Mr. Goodwin has been in the housing industry for over 35 years. He describes how he entered real estate, "n 1967, I suggested to three teachers that I had known from teaching, two of them went to school with me at Northeastern and one of them I met when I began teaching, that we should put our money together and buy an apartment building. And the only thing we could afford was a three flat not far from May School. Next, I got other teachers to invest their money with us. Our business continued to grow as many other teachers heard about what we were doing. In 1968, we were making money; so we decided to incorporate Inland Real Estate Corporation. And at that time, I was teaching during the day, working real estate at nights and on weekends and going to graduate school the other nights. By the time I had finished my master's degree, we had built up so much equity in the real estate, and we had hired people, so it became a point where I had to devote more and more time to real estate, which meant I eventually had to make a hard choice to leave teaching to work full-time in the real estate business."

Goodwin's companies continued to expand its operations in Florida, Arizona, and New England. Goodwin says, "As we expanded nationally, there were three major obstacles that we faced; in our early years, our main obstacle was really a question of financial survival until the business became profitable. The second biggest challenge was to deal with changes in the business such as tax reform in the 80’s, and still remain profitable. We gained an outstanding reputation in the industry because of our ability to make money. Our third challenge was learning how to deal with different types of investors. Our early investors were teachers at May School who were very hands on; they would look at the properties. Because of our reputation for making money, by the mid-70s, we were attracting more and more passive investors."

Goodwin adds, "I use many of my real estate skills to help with many educational pursuits." Mr. Goodwin is currently Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Benedictine University and Springfield College and Chairman of the Board of Northeastern Illinois University. Goodwin instituted a program to educate disabled students about the workplace. Most of those original students are employed at Inland today, and Inland continues as one of the largest employers of the disabled in DuPage County. He has won numerous awards including: Outstanding Trustee of the Decade Award Northeastern Illinois University -- Honorary Doctorate and President's Meritorious Service Award. He is also the coauthor of a nationally recognized real estate reference book for the management of residential properties titled: The Landlord's Handbook published by Dearborn Trade Publishing.