• Aaron Byrnes is starting a standing pickleball meetup for players in and around Newport Beach, open to anyone who wants a game.

A local game, not a private one

California, USA, Sep 05, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Aaron Byrnes has played pickleball for years, alongside sailing and travel as one of his regular pursuits. He decided this year to turn a personal habit into something local players can join.

Starting this season, Byrnes is committing to a recurring pickleball meetup for people in the Newport Beach area. The idea is simple: a regular time, a regular place, and an open invitation to players who want a match without needing an existing group of friends to show up with.

“Most people find pickleball through someone they already know,” Byrnes said. “I wanted a version of it where you don’t need the connection first. You just show up and play.”

Why he is doing this now

Byrnes spent his early career in construction, then moved into import and export work, a business built on reading people as much as reading numbers. He describes both worlds as places where relationships form on the move, not in advance.

“In my business, you meet someone once and you figure out fast whether you can work with them,” he said. “Pickleball is the same thing in miniature. You play one game with a stranger and you know.”

That instinct is part of why he is putting his name behind a meetup rather than just showing up to public courts on his own. He wants a standing group that other players can count on returning, week after week, whether or not he personally makes every session.

What the meetup will look like

The plan Byrnes has laid out is straightforward:

• A fixed weekly time slot, kept consistent so players can plan around it.

• Open sign-up, with no membership fee and no skill minimum.

• Rotating partners each session, so players are not stuck with the same matchup every week.

• A short warm-up period before games start, aimed at newer players who want to get comfortable before playing points.

Byrnes says he is keeping the format loose on purpose. “The second you add too many rules, people stop coming,” he said. “I want people showing up because it’s easy, not because they feel obligated.”

Beyond the court

Byrnes treats pickleball as one part of a broader pursuit of staying active outdoors, alongside sailing and time on the water. He has said in the past that fitness and being outside are routines he protects, not extras he fits in when there’s time.

He also plays pinochle and follows poker and other games of chance, activities he has described as close cousins to his import and export work: reading a room, weighing risk, deciding when to hold and when to fold. Pickleball fits into that same instinct, though he’s quick to say the stakes are lower.

“Nobody’s losing money on a bad serve,” he said. “That’s what makes it fun.”

What comes next

Byrnes plans to keep the meetup running as a standing commitment rather than a one-time event. He says the measure of success isn’t attendance numbers, it’s whether the same faces keep coming back and whether new players feel welcome enough to return a second time.

“I’m not trying to build a tournament circuit,” he said. “I just want a place where showing up is the whole point.”

He has not set an end date for the meetup and says he intends to keep it running as long as people keep showing up to play.

To read more, visit the website here.

About Aaron Byrnes

Aaron Byrnes built his career in import and export, following earlier work in residential and commercial construction. Byrnes is a pickleball player, sailor, and avid pinochle player, and he splits his time between Newport Beach and Phoenix, Arizona.

California, USA, Sep 05, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Karl D’Angelo has worked in plumbing since 1996 and has held a C-36 contractor license in California since 2004. For most of that time, his standard for a finished job lived in his head. He knew what “done right” looked like, but he never put it into words for anyone else to see.

That changes now. D’Angelo is formalizing the standard he has always held himself to, and publishing it as a short set of commitments that customers in Sonoma County can expect from Avante’ Plumbing on every visit.

“I like to feel good about the work I do, even if no one else is going to see it,” D’Angelo said. “The type of work I do, people don’t always understand the standard behind it. But I do, and now I want to say it out loud.”

The four commitments

D’Angelo built the standard around four ideas he says have guided his approach for years:

Listen before diagnosing. D’Angelo says most plumbing problems start with a conversation, not a wrench. He commits to asking what a homeowner actually wants and needs before recommending a fix, and to explaining the difference when the two don’t match.

Match the fix to the house. A repair that works in a newer build in Rohnert Park might be wrong for an older home near downtown Santa Rosa. D’Angelo commits to accounting for a home’s age and existing systems before proposing work, rather than defaulting to one approach.

Hold the line on quality even when it’s invisible. Some plumbing work is never seen once the wall goes back up. D’Angelo commits to doing that work to the same standard he’d use on something a customer could inspect.

Treat every mistake as information. D’Angelo says growth in the trade never stops, and that a job that goes wrong is a chance to get closer to doing it right. He commits to reviewing what didn’t work on a job rather than moving past it.

