$3,000 and a new country.
I was born in Romania a few years before the fall of communism, and in 1997 my family immigrated to Chicago with $3,000 and the belief that hard work still meant something. Entrepreneurship was never a career choice for me, it was a family trait, so at 18 I started my first business. It failed on cash flow, but the lesson stuck, and after a stint in banking I moved into accounting and consulting in 2014. Over the next few years I earned a string of recognitions, including two Gwinnett Pinnacle Awards and an EY Young Entrepreneur of the Year Southeast semi-final nod, and was inducted into the Forbes Finance Council. After a year of travel and study I passed the CPA exam in 2018 and earned both my CPA and CMA in 2019, the same year I founded Centaur Digital Corp, the virtual-first, strategy-led, flat-fee firm I would have wanted as a business owner myself. Today I lead Centaur from Jacksonville and Gilbert, serving clients across the country, and write regularly for Forbes and Entrepreneur on tax strategy and the realities of running a small business.