I grew up the child of immigrant parents who ran restaurants. Through a child’s perspective, I experienced firsthand the highs and lows of business ownership through both my parents. After they had divorced, each operated a separate restaurant location, and I learned the difference in how a mixture of risk appetite and persistence can have on a person’s financial goals and outlook.

My father went on to open more locations on his own and experienced years of increasing income. Just as quickly, he experienced years of declining business. It didn’t help that an IRS audit of his business tax filings had him pay significant back taxes that ended up shutting down what was left of his restaurant empire. That led to a stretch of years that saw him saving money and eventually being able to open another restaurant after taking an equity loan against his primary residence. Once again, he was back on his horse and leveraging his available assets to open up more locations.

My mother was the opposite in temperament and kept busy operating the one location and raising my siblings and I. Through her, I learned what it meant to be financially conservative and how to broaden risk exposure. Instead of continuing to pour more money into her business, she expanded her real estate portfolio. By the time I was in college, she had bought a rental property for me and my best friend to live in. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was “house hacking” on her behalf by renting out the different rooms in the house to other people. Now she holds multiple properties and isn’t completely dependent on the well-being of her restaurant.

With the experience and education I’ve received, I learned how much of a disservice my parents received from the accounting and tax preparers they’ve used all these years. They not only paid unnecessarily high tax bills and penalties due to a lack of understanding of entity structuring, timing, and goal setting, but they also butchered books and tax returns that led to the IRS audit in the first place. Unfortunately, most accounting shops operate with the intention of getting you in and out as fast as possible which lead to these sorts of issues. My goal is to offer white-glove service for each client that works with me.

My experience spans from working for global accounting firms that handle multi-national corporations, regional firms that hold large portfolios of commercial real estate, to small office firms that handle the books and tax filings of individuals and their various businesses and real estate holdings. As a business owner and real estate investor myself, I understand not only the need for but also the benefit of quality CPA services.