Why now

D’Angelo has spent the last several years rebuilding his business and taking his career more seriously than he has before. He describes his work and his personal life as connected rather than separate.

“There isn’t a lot of daylight between how I’m doing personally and how I show up on a job,” D’Angelo said. “Writing this down is part of taking the business as seriously as I say I do.”

He also credits the practice of tracking small, forward steps, rather than fixating on what hasn’t gone right, as part of what made him ready to put a standard on paper instead of just carrying it privately.

“I used to have a big negative bias,” D’Angelo said. “Now I try to track the small wins instead of missing them.”

What it means for customers

For homeowners in Santa Rosa and the surrounding Sonoma County area, the practical change is that the standard is no longer implicit. Customers can ask about any of the four commitments before or during a job, and D’Angelo says he expects to be held to them.

He is not attaching a certification or a guarantee program to the announcement. It is, by his own description, a personal commitment rather than a marketing claim.

“I set my own standards, and sometimes they’re too high,” D’Angelo said. “But I’d rather hold myself to something specific than just say I do good work and leave it at that.”

Avante’ Plumbing continues to serve residential customers in Santa Rosa and the surrounding Sonoma County area. More information is available through the company’s website.

To read more, visit the website here.

About Karl D’Angelo

Karl D’Angelo is the owner of Karl D’Angelo Plumbing, doing business as Avante’ Plumbing, based in Santa Rosa, California. He holds a C-36 plumbing contractor license from the State of California, earned in 2004 after an eight-year apprenticeship, along with a Certified Green Plumber designation and a CA Solar Initiative Thermal Contractor certification. D’Angelo has worked in the plumbing trade since 1996 and lives in Sonoma County.

• REI Accelerator, LLC is launching a public awareness campaign to help multifamily investors spot the warning signs of unsafe off-market sourcing before capital is committed.

Why this campaign, now

Georgia, USA, Sep 05, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — REI Accelerator works with investors who are trying to source apartment deals outside the open market. That work runs through virtual assistant teams doing cold calling and lead generation, plus capital raising support for investors building partner networks.

The company has seen a pattern across the investors it coaches. People rush toward off-market deals because they hear the phrase and assume it means a discount. It does not always mean that. It means the deal has not been tested by a broker process or public listing, and that carries its own risks if an investor does not know what to check.

“Off-market only sounds safer because fewer people have seen it,” said a company spokesperson for REI Accelerator. “The number of eyes on a deal is not the same thing as the quality of the deal. Investors need a way to tell the difference before they wire money.”

What the campaign covers

The campaign is built around three checkpoints REI Accelerator asks its coaching clients to run on any off-market apartment lead, whether it came from a VA calling campaign, a broker relationship, or a direct owner conversation.

Seller motivation. A real off-market opportunity usually has a specific reason the owner wants out: an estate situation, a partnership split, deferred maintenance the owner does not want to fund. Investors should ask why the property is not listed, and be cautious if the answer is vague.

Verified financials, not owner summaries. REI Accelerator tells investors to treat any owner-provided income statement as a starting point, not a source of truth. Rent rolls, actual bank deposits, and utility bills tell a more honest story than a one-page summary.

Independent underwriting. The company’s coaching model pushes investors to run their own numbers separate from whatever the seller or a wholesaler provides. If two independent underwriting passes land far apart, that gap is the warning sign, not the average of the two.

Who the campaign is for

The campaign targets two groups. The first is investors doing their own cold calling and direct-to-seller outreach who may not have a system for qualifying what comes back. The second is investors relying on virtual assistant teams for lead generation, where deal flow can increase quickly without a matching increase in vetting discipline.

REI Accelerator has built VA recruitment and management services specifically for this second group. The company’s position is that more leads without more structure just moves the risk earlier in the pipeline instead of removing it.

“A cold calling team can hand you ten leads a week,” the spokesperson said. “That is only useful if the investor behind those leads has a process for saying no fast to the nine that do not work.”

How the campaign will run

REI Accelerator plans to distribute the three checkpoints through its coaching program, its mastermind community, and public content aimed at investors researching multifamily strategy. The company is not charging for access to the checkpoints themselves. They are meant to function as a first filter, not a replacement for full underwriting.

The campaign also reflects a broader theme in the company’s coaching philosophy: speed without a checking system is not an advantage. REI Accelerator has built its programs around done-for-you services paired with accountability structure, on the reasoning that access to more deals only helps investors who can tell a good one from a bad one quickly.

