Born in 1954 in Windsor, Ontario, Rick has enjoyed a most varied and interesting life.

Going directly from high school graduation to working for the family drycleaning business (with a slight sabbatical in between venturing out west to "find himself" during those days of love, peace and flowers), it wasn't long afterwards that he developed a deep interest in business and soon took over managing the operation, even shearing his long locks.

In the 1980's he bought the business. Twenty-two percent interest rates during the worst recessionary period in modern history couldn't stop the young gun from learning his first and most valuable marketing lesson. Instead of cutting back as many of his competitors were doing, Rick opened new stores and upgraded what was already a modern processing department. He also raised his prices to reflect the increase in the quality of the plants work. The company not only survived the economic storm when many of his competitors didn't, but ended up thriving.

Throughout this period of time, Rick worked part time on his "first love" - writing and promoting songs. He entered and won the most prestigious songwriting competitions of the day, including the Billboard Magazine International Songwriting Competition, two years running, and, was having his songs recorded by major recording artists.

Rick eventually came to the realization that he had what it took, including a solid financial base, to make a career writing for and producing what he called "deserving musical talent".

In the 1990's he sold his multi-store drycleaning business (he spent 2 years prior designing and building a 32 track recording studio in his home) and set up a music production company. As fate would have it, he was divorced ("Canadian-style" as he calls it) before the first production was even completed and he eventually lost most of his asset base, including the home and studio.

So in 1998, deep in debt, he turned to the World Wide Web and decided that if he couldn't figure some way to make a living with 40 million people connected at that time, then he deserved to sell shoes!

With no "gurus" or even guidelines to follow at the time, he had to quickly learn what to do, and not to do. Despite making what he calls "a few mistakes," he started an Internet newsletter, or Ezine, and began to write articles that were featured in most of the established business and marketing ezines at the time.

The resulting popularity of this exposure led to the exponential growth of his newsletter and within a year he had managed to write his first business eBook, which remains a top-seller to this day.

As a pioneer of e-commerce, Rick developed one of the Internet’s first 2-tier affiliate programs and today, owns and operates 6 successful programs with tens of thousands of resellers, including the revolutionary www.PeopleBuildingPeople.com

At the encouragement of friends and associates, including John Harricharan, author of the best-selling "When You Can Walk on Water Take the Boat", Rick has written the first of the "Slice" series.

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