New Direction

Growing up in rural California, Brian Andrus was surrounded by a family steeped in medicine — so much so that he toyed with the idea of becoming a doctor himself.

But after a career as a business consultant that took him to Canada, Mexico and throughout Europe, Andrus in the early 1990s settled back in California and earned a general contractors’ and eventually a real estate broker’s license. He spent the rest of the decade buying homes, renovating them’ and flipping them for a profit.