Beyond the Bottom Line

Beyond the Bottom Line is a podcast for founders and business owners who want practical insight they can actually use as they grow. Hosted by Miguel Alexander Centeno, founder and CEO of Centurion Firm, the show features in-depth conversations with industry experts, clients, and business owners about how they think through tax, cash flow, operations, and the decisions that come with running a real business. We focus on how things really work when you’re scaling, what challenges tend to come up, and how other founders, experts, and operators have dealt with them. If you’re building or growing a business (often somewhere between $500K and $25M+ in revenue), this show is designed to help you make smarter financial and operational decisions and keep more of what you earn.

Beyond the Bottom Line is a business podcast hosted by Miguel Alexander Centeno, with 38 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Miguel Alexander Centeno hosts Beyond the Bottom Line, a business show with 38 episodes published.

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  Episode #33

  Find Your Niche and Dominate It: Building Happy Path with Noah Bortz

  Sep 29, 202643 minS1

  Testing the Untestable: Building Happy Path with Noah Bortz Long before he was automating enterprise software testing, Noah Bortz was selling herbal cigarettes in high school, building a catering-scheduling platform that launched three months before COVID, and learning, the hard way, what it means to find a problem that's actually big enough to build a company around. On this episode of Beyond the Bottom Line , Miguel sits down with Noah, co-founder of Happy Path, an AI-powered platform that automates software testing for complex enterprise implementations like Workday. Noah walks through the winding path that got him here: growing up in a family where entrepreneurship was "pervasive, maybe even contagious," the release-hell problem he lived through in trading that inspired Happy Path, and the strategic decision to go all-in on one niche instead of chasing every market his team's collective experience could have opened up. The conversation goes deep on what it actually takes to build an AI company right now, why "we slapped AI on it" isn't a strategy, how Happy Path keeps costs down by not always reaching for the newest, most expensive model, and why Noah believes the founders who win in an AI-saturated world will be the ones who pick up the phone instead of hiding behind another automated email. He also gets candid about choosing co-founders (find people who complement your weaknesses, not just your friends), the paradox of needing total confidence externally while staying honest about what you're bad at internally, and why patience, not building, has been the hardest skill of his founder journey. In this episode: Why Noah's early ventures (including one before COVID) taught him to validate market size, not just the problem The "release hell" story from his trading days that became the idea behind Happy Path Why AI companies keep failing at "knowing what to build and why" How Happy Path keeps AI costs low while staying accurate enough for QA What makes a strong co-founder match (hint: it's not just friendship) Why in-person relationships and old-school sales skills matter more, not less, in the AI era About Our Guest Noah Bortz is the co-founder of Happy Path , an AI-powered software testing platform that helps companies automate and improve how they test complex enterprise software implementations, with an initial focus on Workday. Before Happy Path, Noah spent over eight years across product management and operations, including time in trading and consulting, giving him firsthand experience with the challenges of implementing and testing complex technology. Learn more about Happy Path at happypath.io. Connect with Miguel Connect with Miguel on LinkedIn or reach out at media@centurionfirm.com .

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  Episode #28

  Minisode: On Burnout, Bad Predictions, and Starting Over (R)

  Sep 22, 202611 minS1

  In this episode of Under the Hood, Daniela turns the interview around and puts Miguel in the hot seat. They get into what burnout actually looks like for him, not too much work, but doing the wrong things at the wrong time of day, and how structuring his schedule around his own energy, rather than just pushing through, changed how he leads the team. Miguel also reflects on a prediction that didn't pan out, the assumption that clients needed custom-built software rather than accessible AI tools, and what he'd do differently if he were starting the firm today. The conversation moves through leadership, presence, and the moments early in a business that end up mattering more in hindsight than they seemed to at the time.

