Experience
+ CEO/Founder
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International Clearinghouse, Inc.
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Source, Inc.
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Help Worldwide, Inc.
+ Founder & Creator
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WeSave, Inc.
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Fractional Ownership Marketplace Owned by the Members & Merchants
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Help Worldwide Foundation
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Catholic Loyalty Foundation
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The Michelangelo Legacy
Education
+ International Association of Adaptive Sciences
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, International Economics
+ International Association of Adaptive Sciences
Master's Degree, International Business
Notable Achievements
During the early 1980’s, Richard became one of the most prestigious pioneers in the professional field of Adaptive Science. Richard earned his PhD in Adaptive Science Economics with his dissertation registered at the Library of Congress. He presented his Doctoral Dissertation and Oral Defense before a distinguished body of peers and invited guests from the University of Miami Spectrum Center.
In 1988, Richard's dissertation was extremely well received, he was invited to serve on the Universities Advisory Council. Having remained on the Council for almost five years, shaping many of the policies and procedures, he was elected Council Chairman from 2001 through 2005.
Due to his exemplary efforts, including work with the Humanitarian Empowerment Loyalty Platform, he began his new tenure and was elected as Co-Founder and Chairman for the Council on January 6, 2006.
A Walk Through His Story
Throughout Richard G. Stewart’s successful ventures in finances, commercial real estate, and land and resort development, he has been known as a visionary leader and entrepreneur.
Richard has been the founder and partner of several successful companies
and the pioneer of many business creations:
PREMIER ACCESS MEMBERSHIP
Together with his son, RJ, Richard created the first Premier Access Loyalty Program that gave members discounts and rewards over the same 15-year term of the resort Membership Guarantee Program. These rewards and discounts equaled or exceeded the cost of money used to purchase the membership.
TENANT OWNED FRACTIONALIZED INTEREST
After reading “How to Wake Up the Financial Genius Inside You” by Mark O. Haroldsen, Richard purchased his first property in El Paso, Texas after it spent two years on the market with no offers. He placed the purchase into a limited partnership which had a total of 50,000 sq. ft. Richard convinced each of his tenants of the advantages to buying a percentage of the partnership equal to the square footage they rented in the building. This enabled the tenants to qualify for tax depreciation as they held equity in the building and led Richard to eventually sell 100% of the limited partnership units to the tenants. Mr. Mark O. Haroldsen eventually was a guest speaker at the Millionaires Conference held by Richard in Los Angeles, CA in 1984.
MEMBERSHIP GUARANTEE PROGRAM
As President of Stewart-Thomas Inc., Richard owned, developed, and operated the Ahwahnee Resort and Country Club, Bass Lake Resort, Merced River Resort, and Pismo Creekside Resort. After creating memberships for these resorts, Richard sought to increase sales. He created the first Membership Guarantee Program that guaranteed the return of the principal cost of these memberships to the member in 15 years, which resulted in an extremely valuable product to the Members as they enjoyed 15 years of family fun with the guarantee of receiving their money back at the end of that period.
RECIPROCAL RIGHTS TO USE
While operating his many resorts, Richard pioneered a cooperative-competition business model, known as ‘rights to use’, that vastly increased sales and profits for participating ‘coopetition’ members – a highly successful model which later become known as the Timeshare Industry. A unique part of the package Richard created was the reciprocal resort membership which gave all members the right to use open-looped timeshare resorts with exclusive rights to the Stewart resorts.
PACIFIC STOCK EXCHANGE
Richard G. Stewart purchased and owned the Pacific Stock Exchange Building. Once the Pacific Stock Exchange moved out of the building, Richard used the real estate to create a new creative cash flow. He partnered with Mr. Clyde Wallich from the famous Wallich’s Music City for the grand opening of The Stock Exchange Club which opened with a “Roaring Twenties” theme and plenty of celebrity guests performing throughout the night. This club, now called Exchange LA, is still open today.
