At the beginning of his career, Mr. Sinclair served as a naval officer with two tours of duty in Vietnam. He earned BA and JD degrees from the University of Michigan and then practiced law in Detroit, Michigan, and Grand Junction, Colorado, before making a career change to commercial investment real estate in 1977. He earned a Certificate of Achievement in Real Estate from the University of Colorado. In 1978 the Commercial Investment Real Estate Institute awarded him the Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM) designation. In Grand Junction, Mr. Sinclair under the firm name Sinclair & Associates was active in commercial investment real estate brokerage, real estate development, real estate securities offerings, and was the city's largest real estate property management company. In Grand Junction he was also a business advisor for four years to Lewis & Clark, Ltd., a local retail backpacking shop.

In 1984 he left Colorado to work for First International Equities of Houston, Inc. on a consulting basis to do acquisitions and acquisitions consulting for the firm's clients, primarily national syndicators. In 1985 Mr. Sinclair and other members of the firm became the in-house acquisitions staff for Cal Fed Syndications (a subsidiary of California Federal Bank, Los Angeles, the third largest Savings & Loan in the US) as consultants. Subsequently, Cal Fed employed Mr. Sinclair to cover an acquisitions territory of ten metropolitan areas. During this period he acquired $100 million of income property and analyzed and evaluated an additional $500 million of income property for Cal Fed.

In 1987 he founded the real estate consulting firm of Sinclair & Associates in Denver. In 1988 he moved the firm to the San Francisco Bay Area. Mr. Sinclair has written numerous journal articles on investment real estate topics. Articles include "What If Logic Assays Income Properties," Federal Home Loan Bank Board Journal, and "When Do the Numbers Work? A Guide to Estimating Condominium Rehabs," Commercial Investment Real Estate Journal. He has taught numerous real estate seminars on such topics as discounted cash flow analysis, loan packaging, feasibility studies, real estate investment analysis, real estate financial structuring; and he is a former member of the national faculty of the Commercial Investment Real Estate Institute. Mr. Sinclair taught graduate courses in investment real estate in the School of Finance at Golden Gate University in San Francisco and undergraduate courses at San Jose State University.

He was also a senior consultant and a member of the board of directors for Financial International Corporation in Durango, Colorado, a firm which contracted with the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to provide real estate and other related financial services nationwide on real estate assets in excess of $600 million.

Mr. Sinclair's book on real estate investment analysis Real Numbers was published by Business One Irwin in winter 1993. The entire book covers only investment real estate analysis and covers it more completely than any other book in print.

After publishing his first book on a real estate topic, Mr. Sinclair turned his interest to digital technology topics. His qualifications to write high tech books and teach high tech seminars are as an expert computer user (not as a computer programmer). He started using personal computers in business in 1981. In 1981 he co-authored a real estate investment analysis program and in the late 1980s was a beta tester for Javelin Plus, a financial analysis program. He started using digital multimedia authoring programs in 1992, created digital presentation products for business, and became an expert in text-based digital multimedia authoring. An experienced photographer, he first used Kodak's Photo CD film digitizing service in 1992. In 1993 he began a transition from real estate consulting to writing about digital technology.

He became a member of the board of directors of the North Bay Multimedia Association (NBMA - San Francisco Bay Area) and chairman of the NBMA Education Committee in 1993. He founded and was chairman of the NBMA Internet Special Interest Group 1994-98. He was a member of the Multimedia Curriculum Advisory Committee to the College of Marin in 1994 when it started its digital multimedia program, the first for a community college in California. He also taught courses in the College of Marin's extension multimedia program.

In October 1994 he established the first gourmet food store on the Web and also a commercial real estate center. He has been an expert in HTML authoring since the summer of 1994. In 1994-96 he gave seminars about doing business on the Internet for the Digital Village, a joint venture between the Digital Village Foundation and the College of Marin.

