Peter: Hey welcome back everybody. Great to have you today. I’ve got my guest Greg Kozera. Greg and I met through the National Speakers Association, the Ohio Chapter. I’ve got to know Greg a little bit over this past year or so. We were in a virtual mastermind group together, which was very successful and led to a lot of changes in my website, and I was really impressed with Greg’s knowledge, experience and his approach to the speaking business, as well as approach to leadership. So first and foremost, thank you Greg for taking time out of your busy day. I greatly appreciate you giving us this time to be a guest on my podcast. I’m so looking forward to this conversation

Greg: Peter, good to be on board with you today. Good stuff.

Peter: Greg is talking to us from Charleston, West Virginia. So Greg, before we get started, tell me audience a little bit about yourself.

Greg: Well I’m an engineer. I graduated from West Virginia way back in the seventies. I was in agricultural engineering and graduated in 2000 with a Masters in Environmental. I’ve been in the energy industry for 40-plus years. So I worked for a company called Halliburton [laughs]

Peter: I’ve heard of them [laughs]

Greg: I started out with those guys back in the seventies. I’d check into hotels, and you know they always had you put on your company and I’d write down Halliburton. Everybody would look at me and say, what do they do? You know, for 30 years nobody knew what a Halliburton was, and now all of a sudden Cheney shows up. But here’s what I can tell you about Cheney, and you know he’s a great leader. Now the poor guy – Halliburton does a lot of work on oil wells, they do cementing and hydraulic fracturing, fracking business – people talk about Cheney and fracking. The poor guy, he wouldn’t know a frack job if you drove up on it.

Peter: [laughs]

Greg: [laughs] Because I know this. I know this because I was a manager and the guy understood. They brought me more because of his international relationships but I could tell by the stuff came out of Houston that he had no clue how we generated income out here in the Northeast or other processes, so it’s pretty obvious he didn’t know that. Now from a leadership standpoint, though, I can still remember, back in the Cheney days, there were four key things. One, we were going to be number one or number two on our core businesses. [Two,] We were going to be a great place to work. [Three,] We were going to provide exceptional shareholder value, and the fourth one was something to do with safety. But think about that. That’s been – he was doing that in the 90’s, so that’s been 20 years

Peter: Yeah

Greg: I could still remember those four things. So think about it, Peter, how many companies today – and I can tell you this, we work for ourselves 100%, Linda and I at Learned Leadership. We started that about four years ago, so I’ve been working for other folks, but in March we’re full-time. This is what I do. I speak. I do leadership training, motivational talks, team-building type stuff, and we do energy education. But what’s amazing is I can think about the companies I’ve been with, and I couldn’t tell you what the vision was. As a matter of fact I actually asked Lazar, the new CEO of Halliburton, 5000 salespeople this meeting, and at that point I kind of felt like I was bullet proof, so he asked for questions, and I’m first guy that holds up his hand.

Peter: [laughs]

Greg: I’m thinking, what they gonna do fire me, and I ask him, “Mr. Lazar, what’s our vision?” I remember I told you what Cheney’s vision was. We knew where we were going, and he went on, Peter, for about 15 minutes, and when he got done I still had no clue

Peter: [laughs]

Greg: [laughs] I had no idea, and I think if there’s a message that will help your listeners when it comes to leadership is leaders know where they’re going. I mean I’ll bet you right now that if I ask you what’s your vision for your business, where do you want to be at the end of the year, I’ll bet you could tell me.

Peter: I bet you I could too.

Greg: Absolutely.

Peter: [laughs]

Greg: And think about how many companies couldn’t make that statement. As an employee, but particularly as a management employee, if I don’t know what the vision is I guarantee you my people don’t know what it is. I’m also high school soccer coach. We started teaching leadership way back in 1999 because we felt like we wanted seniors to be leaders, but what are they use? I mean do they just become leaders because they’re seniors? So we started teaching this stuff, and the first year it was amazing. Peter, we had one returning starter. We’re Charleston Catholic, a small high school in Charleston. Those days we had to play everybody: the biggest, the baddest, the best. We never won anything. Never won a section, I mean forget regions, and we got one returning starter. We’re rebuilding this team, and we’re talking about leadership, we’ve got these four seniors together to practice, and I tell them about vision. I said what’s your vision, what’s your dream, where do you want to be at the end of this season? And I’ll never forget – this kid’s a doctor in Charleston, South Carolina, now – and he says, coach, we want to play in the state championship. [laughs] And I looked at him and I’m thinking this is a joke, and I’m looking in his eyes and it’s not a joke. He’s dead serious. I was, Peter, this close to saying, you know, BJ that’s a great vision, but maybe we ought to aim a little lower.

