Michael J. Weiner (Mike) was born in 1955 in New York, and moved to Washington, DC in 1960 with his family. As Mike was growing up in the Maryland suburbs, he became fascinated by the radio business, becoming a fill-in radio announcer at the tender age of 15 at a small college radio station in Takoma Park, Maryland. While in high school, he was part of a small group of students who built an in-school radio station which broadcast music to students.
Michael is a product of Montgomery County Md. Public Schools. He graduated high school in 1973, and after one year of community college, he enlisted in the US Air Force, where he was trained as a radio and television broadcaster and served at the American Forces Radio and Television Service stationed at the Alaskan Forces Radio Network. After working as a newscaster, then air-personality, then producer of special programs, he returned to his native Washington, DC to resume his broadcast career in the market. Mike's interests began to expand beyond broadcasting as a talent, to new opportunities in the business world. He felt drawn to learn more about the business of real estate, as a Realtor, a mortgage originator, life insurance agent, and finance, all while working as a voice-over narrator.
During the years he was gaining experiences, he continued attending college, eventually accumulating enough credits to earn a bachelor, then a second, and a master's degree in business. However, it was the working experience that he gained which has been translated into a new realm of business.
When he graduated, Mike was attending college when he was introduced to the US Air Force and the possibility of being trained in radio and television production for the American Forces Radio and Television Network. He received orders after an extensive 10-week military broadcast school (DINFOS) to be stationed at Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage, the headquarters for the Alaskan Forces Radio Network. He was assigned as a news anchor, then air personality, then special programs producer. Upon leaving the Air Force, he returned to the Washington, DC area to resume his broadcasting career.
After working at several local radio stations in Washington, he became a free-lance voiceover and producer, building his own in-house studio to accommodate his clients. Mike was an original voice of the US Government’s automated answers systems that were being installed under contract. Ultimately, he was electronically heard by tens of millions of American citizens who would call the federal government weekly. His was the voice heard when calling the Internal Revenue Service, the Customs department, some court systems, and even announcing bus stops in Los Angeles some 100,000 times daily by riders. Along the way, he earned a BS in Business and Management, a BA in Communication Arts, and an MBA in Marketing.
As an entrepreneur, he created a business to business marketing product called Telemmercials® to play on hold at business locations. He also co-invented an in-store promotional messaging system which was tested and bought by Safeway’s Eastern Division. In addition, he created the Model Home Radio Network for homebuilders to have playing in model homes in their developments.
In 2006, after 30+ years in the communications business, Mike decided to enter the world of real estate investing. After buying his first property, and making every mistake an investor can make in doing so, he became determined to learn from his mistakes and started to attract project developers who needed funding for their projects. With Mike’s network of friends and associates, he began seeking private funds for his first client, a developer of a 350-Million Dollar Sports Camp and Center for youth outside of Atlantic City, NJ. At the same time, he was offering private investors an opportunity to invest in Pre-Construction deals in large condominium projects in Chicago, Las Vegas, and other cities including preeminent developers such as Mandarin Oriental.
When the financial crisis started to rear its ugly head, the impact spread like a cancer to many of the funding resources. Seemingly overnight, sources dried up. At about that time, Mike had been fielding project funding requests to help a growing list of project sponsors totaling 60+ Billion dollars in project funding needs from around the world. As a marketing professional he had generated a contact base of more than 10,000 connections worldwide, which has been the source of many deal flow opportunities. Mike can be found on LinkedIn at http://linkedin.com/in/mikeweiner.
Weiner has invested over a decade learning to cull away from the liars, cheats and thieves that haunt the Internet. Over time, by focusing first on developing a personal relationship with people, he has developed an international following and network of ultra-high-net-worth individuals and established project developers. One of those relationships was with a senior level European private banker in control of the flow of bank-issued paper through trade groups stationed at the top 5 banks. He was invited to become one of three authorized intake officers for financially qualified corporations and individuals who might be invited into an internationally regulated program established post-World War II, and reserved for people who understood the use of leverage to attain funding results, and healthy non-recourse profits for the qualified investor. This relationship has been in the making and continues to grow today as Mike develops the client relationships between the investors and the principal operators of the regulated programs.
Mike has written numerous articles on the topic, which have been published in Wealth and Finance Magazine, Financier Worldwide, and other publications reaching qualified investors. Mike lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, is married and has three grown children. He is a life-member of the Sandy Spring Volunteer Fire Department (EMS-Lieutenant and Past President), as well as the President for 2017-2019 of the Rotary club of Olney.
