How Yuri Kapilovich, CPA, Brings His Fun Personality to Accounting

There are people who stumble into their destinies as if led by a thread of fate.

Yuri Kapilovich is one of them.

Not because he plotted out each milestone with ironic mathematical precision for a CPA but because he dared to be wholly himself in a world that often prizes conformity.

And the world noticed.

You may know him as #TheFunCPA, Managing Partner of Kapilovich & Associates, LLC, the smiling face on your LinkedIn feed, waxing poetic about taxes, clients, and life.

Financial Cents recently spoke with him, and what followed was not an interview but the kind that wanders freely through memory, pausing at stories long buried and laughter that rises without warning.

The Immigrant Who Became a Bridge

Long before the moniker #TheFunCPA appeared in hashtags or conference booths, there was just Yuri. A boy born in Belarus, in the quiet expanse of Minsk.

When his family left, he was still small. First, they went to Israel and stayed there for almost 12 years. Then came America.

But America, for all its promises, doesn’t make arrival easy.

They moved to Pennsylvania, then New Jersey, and finally, Yuri made a solo leap to Florida. With every move, Yuri learned how to read a room and how to talk to anyone without losing himself in the conversation.

“It made me extroverted,” he said. “When you’re always the new kid, you learn to connect or disappear.”

But Yuri didn’t disappear. He showed up.

He would talk to strangers on buses, in cafes, or the backseat of a cab because, for him, people were stories waiting to be told. Perhaps that was his first real gift: not just numbers but connection.

It’s almost poetic, then, that his path to accounting wasn’t carved by ambition but by accident.

He had wanted finance, but a professor’s clerical error—a mistaken grade—derailed his plans. His GPA dipped, and application was denied. And finance, that glittering goal, slipped from his hands.

“I couldn’t even get into the business school,” he said. “The doors closed before I could knock.”

By the time the mistake was corrected, it was too late. Finance was full. “What’s next?” he asked. Someone said accounting. And so, he went.

But sometimes, the detour is the destination.

What began as a backup plan became a calling.

The Bus Ride That Sparked a Movement

It didn’t start in a boardroom or a strategy meeting with whiteboards and brand experts.

It began on a bus.

Yuri was commuting from New Jersey to Manhattan, an ordinary routine that often passed in a haze.

On one such day in September 2021, as the bus rumbled over the Hudson, Yuri almost absently reached for his phone.

There was no plan or agenda.

“I just started posting,” he said. “No brand in mind. No niche. Just thoughts.”

They were raw, unscripted, and often funny. He called them “bus thoughts.” Fragments of musings, sometimes on taxes, sometimes on life, often both, spilled out between jolts of traffic. He wasn’t chasing followers. He was searching for expression, perhaps even connection.

Later, those posts followed him to the trails, “trail thoughts” now, shared while biking under the open sky, wind pressing against his cheeks like a secret he was almost ready to tell. And one day, in a moment that felt more instinct than intention, he typed three words beneath one of those posts:

#TheFunCPA

He hadn’t known then what he’d done. There was no trumpet sound, no lightning strike. Just the quiet tap of a hashtag that would soon become a movement.

“I didn’t even know what it meant,” Yuri recalled, half laughing. “I just knew it felt true.”

But the world has a way of responding when you’re brave enough to be yourself.

Weeks later, Yuri was invited to a high-end lifestyle event; a place where the words fun and CPA rarely belonged in the same sentence, let alone the same booth.

He brought a sign: white background, bold font: #TheFunCPA.

“Some read it as The Funk Pa,” he said, amusement crinkling at the edge of his eyes. “They couldn’t process the phrase because the idea of a ‘fun CPA’ just didn’t register.”

But Yuri smiled, and he stayed. He became, for many, the first CPA who made them laugh before he filed their taxes.

And in that moment, surrounded by opulence and skepticism, Yuri understood something profound: When you say something so new, so wildly out of place, people won’t get it right away. But that’s how you know it matters.

From there, the hashtag became a banner. The banner became a brand. The brand became a belief that joy and accounting are not mutually exclusive.

The Heart That Saw Too Much to Take Taxes Too Seriously

Some moments reshape you.

For Yuri Kapilovich, one such moment happened in the flashing lights of an ambulance, the pulse of urgency in someone else’s pain.

He was a teenager, still unsure, still forming, when a friend invited him on a ride-along with the EMT service. It sounded thrilling. A break from the monotony of school. But when he stepped into the back of that ambulance, something shifted.

“I loved it,” he said, voice soft with memory. “And I stayed for sixteen years.”

For over a decade, Yuri volunteered as an EMT. He saw grief raw and unfiltered. He held strangers’ hands in their worst hours.

It was life: unscripted, unpolished, and unforgiving.

And it gave him a rare gift: perspective.

So when he entered the world of accounting, with its endless numbers and inflated pressures, Yuri carried that perspective like a compass.

“They told me taxes were serious,” he recalled. “But I couldn’t believe them.”

At the big firms, seriousness was a uniform, ironed suit, hushed urgency, and long hours lit by fluorescent bulbs. There were rules. There was structure. But there was very little soul.

“They’d get mad if you left at five. Like… how dare you,” he said, laughter tucked beneath his disbelief.

Still, Yuri played the game. He stayed and answered emails through lunch. But deep inside, he held onto his quiet rebellion: This is not life and death. This is taxes.

That mindset became his shield against burnout and bitterness. And it became his message, too.

“The worst thing that can happen? You get audited,” he shrugged. “You fix it. You apologize. You move on. No one dies.”

In a profession where pride is often worn in the form of 90-hour workweeks and unpaid lunches, Yuri became the anomaly. The one who celebrated birthdays in April during tax season and refused to sacrifice presence for prestige.