Peter: Mhm.

Peter: Like, you know, a winning season, and you know we play some big schools, but I just said this: I said, okay, we got a lot of work to do, and he convinced me that we could actually do this. We convinced the seniors, and together we convince the team, and I’ll tell you how absolutely nutso it was. Again, he didn’t know this at the time, we had to play two schools that in 15 years we had never beat, and we had to go through them – one in section, one in the regionals get the state tournament. At the end of practice I get the boys together and we talk about what our goals for the next game, the next practice, and I would jump – you can probably picture this – I would jump up in the air, throw my hands and scream, what’s the dream? And the entire team would scream – not to win the state championship, it was to play for it. The short story is, against all odds, we beat those two schools. We beat one in the region championship, and we didn’t just beat them we beat them like a drug. We beat them 5-0, and it was the craziest thing. I’m watching this happen. I’m watching us totally dismantle a team we haven’t beat in 15 years and I’m thinking this is a dream, because you’re gonna wake up and realize that none of this has ever happened, and it was real, but the coolest thing was when that game was over our opponent literally, in place, sat down. It was in unison. The entire team just sat down on the field. It’s like they’re trying to figure out what the world just happened to us out here. The second team we played in the state semi-final and they were archrival. Picture this, in 15 years we haven’t beat them and we’re playing them twice a season, so there was like 30 games out there that we hadn’t won. We’re down to 2-0 at halftime and I remember my halftime talk. You talk about coming out fired up, but it was with about 18 minutes left we scored, and then with less than two minutes left BJ, the captain, scores again. We go into overtime, we had to play the whole overtime,and we fell behind again – and this kid’s a doctor now in the Charleston area – he scores literally with one second left in overtime to tie the game and send it to shoot up. So you talk about motivation.

Peter: Wow.

Greg: Here’s the thing, in the shootout there’s a kid comes up to us, he’s a senior and he wants to be one of five shooters, and he scores the winning goal in the shootout to send us into the state tournament for the first time in the history of the school. But it gets better, Peter, because you know what? You and I know its speakers is you throw these seeds out there. Whether you’re doing this podcast or whether you’re speaking to an audience, you plant seeds and you never know where they’re going to grow or how they’re going to grow, and in 2012 my wife had a really serious car accident. It was right here – I actually live close to Charleston but my little town is called Pinch, West Virginia, so you can imagine it’s not very big. So I just got home from work, she was right behind me, I had the dog out. I get this phone call saying mr. your wife’s been a little accident here in downtown Pinch, you might want to come down here. This is her phone and, you know, she’s alright. I’m thinking okay, fender bender. I get down there and there’s a crowd gathering. The fire truck’s on its way and her car is flipped on its top in the middle of the road and she’s a diabetic, she passed out, and literally she tore everything up. All four sides and the top and she’s still in the car, and you talk about helpless. I mean there’s nothing I can do… and the paramedics were awesome, they got her out – but the long story short she broke her neck because of the force of the collision. Thank God for airbags, and she had a gash in her head. So here it is it, this was a Friday, and Sunday morning this team of doctors comes in. We talked about vision, how powerful that is. So they look over and she’s hurt, I mean she can barely talk and she’s got this gash and she can’t move anything, and as they’re starting to leave my wife whispers, “Doc,” and the head trauma surgeon goes over to her and he’s got to actually bend his head down over her mouth so she can you can hear or speak. She says, we have a trip to Disney World planned the middle of next month. Now is there any reason I can’t go?

Peter: [laughs]

Greg: Ha! Yeah I just lose it. He’s laughing, I’m laughing, then he says well you know you might be a little uncomfortable if you’re driving. So I got plane tickets. He said no problem, but here’s the rest of the story. I recognized one of those five, and as they’re leaving the room this young man says to me, “Do you remember me coach?” I said, “Nathan, I’ll never forget you.” The kid that scored the goal in the shootout that put us in the state championship game is now a doctor, I find that he’s a damn good doctor, well guess who’s more my wife’s doctor for five days? Nathan, and he had heard, he knew her vision, knew her dream, and I had to run an errand for the next day, and this was Sunday. You can imagine Sunday morning she’s laying there in bed, she can’t move, she got the gash on her head and she can barely speak. I’m back, it’s five o’clock Monday evening, when I get back she’s not in her bed, I’m like what’s going on? I’m worried and I walk and he’s got her in a walker going down the hall. Between Nathan and Linda, they pulled it off, and I have a picture of my wife in a wheelchair with our oldest granddaughter in front of the haunted mansion at Walt Disney World in Florida one month later. The power of a dream, and when you and I, and your listeners, sow seeds you don’t know where they’re going to grow, because Nathan understood this whole vision thing, and that’s probably part of the reason why was a Doctor. Incredibly and as it turns out his office now, he’s moved on and he’s actually a heart doctor, and he’s on the same floor that my wife’s working today and they literally are on the same floor in this medical building. So you talk about what’s the odds. I mean, I’m not that creative guy. I can’t make this stuff up.

