Carl Szasz

Meet Carl Szasz

I was originally born in Romania, an eastern European country in the early 1980’s. At the time, the country was communist and there were no companies. My father worked at the Ministry of Telecommunications where he ran the country’s phone systems and my mother had an un-authorized business fixing broken TV’s for a living. When I was 6 years old, my parents fled the country and immigrated to Germany. Due to the danger of leaving and the fear of imprisonment, my parents left my brother and I with my grandparents. For the next 2 years they worked and saved enough money to have us smuggled out of the country. Eventually we were reunited and traveled all over Europe for 2 years, but spent most of our time living in a southern German town called Knostantz near the Swiss border.

In 1990 we were accepted and came to the United States. As a young boy in elementary school, my life was pretty uneventful until my parents encouraged me to skip a grade. Given that we had moved around so much when I was a child, I was constantly forced to learn new languages and as a result I wasn’t very good at English. I was only good at math; the universal language. My father and I studied for the SAT’s and took all the practice exams. At the end of my 6th grade year, I took and passed the math section of the SAT’s with a perfect score. This allowed me to skip a few grades and do 10th grade Geometry when I was in 7th grade. During the summer I went to a math camp at Oakland University where I was the youngest student admitted at age 13. The two college courses allowed me to expand my horizons into math topics such as number theory and differential equations. This is when I first began to understand patterns and the compounding effect high interest could play in the growth of numbers.

That summer, I took my life savings of $2,225 and bought my first stock; Clearworks Technologies. I didn’t know much about Clearworks line of business other than the fact that they produced fiber optic cables that allowed for transmission of data at much greater speeds than copper wire. What attracted me to Clearworks was that it was a rolling stock who’s price seemed to fluctuate between $2 and $6 per share. I would buy at $3 and sell at $5 every chance I got. This methodical unemotional approach allowed me to take my $2225 and get it to over $20,000 within a period of 3 years. In late 1999 at the height of the tech bubble, my father and brother, who were both investing in stocks, had bought into my strategy but held the stock beyond my $5 a share sell price. I sold my Clearworks stock at $5 a share like I had always done, and was kicking myself when I watched the company’s stock go to over $13 per share. Despite the fact that my decision to sell looked pre-mature, my father and brother never ended up selling and watched the stock go to $0.50 in less than 3 months. This experience was the first time when I began thinking about becoming a financial advisor. More importantly, I had learned that having a good strategy is the difference between a predictable and desirable outcome, and an outcome driven by luck.

During my high school years, I spent a lot of time after school taking math classes at Oakland University. Once I graduated from high school, I had amassed 47 college credits, enough to allow me to graduate from Michigan State in 2 years. Michigan State is where I met my wife Melissa to whom I have been married to for 4 years now. She was the best experiences I took away from my college years. Right after college I began working at American Express Financial Advisors in Troy, MI. Ameriprise (as it is now called) had an excellent training program where I was able learn how to acquire and service clients. After spending around 2 and half years as an employee of Ameriprise, I took on the added responsibility of franchising out in 2007. In addition to a greater degree of freedom, this taught me a great deal about running a business, managing staff, and building a growth company. In the middle of 2008, I took another step in declaring my independence by fully separating from Ameriprise. On June 6th 2008, I took my clients, and along with the help of Ann Marie and Tommi, started Verde Capital Management. Unlike my work at Ameriprise, with Verde I have been able specialize and focus on the most important thing I do which is managing and growing my clients’ money. Today, most of my time is spent with clients simplifying their lives through a sound investment plan that allows them the confidence to know that their goals are achievable and on track.