The Extraordinary Journey of a Young Finance Man

“I was out of college and couldn’t find a career that I enjoyed,” Otar said. “I tried the restaurant business where I worked as bus boy, waiter, and then manager. I tried medical school.”

When Otar was a med student, his brother, a stockbroker, began to talk to him about an up-and-coming industry called alternative lending. After reluctantly agreeing to meet his brother’s colleague who owned a funding company, Otar began working part-time at his brother’s apartment, setting appointments and doing various pre-call activities.

“My brother had to drag me to this meeting [with the lender],” Otar said. “At the time, he was considering going into [alternative lending] and wanted to try it out. We had always worked well together. So I set the appointments, he closed the deals, and we split the commissions. I was simultaneously helping my brother and learning a trade.”

Within a first week of working together, the brothers closed their first deal, netting Otar $1,000. It didn’t take long for Otar to want an expanded role in the funding process and a bigger piece of the pie. After a year of working his own UCC leads from home, Otar was offered a partner position with a cash advance company, an attractive package with salary, commission and benefits.

Working in a senior role at a leading cash advance company gave Otar a broader view of the industry, an improved tolerance for risk, and a solid foundation for his subsequent success as an entrepreneur. With one and a half years of experience as an executive manager under his belt, Otar and a partner broke away and started their own company, working out of Otar’s mother’s basement. Otar described the early days as a democratic arrangement between friends — days of closing, borrowing, and “calling, calling, calling.” A year later, the partners were funding an average of $2 million to $3 million in revenue per month.

Otar described his career as a rags-to-riches story with a real-life happy ending. He will never forget what it felt like to earn his first commission check or to find himself in his early 20s with a six-figure annual income. Most importantly, Otar, a self-described eternal optimist and four-time cancer survivor, is grateful to be alive.

After being diagnosed at 17 with testicular cancer and surviving multiple operations to become cancer free, Otar launched Campaign for Life Interrupted, promoting his cause on the talk show circuit. He also shared his story in the anthology “And We Write: Surviving Cancer; Let the Healing Begin”, donating all proceeds from book sales to cancer research. (By: Dale Laszig,dailyfunder.com, September-October 2014 issue)