Peter: Wow. That’s a story. I mean we went from Halliburton and Dick Cheney to soccer to your wife’s wreck to Disney World, but you kinda tied it all up in a nice little bow there at the end. I mean I have a lot of questions to ask you just from that story

Greg: [laughs]

Peter: But the one thing you were talking about, you could remember Cheney’s vision, but when the CEO was giving his vision he went on for like 15 minutes and you walked away and you had no idea.

Greg: No idea.

Peter: Which takes me right to Abraham Lincoln and to Gettysburg Address, because the guy who spoke before him was a former Secretary of State. He spoke for two hours. Nobody even knows his name, and his name is Everett something or other, but Lincoln spoke. Do you have idea of how many words were in the Gettysburg Address?

Greg: Not very many.

Peter: 272, he spoke for 10 minutes, and so to your point he was concise, he was brief, he was to the point. Everybody remembered it vs the other person.

Greg: And it was emotional. I mean that’s the thing. As leaders we have to touch the emotion. It has to mean something and, you know, I mean you and I can both remember. I can’t repeat the whole gettysburg address, but I got a pretty good idea. Four score and seven years ago dadadadada, but you know, I know the gist of it, and think about that. You’re right. I mean 200 some words over a 150 years ago and people still remember. How powerful is that? You’re right, that’s a leader.

Peter: I know you got a copy of my book and if you’re looking at my book I took the liberty and rewrote the Gettysburg address in corporate speak, which you might find extremely hilarious these days, but the other one that you mentioned that I want to touch on briefly was the guy who had the vision of making the state championship, and you’re cynical in your mind – are you kidding me kid? In the movie Remember The Titans, there’s this scene between the captain and the other football player, and they’re going at each other, and basically talks about, you know, leadership. It’s all about attitude. And in the movie the the captain’s attitude was not of leadership quality. That kind of started to change things in the movie, but basically makes me think that soccer guy. He had the attitude and he kept that attitude, and basically you said he convinced you. I mean that’s classic.

Greg: You know what’s so powerful, Peter, is that attitude. That’s why this whole vision thing is so critical for us as individuals, but even as his corporations, because it drove everything else. I mean think about it: Practice. If your dream is well we’re going to have 500 season and you know maybe win some games, maybe we will – how are you going to practice? Not very. I mean the intensity – I remember the drills that we went through the week before the state tournament. I mean, they were working hard. Who was leading the drills? BJ. And the other piece of that is you gotta believe in, and that was the trick. Because we can say State Championship game until the cows come home, as they say, but if I don’t believe it – and I’ll never forget, at my halftime time talk we’re down 2-0 and and we were talking about the head coach, I’m the assistant coach, talking about the things we had to do, those those things that had to change. I said, gentlemen, what’s the dream? They said state championship game. I said we have to win this tonight to get there. The one thing I remember saying is, if there’s anyone in this room that doesn’t believe we can still win this game and play in the state championship game, you need to stay here in the locker room, and I remember someone yelled something, and the whole team went out fired up, and boy you talk about their level of play in the second half to the first half. It was intense. And finally, and it’s strange how things happen when you’re hustling, when you’re making things happen, luck will come your way. Our first goal was this kid just took a weak shot at the goal, there wasn’t much to it, but the ball took a crazy hop away from their goalkeeper and score. Now all of a sudden it’s, you know, 18 minutes and we’re down one goal and nobody quit. They didn’t even think about it. Can you imagine? You’re down a goal, in overtime, there’s 30 seconds left in the game – and here’s the cool thing, our opponent was loaded with Seniors, we had like four and only one of them was a starter too, and they get their bags lined up. They’re ready to leave because they know that there’s no way in the world we’re going to come back and beat them in this overtime. I’ll never forget that. You know, their goalie kicks the ball away and ball keeper comes way of the goal, traps it, passes it to who? Nathan, who passes it to Stewart, who is the other striker, who passes it to BJ. Now here’s the rest of the story: BJ, senior captain, his dream, he’s got the ball. He’s probably ten yards away from the goal, there’s ten seconds left and they’re counting it down, and he doesn’t shoot. He passes the ball to the little Kenny Proops, and Kenny – he’s literally probably five foot tall, Peter, and he put it – Think about it, as leaders one of the things we have to do is develop our people. He had developed Kenny to the point – as a freshman he shouldn’t even be on the field, he’s not a starter, he was there because someone else got hurt – Kenny’s on the field, BJ passes him the ball and Kenny shoots and scores with one second left.

