I rang up my first sale at the age of five when I was turning my baseball card collection into an after-school business on the sidewalk of West Hartford Center. Once I learned how to market myself and negotiated the sale of my first collector's card for a big profit, I was hooked. When school got out in June, I moved to my grandparents' house at Crescent Beach for the summer. So, I switched from baseball card superstar to selling baits to all of the local tackle shops. The bait business was all profits, but it required me to catch the bait by hand. The harder I worked, the more my business grew. This is how I paid for my extravagant Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle collection. I look back at my early days and realize that I am still the same person: passionate about business, driven by the potential for success, resourceful, intelligent, and social. I was always the idea guy, always in the brainstorming mindset. I loved the challenge of creating profits with limited resources. This love for growing a business is what motivated me to co-found Brooklyn Taco. In 2009, I join the movement of Food entrepreneurs in New York. In just four months, with 35K and a three-person team, we created a successful business concept with a strong brand identity. Attractive branding, product quality, customer service, growth-hacker marketing techniques and a knowledgeable management team helped Brooklyn Taco become one of NYC's most awarded and followed Taco brands. The long journey from conceptualizing the business to our first corporate event with the Daily Show, where I told jokes to Jon Stewart, was nothing short of amazing. The most important lesson in my experience as a co-founder was that brand experience is extremely complex and it takes place across several touchpoints. My true passion is in strategizing ways to drive company growth through seamless integration of a digital media strategy, brand messaging and an engaging customer experience.