He didn’t shout this philosophy. He lived it.

And slowly, others started to listen.

The Father, The Founder, The Human First

Like so many of our lives, Yuri’s is not divided into neat compartments. It’s woven tightly with morning routines, midnight ideas, business calls, baby bottles, spreadsheets, and bedtime stories.

He wakes not to silence but to small voices. Sometimes a giggle. Sometimes a cry. A son, six years old, full of questions and energy. A daughter, just two, who already knows how to command a room. He is not just their father. He is their morning ride, shoe-finder, toast-cutter, and calm.

After school runs and tangled hair, Yuri sometimes steals a moment for himself. He goes to the gym, not for vanity, but for sanity. Then, at last, around 10:30 a.m., the workday begins.

But even this workday is not typical.

He is not in an office lined with silence and suits. He works from home, his sanctuary, and the circus. Between client calls and QuickBooks dashboards, there is lunch.

“Lunch is sacred,” he says, with a kind of mischief and defiance. As if to say: You can take my meetings, but not my meal.

At 3:30 PM, the rhythm shifts again.

The school bus groans to a stop outside. A backpack is flung onto the floor. Crumbs appear as if from thin air. His son is home. A snack is made. Sometimes, work resumes for another hour. Sometimes, it doesn’t.

By five, the real marathon begins. This time, it’s dinner and diapers, pajamas and lullabies, and requests for water, always one more sip.

Yuri calls it “the abyss.”

And yet, it is in this abyss that his greatest joy lives.

He could be one of those CPAs who work 80 hours a week.

Outside of tax season, he limits client hours to 10 or 15 per week. For him, that’s not laziness.

“I built my firm around my life,” he says, “not the other way around.”

His calendar doesn’t rule him, and his clients don’t own him. He chose this path to be present for his family and the moments that pass too quickly when you’re busy chasing someone else’s version of success.

And even during tax season, when the workload surges, he remains grounded. At night, when the children are asleep, and the house sighs into silence, he might work for one more hour. But only if it feels right.

In a world where being “busy” is currency, Yuri has chosen wealth of a different kind: presence.

He is a CPA, yes. But he is also a father who keeps his promises, a husband who shows up, and a man who knows that work is just one part of a whole life.

Redefining What It Means to Be an Accountant

The stereotype has always been there that accountants are dull. They are grey-suited, grey-spirited figures hunched over calculators in rooms where laughter feels like a foreign language.

Yuri Kapilovich has made it his mission to break that narrative.

When he speaks about accounting, there is no monotony in his tone. There is rhythm, color, and joy.

“People think we just sit at a desk all day,” he says, smiling. “But I’m out with clients. I’m on the phone, laughing, grabbing lunch, talking about life. It’s the opposite of boring.”

It is not that Yuri refuses the work. He does it diligently and with precision. But he refuses the performance of suffering that the profession often demands.

He does not sell himself with strategy sessions or lead magnets. He does not pepper his social media with price points or polished sales language. What he offers instead is presence. A way of showing up in the world that is real, vulnerable, sometimes messy, always human.

“If you work with me, we’re not just talking about taxes,” he says. “We’re talking about your life. Your business. What you care about.”

His clients don’t just call with W-2s.

They call with questions about marriage, babies, buying cars, and dreams they are still afraid to name out loud. And often, they talk for thirty minutes before remembering why they called.

They become not just income and deductions but reflections of who people are and what they want from their lives.

Yuri listens. Not just to balance sheets but to heartbreak and hope.

His style is not for everyone.

“My prices are high,” he says, with neither apology nor arrogance. “Because I want to work with fewer clients. I want the time to know them.”

He is not interested in volume or chasing scale. He is chasing meaning.

Yuri has built a practice that feels more like a conversation. Like sitting across from an old friend who knows your business and your children’s names. Who reminds you, in small and big ways, that your worth is not tied to your taxable income.

He has redefined not just what it means to be an accountant but also to be a person who holds space for other people’s dreams.

In doing so, he has permitted for others to do the same.

A Message to the Misfits

There are young, brilliant, quietly unsure students who sit in crowded lecture halls and scroll late into the night. They type “Is accounting worth it?” into Google with a blend of curiosity and dread. They stumble onto Reddit threads and Twitter rants filled with burnout, long hours, and lifeless firms. And they begin to wonder: Is there a place for someone like me in this world?

Yuri Kapilovich speaks softly but clearly to those students: Yes, there is.

You don’t have to abandon your humor, creativity, or love for connection. You don’t have to give up the part of you that wants to tell stories, throw parties, or leave the office at five to watch your child dance in the kitchen.

“I wish more people knew what this profession can become,” Yuri says. “It’s not all horror stories. It’s people. It’s relationships. It’s helping someone plan their future.”

He speaks not from a pedestal but from a path, one paved with setbacks and stumbles. He never planned to become a CPA. He didn’t grow up dreaming of tax codes. He wanted finance, and life handed him accounting instead.

But he made it his own.

And that is the heart of his message: Make it yours.

He has stood on stages in San Diego, delivered keynotes in Maryland, and sat across tables from clients who now call him a friend. He has told jokes about taxes and made people laugh in places where no one usually laughs.

“I’m not an influencer,” he insists. “I’m just me.”

But maybe being “just me” is the most revolutionary thing a CPA can do.

To the students who feel too loud, soft, introverted, vibrant, not-accountant-enough, Yuri is living proof that there is no one right way to show up in this profession.

The first few years will be hard, he warns. They will stretch you. You may cry in bathroom stalls or fall asleep on your laptop. But you will find your place if you keep going and refuse to shrink.

It will not look like anyone else’s. That’s the point.

And when you do find it, you’ll know.

Because it will feel like yours.