronology of Art Consoli's Business Experience
What’s better - twenty years of experience or
one year of experience repeated twenty times?

Employment experience 1962 - 1973

The Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies 1960 – 1972
Admitted to the Management Trainee program and then assumed positions
of increasing management responsibilities focused on solving problems.

The D H Overmyer Company 1972 – 1973
Vice President of the Western Region with profit and loss responsibility for this
privately held nation-wide developer and operator of 120,000 square-foot warehouses.

Entrepreneurial Experience* 1973 to present

The Bisk Co. Inc., President and Owner. Master leased
warehouses and managed problem real estate for CLIC, a division of
MGIC (the largest private mortgage insurer).

18th Street Mobile Home Park, Owner. 75 space mobile home park in Phoenix, AZ.

Equity Directions Inc., Owner. A full service real estate
company (divisions listed below). President of each division and, where applicable, the licensed party.

* Many of these occurred concurrently with others. Some were held for as little as a year, some for many years.

Consulting, brokerage and workouts for lenders and owners