Peter: Wow.

Greg: Think about that. His whole dream is state championship game and he doesn’t take the shot. He passes it to a freshmen that he trained that isn’t even a starter.

Peter: Wow

Greg: And that was something I didn’t even think about. I’ve been doing these talks, and it was like three years later and like, oh my god, how powerful is that? I mean think about how many businesses you talk to, how many people, their shortcomings as leaders is that they won’t trust their people. Think about it. I mean how many times do we not develop our people, or do we not trust them, and let’s face it if you develop your people – Here’s the difference that I see between leaders and managers. A manager is threatened by those underneath him or her because they might take their job. As a leader, if I’m a true leader, I want my people to be better than me. I want them to grow. I want them to be part of my team and I should never be threatened by those people, and BJ obviously wasn’t. He wasn’t worried anyone would take his job. He wanted to win. He wanted success.

Peter: There’s one piece in there that you haven’t said but you’ve alluded to it. In the end that leadership role when he passed the ball, he didn’t have a huge ego. He didn’t need to feed his ego by being the one that scored.

Greg: You know you’re right

Peter: We all have egos, but when leaders can swallow their ego and do what’s best for the team not what’s best for them, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts goes a long way in building leaders and also building the team, and also maintaining a team.

Greg: Absolutely. You know it’s interesting you brought that up, because our 2012 team – I mean we’ve won 5, 6 state championships in the last seven years. Now I mean that’s what those young men started way back then. I mean we’ve been to the state tournament eight years in a row, so our seniors this year are like, oh yeah, of course we’re going back to the tournament. We’re gonna win. I mean that’s their mentality. But our ‘12 team we had a kid, super young man, our captain. He was leading the state in scoring at two-thirds of the way through the season, Peter, and the last third of the season I’m noticing he’s not taking as often. He’s distributing the ball, and what was so cool in the state championship game a freshman scored three goals. Instead of Sam taking the glory he was developing his people, and at the end we’re up four nothing and Sam had to score, he finally scored the 5th goal, but you know by then the game’s out of reach and we already had it pretty well in hand. But the whole thing about the concept is here is this kid that can be the leading scorer in the state, and he doesn’t do it because it’s more important to develop those freshmen that are going to be in that game, and then they got what he wanted. He won the state championship we, we won it handily, but if he’d have been that ego guy that you’re talking about those freshmen wouldn’t have been ready to play when they were, and the first goal was scored from a freshman. Sam develop those players.

Peter: I’m going to ask you this question. This is is a wonderful story. Have you turned it into a keynote?

Greg: I’ve told pieces of it but not to this level.

Peter: You need to put that whole piece and develop it into a keynote, because it’s very, very powerful and relatable, because it’s soccer, and the things that you talked about here. I tell you what, it would make one hell of a keynote address.

Greg: Good point. I like that. I think if there’s anything that we can do to help our audiences, I think, is to help them understand that vision piece, because no matter what they’re doing it’s gonna help, so I thank you for that. That’s a good point because I’ve never put all those pieces together like we just did. I’ve done bits and pieces of it but not in one congruent story.

Peter: I would get post-it notes out. I will send you a copy of the audio before we even play it so you can go back and listen to it, and I would lay it out and post-it notes to develop the keynote because I think is very strong powerful message on leadership. I think you can actually blow audiences away. As you’re talking my other question was do you have this story in your book, and the name of your book again is?

Greg: The first book is Learned Leadership.

Peter: Learned Leadership, and that was published when?

Greg: It was in 2007 and that’s strictly leadership, and that’s really the book that we teach even our seniors. That’s really kind of like the Bible when it comes to leadership.

Peter: Okay so this story is not in in that book.

Greg: Actually it’s interesting. Both stories, I mean in the leadership book, the BJ story is.