TRUDY PAT
In 1980, Richard created the concept of the equity participation program and applied it to his Pacific Stock Exchange Building purchase in downtown Los Angeles. The package was called a “Trudy Pat”, a financial vehicle in which thousands of people, in the model of coopetition, invest money and own pro-rated fractional interests in a fund that makes a loan for a real estate development secured by a first deed of trust on that property. In addition, the investors each received an equity participation in the development equal to their pro-rated fractional interest, insured by a title policy in their name.
RESORTS & TIMESHARES
Throughout Mr. Stewart’s successful ventures in finance, commercial real estate, and land and resort development, he has been known as a visionary leader and entrepreneur. He has been a founder and general partner of several successful companies and throughout his career has directly raised over $150 million in capitalization for land, resort, office and other commercial real estate ventures. Mr. Stewart successfully developed, owned, and operated resort destinations across the United States including: Shawmideleca, Meadowlark Ranches, Greenbrier River Resort, The Bass Lake Resort, Ahwahnee Resort & Country Club, The Pismo Creekside Resort, and The Merced River Resort.
NATIONAL INVESTORS
The Trudy Pat program was so successful that in 1990 Richard funded National investors, a company specializing in creating packages to fund large real estate acquisitions, completions of the conditional use permits (CUPs), and full stage development. National Investors was given the rights by the Department of Corporations in California to raise over $300 million for Trudy Pat projects. Richard’s initial presentations to investors directly raised the first $150 million in capitalization for land, resort, and commercial real estate ventures.
confusion hill
the name tells the story
80 acres with 80 open wells with billions of oil reserves waiting to be controlled. However, this oil field has a history that should have made me think twice before I bought it.
It began in 1935, when Professor M.R. Yant (head of Yant Petroleum Corporation) acquired four existing wells in Placerita Canyon, CA. A Native American claimed there was oil beneath the ground. Yant believed it and, in a further show of faith, purchased a parcel of undrilled land one mile to the north. Before undertaking any drilling on the parcel, Yant had proceeded to drill a well on ground to the west of the existing wells. This decision brought forth very disappointing results.
As times were hard, Yant created land development syndication and raised money by subdividing and selling portions of the property he purchased. He divided the parcel into small lots, some no larger than one-tenth of an acre. The descriptions in the deeds were by metes and bounds and were based on the assumption that the property contained 80 acres. In the transaction, oil and gas rights passed to investors of the lots. Months passed, money was burning, the hole got deeper, and no oil was found. Eventually, the landowners litigated against Yant for fraud and won. The Judge found Yant guilty and divided the land and mineral rights to the owners according to the percentage of the positions they purchased in the beginning.
Ramon Somavia, a partner of Yant, believed in his idea enough to put up the money for an exploratory well and the drilling began once again. A short time later and another few hundred feet, he struck the richest well to date in California. Yant was right. The only proof he had in his trial that there was oil was a testimony from the Native American. That testimony worked against him and made him look ridiculous enough to lose the case. Yant had it figured out from the beginning. He knew he had to be in control of the total number of acres when he hit oil. The field needed to be managed properly as the discovery touched off a wild scramble for leases. The parcel of land had been highly subdivided. Some of those who had purchased lots from Yant, in turn, subdivided their property, reducing parcels to as little as one-twentieth of an acre. The next discovery was that the assumption that the property contained 80 acres, in effect, that section lines were true, was not valid. There were actually only 71 acres that Yant had divided. Finally, it developed that in many cases the legal titles were tangled. In some cases, as many as three claimants to the same tiny parcel appeared. This is where the name Confusion Hill comes from.
Obviously, the oil that lay beneath the subdivided area does not recognize surface boundaries. The oil simply lay in the earth, waiting to flow to the surface in greatest volume to those who tapped it first. However, as soon as the well is tapped it needs to be capped and managed in order to not lose the back-hole pressure that drives the oil from the bottom to the surface. This is one of the basic primary recovery processes. As soon as the first well was hit, operators rushed to drill to claim the oil below before the other owners did. Hole after hole and with each puncture the pressure was lessened until there was none left.