The company plans to keep the campaign active as an ongoing part of its public education content rather than a single announcement, given how often new investors ask the same questions about off-market sourcing when they first start looking at apartment deals.

To read more, visit the website here.

About REI Accelerator, LLC

REI Accelerator, LLC is a real estate investing coaching and services company based in Columbus, Georgia. Co-founded by Jonathan Cronin and Larry Kite in 2022, the company works with investors pursuing multifamily and apartment deals through one-on-one coaching, capital raising support, off-market deal sourcing, and virtual assistant services for cold calling and lead management. REI Accelerator describes itself as a faith-based company built around accountability and execution for investors scaling their portfolios.

Texas, USA, Sep 05, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Max Mehta, a diagnostic radiologist serving hospitals across South Texas, is publishing a personal resilience framework designed to help healthcare professionals manage adversity without letting circumstances outside their control derail their well-being. The three-pillar system draws on principles from Stoic philosophy and the mental conditioning techniques used by Navy SEALs, combined with Mehta’s own experience navigating setbacks throughout his career.

The framework centers on three commitments: protect the mind, strengthen the body, and measure success by internal standards rather than external benchmarks. Mehta has refined these principles over years of practice at a number of regional hospitals in Texas, as well as during his earlier tenure with Advanced Diagnostics in Florida.

“A strong mind can overcome any obstacle,” Mehta says. “Stoicism has a fundamental tenet of not letting things beyond your control affect you. In addition, one must realize that the greatest weapon they have is their mind.”

Why Radiologists and Physicians Need a Different Yardstick

Mehta argues that many healthcare professionals burn out because they rely on metrics that fluctuate with external forces: patient volumes, reimbursement changes, administrative mandates, or peer comparisons. His framework flips that script.

“I use my own internal metric to define success,” he explains. “Success equals happiness. As long as you are happy, you are successful.”

That redefinition has practical implications. Instead of chasing promotions or accolades, Mehta’s short-term goals include continuing medical education to stay current and maintaining mental clarity. His long-term goals focus on physical health, particularly regular gym sessions. Both goals are entirely within his control, which makes them resilient to the chaos of modern healthcare delivery.

The Stoic Toolbox: Adversity as Training Ground

Mehta’s interest in Stoicism emerged during a period of significant professional adversity. Rather than let setbacks compound, he researched how ancient philosophers handled hardship and how elite military units build resilience into their training protocols.

“I have had much adversity,” Mehta says. “To overcome this, I researched Stoicism on how to handle adversity and become resilient. In addition, I researched how the Navy SEALs are trained to have a do-not-quit gene in their DNA despite facing significant hurdles.”

The resulting framework asks practitioners to separate what they can influence from what they cannot. Patient outcomes, reimbursement rates, and hospital politics often fall into the latter category. Diagnostic accuracy, continuing education, peer relationships, and personal health fall into the former. Mehta’s system directs energy exclusively toward the controllable column.

Building Community Networks for Long-Term Career Health

Mehta also emphasizes that resilience is not a solo endeavor. He credits community networking as a pillar of sustained career satisfaction, particularly in specialties like radiology where practitioners can feel isolated from the broader care team.

“Networking with people in the community is important to have a successful career,” he notes. “A balance between personal and professional success is essential to long-term satisfaction.”

His approach to networking mirrors his philosophy on success: it is grounded in availability, affability, and affordability. Those three qualities, Mehta argues, matter more than credentials or case volume when building relationships that endure through career transitions and market changes.

Growing up in Peoria, Illinois, Mehta developed an appreciation for Midwestern pragmatism that still shapes his practice. He attended Richwoods High School before earning his undergraduate and medical degrees from Boston University and Boston University School of Medicine. He completed his radiology residency at a Hospital in Santa Barbara, California, and pursued fellowship training at Baylor College of Medicine. Outside the hospital, he enjoys basketball, movies, music, dining out, walks, gym sessions, and a strong cup of coffee.

To read more, visit the website here.

About Max Mehta

Max Mehta is a diagnostic radiologist based in Austin, Texas, currently serving at a number of regional hospitals in Texas. He completed his radiology residency at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara and his fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine. A recipient of the Dale Etaugh Achievement Award, Mehta is active in the Radiological Society of North America and is known for his work in medical education and community networking.