Peter: Okay

Greg: That’s the lead story and a lot of what we talked about with BJ, and you know the whole ‘99 team. That stuff is in there. Now what’s interesting, the second book is called Just The Fracks, Ma’am

Peter: Did you say Just the Fracks?

Greg: Just The Fracks, Ma’Am, it’s the truth about fracking. You know, as a speaker, I couldn’t get away from the motivational piece because we talk about, yeah, there’s the science and the technology and what this means to Americans, and at the end of the day I want to talk about how important it is that we we can come together and do the right thing for this country, and so a lot of people, you know, they get a little jaded and they don’t believe in it. In that book, believe it or not, is the Nathan-Linda story. So I actually have that story written down in Just the Fracks. I had written Just the Frack so that the average American can read it and understand it. As a matter of fact, my editor is from New York City, I had to take the tech terms out. It’s written by an engineer but it doesn’t read like that. He wouldn’t let me do that. So this lady, when she got done with the book, I said what you think? She says when it was over I was in tears.

Peter: What?

Greg: Then I remembered Linda’s story is in the very end, and so when she finished the book that was the closing story. I thought oh my god, I hadn’t thought about it that way, but yet those are there in there. But again, it’s not a complete piece because when I wrote the first book the second piece hadn’t happened yet. But good point.

Peter: So you’re a leading authority as relates to fracking?

Greg: I am.

Peter: Because I actually did hear you on 700 WLW probably about two months ago or so

Greg: Yeah, Cincinnati

Peter: Yeah, where they interviewed you as it relates to fracking, and can you give the audience just a 10,000 foot, I mean, I think just because of your diverse background, that you’re in the energy field and very and authority within that general, I think you know imparting some of that wisdom would be great to this audience.

Greg: Sure, and you know in the sense they’re tied together because one of the keys to being a great leader is truth and integrity. I mean at the end of the day, you know, I don’t know about you but I’ve been led, or I should say managed by people, that I couldn’t trust them. [laughs] I mean, you know, because I’ve watched what they did. I mean literally. I mean I watched one guy who had told this young engineer to do something and it backfired, and at this big meeting the VP had all these got folks together with one of my clients, and he’s chewing out this young engineer for what he did, and I’m looking at his manager because I know what happened. I’m looking at him thinking, surely you’re going to step up and say it wasn’t him, it was me. He never did that and I’m thinking, alright, what do I know now? If he tells me something it’s going down in writing. I’m going to make sure that someone’s heard it, because if it backfires I know this: he doesn’t have my back. I can’t trust him.