He also headed the NBMA Web-based training (WBT) experiment which conducted seminars for tuition over the Internet in 1996. He has written numerous articles on computers and digital multimedia for professional periodicals and was a long-term contributing editor for the Multimedia Reporter, a multimedia industry periodical published previously in print and subsequently on the Internet. He also gave seminars on various digital topics at digital industry trade shows such as Internet World and Web99. He decided to write a book about eBay after attending eBay's third birthday party in San Jose in September 1998 with one of his ecommerce clients who was one of eBay's highest volume sellers.

His books have been published by various publishers:

eBay the Smart Way Fourth Edition, 2005, AMACOM

eBay Business the Smart Way, Second Edition, 2004, AMACOM

eBay Motors the Smart Way, co-author Don Spillane, 2004, AMACOM

eBay Global the Smart Way, co-author Ron Ubels, 2004, AMACOM

Building Your eBay Traffic the Smart Way, 2005, AMACOM

eBay Photography the Smart Way, co-author Stanley Livingston, 2005, AMACOM

Creating Web-Based Training, 2001, AMACOM

Web Pages the Smart Way, 2000, AMACOM

Thin Clients Clearly Explained, 1999, Morgan Kaufmann

Typography on the Web, 1998, AP Professional

Developing Web Pages with TV HTML, 1998, Charles River Media

Java Web Magic, 1996, Hayden

Intranet v. Lotus Notes, 1996, AP Professional

Creating Cool Web Databases, 1996, IDG

Real Numbers, 1993, Business One Irwin

In 1998 Mr. Sinclair and 14 others founded the Mare Island Technology Academy, a California charter middle-high school. He served as chairman of the school's Technology Committee managing the school's digital technology development. He provided pro bono legal, journalism, real estate, financial, management, and digital technology services to the school. In 2002 the school finished building a new campus on 15 acres and now has 650 students in grades 6 through 12. It has received over $3,000,000 in seven high tech grants and has a state-of-the-art computer network connecting about 700 PCs. MIT Academy is one of five official high tech high schools in California. In 2005 MIT Academy was named a California Distinguished School, an award annually made to the top high schools in the state. In addition, the school was awarded for having an Exemplary Career Technical Education Program, another award given only to the top high schools in the state. For three semesters Mr. Sinclair taught a Web development course at Solano Community College primarily for the charter school students.

Mr. Sinclair does occasional consulting on ecommerce and other Internet technologies under the firm name Sinclair & Associates. He operated TimeShare.com for four years, a website that provided an aftermarket for resort timeshares with over 11,000 timeshare listings. He sold the website in 2004 to a major corporation, a timeshare developer. He continues to write books with a current emphasis on eBay, a subject to which he brings 30 years of small business experience and 24 years of personal computer experience.

He authors and edits the Smart Way series of eBay books for the American Management Association's publishing company AMACOM. He also writes occasional periodical articles about eBay. He attends all the eBay Live conferences, and each year he interviews dozens of eBay Power Sellers and other eBay sellers, dozens of eBay staff, dozens of leading experts on topics related to eBay operations, dozens of eBay vendors, and also provides eBay consulting to select clients. Although not an eBay retailer, he sells personal and business items on eBay occasionally (including cars). He makes about one-fourth (in dollars) of all personal, family, and business purchases (not including groceries) on eBay, one-fourth on Google-Froogle, one-fourth on Craig's List, and one-fourth in local retail. In addition, he has purchased several cars on eBay. He also makes eBay bulk and individual purchases occasionally for local organizations (e.g., over $35,000 of equipment and supplies for his charter school). He has broadcast on over 130 radio shows and several television shows to promote his eBay books.

Note that Mr. Sinclair is not affiliated with eBay nor does he own stock in eBay. His reporting on eBay is objective and now extends to other online marketplaces of significance to eBay retailers such as Google-Froogle and Craig's List.

By the end of 2005, Mr. Sinclair hopes to build and dress up his new website BaysideBusiness as an online information center for eBay retailers.

For recreation, Mr. Sinclair treks into canyons in Utah and Arizona and climbs mountains in Colorado and California. He is also a regular hiker in the Bay Area and has recently taken up sea kayaking. He has also taken a renewed interest in photography and uses digital cameras, Adobe Photoshop, and other professional software and equipment both for recreation and for his selling on eBay.