My name is Avi (pronounced AAH-vee) Zuber. I grew up in primarily in Boston, MA and came to Israel in 2005. I chose the word "came" in place of the "move" because at the time of my arrival in Israel, I really only had the intention of staying for a few months. At the time, I was greatly unaware of most of the beautiful aspects of my heritage. I began to study and after ten months, knew I needed more. I returned back to the States for the summer and flew back to Israel for another academic year. During this time was I simultaneously enrolled in a Liberal Arts program through SUNY's overseas program. My second year of study was followed by a third, this time at a different institution. During which time I married my high-school sweetheart, Hannah, and finished my degree. My marriage was, and is, going tremendously well, but everything else seemed to fall apart.

Before we got married I was set up with a career position at the very same institution in which I studied for those first two years. It was a quasi-administrative, quasi-educational position in which I would be educating and inspiring teenagers studying abroad for a year. I underwent life coach training to secure the position, during which time the institution faced grave financial difficulties and shut down.

At this time, I had just turned 21 years old. My wife, who was expecting our son at the time, was (and still is) a full time student in nursing school. So without a job and no real work history, facing a language barrier in a foreign country, I began to attempt to figure out how I was going to pay the bills. We received a tremendous amount of help and love from our parents, but as the US economy began fall in to recession, I felt that money from overseas would be short lived.

I decided to take my life coach training and use it to my advantage. I formed a mental health group along with three professionals. We needed a website, so I taught myself web design and low-level programming. I was contacted by a man named Nadav Reis who offered to re-build my website for free, since he was starting to pick up his web development service and wanted to spruce up his portfolio. I turned down his offer, but began to explore exactly what it was he was doing. To make a long story short(er), this lead me in to the world of graphic design and web development.

At this time I formed my first company, BSDinc (BSD stands for an Aramaic phrase b'siyata Dishmaya and has no relation to BSD). The company served as a platform for my various projects. I had the life coaching business, a couple of social networks, a graphic and web studio, and a full time job doing grunt work in an office while I waited for the money to start flowing in. BSDinc made the news and for the first time I saw the word "entrepreneur" printed next to my name. I really had no clue what that meant, or would mean, at the time. I won't bore you with the details of my BSDinc plan, but I will say it took me close to a year to find out that it's much better to do one project really well than 20 projects halfheartedly.

A successful CEO named Richard Kligman offered me free advice and began showing me the ropes of the entrepreneurial world. He gave me a couple of projects to work on, which resulted in great failure and a tremendous learning experience on my part. Looking back, I began to realize that I had been an "entrepreneur" all along. From my earliest summer jobs as a kid, throughout high school, and during my higher educational career, I always had to be doing something productive and innovative or I would immediately begin hating my position. When I worked in a resturant, I spent most of my time figuring out how to make the place look nicer and how to draw in more customers - they were only paying me to take people's orders, which is possibly why I was promoted to a managerial position shortly after beginning work. When I was enrolled as a student, I would approach the administration with various projects i felt would value the student body and formed a cleaning company to keep my fellow students and I occupied and employed in between semesters.

I now have a growing company called DeskElf. I developed DeskElf as a reliable alternative to conventional outsourcing. I developed DeskElf so I can employ people who enjoy doing data entry, graphic design and web development. I developed DeskElf because after a couple of years of failure (and a tremendous build up of gratitude for a superbly supportive wife) I've discovered that I don't do well doing 9-5, cubicle work, but I do very well developing ideas, bringing dreams in to reality and making production happen.

Today is my 23rd birthday (I celebrate the Hebrew calendar date) and I am proud to say that I am thankful to God, my wife, my parents, my in-laws and the rest of my friends and family for helping me become a successful CEO, a loving husband and father, and a passionate entrepreneur.

Thank, Brock Predovich (founder of this blog) for the opportunity to share my story.