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  Episode #31

  Why In-Person Events Are the New Marketing Channel, with Sharon Melzer

  Sep 15, 202633 minS1

  Every founder's inbox is drowning in AI-generated outreach. So where's left to actually reach people? In this episode, Miguel talks with Sharon Melzer, co-founder of Venue Hopper, a targeted event marketing company that connects tech companies to communities in New York City. Sharon is also a content creator and marketer currently finishing her degree at NYU, sharing her take on entrepreneurship, AI, and personal branding along the way. For any founder rethinking where their marketing dollars actually work anymore, this conversation makes the case for real-world connection at a moment when digital channels are more saturated than ever. Sharon walks through why she believes in-person events are becoming one of the few channels that can't easily be automated or spammed, what actually makes an event worth someone's time (hint: it's not the open bar), and the mistake founders make when they name and design events without thinking about who they actually want in the room. The conversation also gets into the reality of building a company as a first-time founder: how Sharon evaluated whether her co-founder was the right fit, the pivot Venue Hopper made from event logistics to sponsor connections, and why letting go of past progress is often the hardest part of changing direction. Sharon and Miguel also talk candidly about the founder tension between staying "always on" and protecting personal boundaries, and where she sees human connection heading as AI reshapes how people work and communicate. Other insights from this episode include: Why Sharon believes IRL events are one of the last channels that can't be easily saturated What actually makes an event format work: curation, agenda, and designing for connection The no-show problem at public events, and a simple fix that can meaningfully raise turnout How to know if a co-founder is the right fit (hint: coffee chats won't tell you) The difference between a small pivot and the kind that sends you back to square one Why Sharon thinks the loneliness epidemic is driving renewed demand for in-person community How founders across generations experience the pull between connection and constant availability Sharon's honest take on where AI helps, where it doesn't, and what stays uniquely human About Our Guest Sharon Melzer is the co-founder of Venue Hopper, a targeted event marketing company connecting tech companies to communities in New York City. She's also a content creator and marketer, currently completing her degree at NYU, where she shares her perspective on entrepreneurship, marketing, AI, and personal branding. Connect with Sharon on LinkedIn. Connect with Miguel on LinkedIn or media@centurionfirm.com

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  Beyond the Bottom Line

  Minisode: Career Paths, Productivity, and Life Behind the Scenes at the Firm

  Sep 8, 20269 min

  Behind the Bookkeeping In this Under the Hood minisode, Miguel sits down with Renee and Maria, two of the people quietly keeping the firm's client work running behind the scenes. Renee, who's stepping from client success and project management into an operations role, and Maria, an accountant managing the full accounting cycle for clients, talk through what a real day looks like, from Renee's early-morning quiet hours before the rest of the team logs on, to Maria's steady afternoon stretch once the meetings finally clear. The conversation turns personal as they trace how they each landed here. Neither planned on accounting, Renee came from hospitality and a communications degree, Maria failed her first accounting class before ever imagining she'd earn a CPA and both found the firm almost by accident, through a stray job listing and a cold email that wasn't supposed to lead anywhere. What was meant to be temporary for both of them turned into years. It's a reminder that behind every client relationship is a team figuring things out one day at a time and that some of the best career paths are the ones nobody plans.

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  Episode #27

  The $100 Website That Led to a Fintech Company: Inside Aloha with Rodrigo Romero

  Aug 18, 202634 minS1

  What happens when a self-taught 14-year-old hacker from the Dominican Republic grows up to rebuild the payments infrastructure for an entire industry? On this episode of Beyond the Bottom Line , Miguel sits down with Rodrigo Romero, founder and CEO of Aloha, a Miami-based fintech company building the banking and payments infrastructure powering the future of travel across the Americas. Rodrigo's path started far from fintech, building his first $100 websites in Yahoo Chat rooms, landing a $2,000 client at 14 without knowing how to build what he'd just sold, and eventually co-founding Aloha with Jorge Dupri after Jorge's own boutique hotels kept losing bookings to cross-border payment friction. What began as a software play quickly became something bigger: a platform solving the real problem underneath it, moving money seamlessly across countries and currencies for travel and hospitality businesses. In this conversation, Rodrigo breaks down why travel is one of the least "tech-touched" industries around, how Aloha protects both merchants and travelers from fraud and chargebacks, and why compliance can never be an afterthought in fintech. He also gets candid about the hardest pivot of his company's life, when the software layer they built to bootstrap the business started outgrowing the payments business it was meant to support and how he uses AI agents (not chatbots) to run reconciliation, investor outreach, and even serve as a sparring partner for his own blind spots. In this episode: How a Packard Bell computer and a printed HTML manual sparked a fintech career Why "just get a customer" beats perfecting your product The real problem Aloha solves: payments, not just software How Argentina's currency tax changes are reshaping cross-border travel spending Using closed-loop AI agents instead of prompt-and-wait AI Why onboarding is a non-negotiable leadership principle What to look for in a co-founder (hint: not someone just like you) About Our Guest Rodrigo Romero is the founder and CEO of Aloha, a Miami-based fintech company building the payments and banking infrastructure powering the future of travel across the Americas. Alongside co-founder Jorge Dupri, he founded Aloha to help travel and hospitality businesses simplify cross-border payments, access local banking services, and move money seamlessly across countries and currencies. Learn more about Aloha, or connect with Rodrigo on LinkedIn . Connect with Miguel Connect with Miguel on LinkedIn or reach out at media@centurionfirm.com .

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