Now organization was critical and secondary recovery methods were the only way to tap into the incredible wealth below. Greed, confusion and the inability to gain the control necessary to invest stopped this incredible hill of wealth from being captured and tamed. Less than 5% was recovered when I came on the scene 50 years later. A man named J. Johnson, owner of JMT oil, had managed over a ten-year period to secure the rights to all the leases on the hill from a man who spent a few thousand at a time and bought each of the original investors out one at a time. He was a Rothschild in New York, NY.
Note: This history is from books and information I read and was told by individuals in my past. I can’t verify it to be 100% accurate – but it is a great story.
Ron Winters introduced me to the deal in 1978. I loved the story and history. I was a young investor and had the resources to bring the money needed to finish off this incredible opportunity. I was amazed that I was able to secure an agreement with Jim Johnson and then buy the rights from the Rothschild Family for the famous Confusion Hill. Myself and a few special friends put the final dollars and hired Johnson to manage the project for a good percentage of the recovery. He was perfect, a John Wayne sort of a guy from Texas. 80 open wells waited fifty plus years and we thought we were about to tame this monster.
Six months in, Jim is diagnosed with severe lung cancer and passed away within 90 days from diagnosis. The field next to us was purchased by Arco for over $50 million and we were twice the size and three times the reserved. The pressure was on. The Department of Oil and Gas started putting pressure on us to start recovery or they would order us to cap all 80 wells. Only God knows how much that would cost. I found myself in a spin of confusion. This deal was way bigger than me and my group could handle. Now we were down to trying to get what we had in it out or lose it all and become liable to the Department of Oil and Gas for any cost they incurred capping the 80 wells. We managed to get out by the skin of our teeth.
The moral of this story is: Stick with what you are familiar with and know you can manage.
Don't take on deals that you cannot manage financially otherwise it will all crash in around you. If you can't manage it on your own than you have no business playing with it because it may eat you for lunch.
~ Richard G. Stewart, Jr.
1946 cadillac
I will always remember my third car which I bought on June 1, 1963
– my 17th birthday.
My boss, Chris Christian, from Alabama was a great man. He liked me and let me know that I was a special person and trusted me to run his gas station even though he had several brothers that wanted the job.
On my birthday (which I had off work), he called me to come in so he could show me something. When I arrived, he had a 1946 Cadillac in the garage. He said he thought that this car was perfect for me and that I could have it for $150.00.
I thought it was cool looking, but I did not want to spend a $150.00 for a car, especially when I was saving my money to buy a new Dodge Hemi.
But because I LOVE cars, I naturally started looking it over. It was a really cool old Cadillac and it was born the same year I was born. As I was looking, Chris said, “Okay well, I’ll go down to $100.00,” but I said nothing as I continued to look. On the passenger side fire wall, I noticed a stitched pocket with a piece of paper in it. I pulled it out and to my amazement, it was a document that said DOB (Date of Birth): June 1st, 1946. This Cadillac was born on my birthday! Now, I had to have it. I was willing to pay the $150.00 Chris started at but just as I was ready to say yes, he lowered the price again to $75.00. I bought that car that day for $75.00.
That car was a blessing. I kept it through my Army tour and when I got home in 1968, I pulled it out of storage and had some fun. The most interesting part of that special car was when my wife and I got married in 1969, I sold that car and got enough money to pay for a good part of our wedding. That car paid for a wedding dress, two rings - one with a diamond, a good part of the ceremony and the reception. How did Chris know I needed that car?
This car experience opened my mind to the possibility that owning classic cars could be a great investment for myself and my future as I was trying to get control of my life, create a family, and understand how I could afford to buy and own things in my life. As a result of this experience, I was able to enjoy several awesome cars in my lifetime.
~ Richard G. Stewart, Jr.