@Mindy Jensen I'm so blown away by the helpfulness and generosity of the BP community - that's the biggest take away for me, besides all the great advise and encouragement. I'm glad I asked here first before taking that leap - yikes! I gather from all the great responses that this subject may have come up before. But as I've said, this investor has 40 years of experience and is a highly respected member of BP - he's done a couple podcasts, etc. I've never come across anything negative about him. So given how great this community is, it was easy to believe him.
In retrospect, I'm not even sure what happened was ethical. I replied to a post Jeff Brown made, asking for clarification of his post. Next thing I know, someone emails me to set up a "conversation". During this "conversation" a lot of personal financial information was obtained. Then at the end came the pitch for the note investing - how it's in our best interest because a better return without the headaches, too many candles on our birthday cakes, etc. So you could say his post was actually trolling for business.