“One dollar.” I smiled with satisfaction as I handed my friend a can of soda and hid the money he gave me in my shoe. It was at summer camp, when I was thirteen years old, that I discovered the “Law of Supply and Demand” and created a system that quadrupled my money in a matter of days. I wasn’t taking advantage of my friends, but rather following basic financial principles–on a summer camp scale.

The “Black Market,” as it was called, had the unit heads baffled. At the beginning of summer, our parents contributed a small amount of money for camp extras. When my camp counselor said he would be going out that night, and asked if we wanted anything, I began to think about my friends, who continuously complained about the heat in the middle of summertime. I finally said, “Would you go to Walmart and buy me a 12 pack of soda?” What cost me less than a quarter per can, I was able to sell to my friends for a dollar each. By the end of the camp session, I had earned a profit of about fifty dollars.

Fast forward to junior year and I was sitting in accounting class. Everyone was nearly asleep; however, I was fascinated by what was being taught. After the lesson my accounting teacher said, “Ok, everyone go to the computers and work on the application problem.” I sat down in my seat, remembering the lecture and how it just–by instinct–made sense to me. The assignment was worth a test grade, and as I stared at the blank balance sheet on my screen, I smiled with excitement. I began typing, and in less than two minutes all I heard around me was “How do you do this?” or “Is this thing possible?” I continued working, trying to block out the chaos. It reached a new level when people would start calling my name, rather than the teacher’s, for help. Every few seconds I heard, “Jonathan, Jonathan can you help me please, please?” I was desperately attempting to disregard everything else but my own work. Twenty minutes had elapsed and I was just about finished. My neighbors barely had the first column completed and I couldn’t figure out why they couldn’t understand the assignment. I submitted my completed work and walked up to my teacher’s desk to return a calculator. “Done already?” she asked in surprise. “Yep, it wasn’t too bad,” I said. I walked back to my seat and saw a score of 200 out of 200! That was just the beginning of my fascination with accounting.

So, I must confess, I loved studying Accounting I and II, and relished sifting through the holy trilogy of financial statements–the balance sheet, the income statement, and the cash flow statement. I learned about each of these terms, and how they interact with one another to indicate the financial health of a business. I am not sure what the general ledger of my life will be, but I do know that the nuances of entrepreneurship, business, and numbers are my assets.