Peter: Right

Greg: So leadership is all about trust and integrity. Whether we’re talking about local elections or presidential candidate, you’ve got to be able to trust that person. When they stand in front of you, whether it’s on TV or a meeting, and they say this is where we’re going, you gotta believe it. I mean whether it’s corporate or whatever. So getting back to this whole fracking thing. I’m an engineer. I understand the process. We’ve been doing this, Peter, in the United States for 60 plus years. That’s how long we’ve been fracking this country. We fracked over 2 million wells. Can you imagine we’ve done this process two million times and they’re still looking for the one well out of those two million that’s contaminated groundwater. I’m thinking how nutso is this. I mean really folks, and I actually stood in front of the EPA two weeks ago and said, look folks here’s what’s going on. It was their science board, there were a bunch of PhDs, but they didn’t understand that. I said here’s the truth. Here’s what’s going on. So why we studying this? I mean if we’re going to worry about something let’s worry about something that’s gonna happen. I mean let’s face it. The roads we travel on, I mean, unfortunately, highway fatalities are not uncommon. I mean my wife was almost a fatality. I mean if we use that same thought process there would be no airplanes and their damn sure wouldn’t be any cars. So that was the reason I had to write the whole book on fracking. So just so your audience understands what it is, it’s really simple, is the rock that we get our oil and gas out – and it’s rock, it’s not a cave. It’s inside the pores of a rock. If you pick up a rock or stone or whatever it’s actually in those pores and it won’t come out by itself. So what we do when they drill these wells, and the wells we’ve drilled to there’s seven, eight, nine thousand feet deep, and we have to frack, and all the frack is is pumping some water and sand, or sometimes just nitrogen gas and sand or nitrogen gas and nothing, to create a small crack. This crack would look like something you’d see maybe in your driveway. We’re talking about a crack that’s maybe a quarter of an inch, but that crack is like a superhighway because that crack allows the oil and gas to flow out of that rock to a wellbore pipe and come to the surface, and fuel our nation, and we’ve been doing this for 60 years and the only change that’s happened is we started to drill wells horizontal, which means you get down six, seven, eight thousand feet and then you can actually turn that pipe, that drill bit, and we can drill now horizontally, like your floor, two miles. Can you imagine a mile and a half deep and that’s like an underground pipeline two miles out, and the only thing is we can create that crack or that frack multiple times, like 50 times in that horizontal well, and that creates literally a world-class well, and the United States, in just the last seven, eight years, we are the leading oil producer. We’re either number one or number two depending on the month, but we’re one of the leading oil producers in the world and we’re the leading gas producer in the world. We are literally today, Peter, the energy gorilla of the planet. That’s why your listeners and down here in West Virginia we’re still paying 2.50 a gallon for gasoline. It was over four bucks a couple years ago. So that’s the reason why gasoline prices – I’ve done on that WLW, and I’ve done over 150 radio interviews. One of the first questions I get is because our gasoline is two dollars, does that have anything to do with fracking? Yeah, everything. I was on the station yesterday in Nashville and this guy, I could tell, even after I talked about what we’re doing environmentally, that we’re not creating a disaster, we’re actually – I mean I literally bill myself as environmentalist because what we’ve done, whether we’re talking about fracturing or whether it’s the way well sites are reclaimed as the result of this whole thing, is we’ve done more for the planet in the last seven or eight years than – you put all these environment groups quote-unquote together and look and see what they’ve done, and it doesn’t compute. It pails. Matter of fact I’ll tell you about that. When Just the Fracks came out I was doing a book signing in Charleston, little hole-in-the-wall bookstore Saturday morning. All my soccer players come up. What could go wrong, right? You know it’s cool. This guy shows up, he’s the head of the green party in West Virginia, he brings his entourage. He’s driven two hours to come to my signing. Like really, you’re kidding me. I mean, am I that important all of a sudden? We have this mini debate and finally I can tell the boys are saying oh come on, you know, let’s get this over with and we got other things to do, but I can also tell that they want tome… I mean I wasn’t prepared for it, so it kinda feels like I got sucker-punched. I could see the boys are all saying, come on coach you gotta get gotta hit him back. So finally we go through this stuff and he throws all this garbage out there and it’s half-truths, and I finally said, I’ll tell you something buddy, and I went through what we’ve done as an industry, the oil and gas industry in America. We’ve lowered co2 10% since 2000. We’ve lowered it. On the planet CO2 is up. It’s down in this country thanks to expanding use of natural gas. There’s industries coming back. Ohio and steel mills now that would have been built in China, India, but because of low fuel prices they came back to this country. We’re bringing the chemical industry back to operate under U.S. environmental law, and when these well sites are reclaimed – in Virginia, we’ve got an elk herd. I mean, we’re talking about a place that used to be a strip mine, it’s got active gas wells that have all been fracked. There’s elk herd, deer, wild turkey, and the rest of the story is they bring the Audubon people out to see the birds out there. Isn’t that crazy? People don’t want to talk about the oil and gas industry as being green, but the Audubon Society goes out to look at birds and I said, you know, isn’t amazing? You would never take the Audubon people to a windmill site, unless you want to show them dead birds. But the reality is wind and solar would cease to exist without oil and gas, because the hydrocarbons – even the electric cars need electricity. Electricity takes coal or natural gas, primarily, and there was this guy was on this show yesterday. He was saying we have to go to electric cars. I said that’s fine. Remember we need coal and we need natural gas for electricity. More importantly, those cars are have a lot of plastic because they have to be lightweight, and plastic comes from Petrochemicals, and petrochemicals come from oil and gas wells. Because we frack every well in this country, virtually. I mean there’s a few we don’t, but we’re talking about 99% of wells require fracking. It’s part of the process, and it only takes a day to do that, and so I said without fracking electric cars would cease to exist. You can’t have them without fracking, and so that’s the the message I want to get out. Look, this is an old process. I mean, it’s like any other industrial process. You gotta be smart, you gotta do it right, but we’re still looking for that first well that’s contaminated groundwater. I’m like, come on, but here’s what’s more important for our freedom. Our military runs on petroleum. You can’t fuel fighter jet on wind and you can’t fuel a tank with solar. It takes oil and gas, and can you only imagine. Putin fracks. All the OPEC countries frack. China fracks. So if we would ever do something really stupid like banning fracking it’s A) not gonna help our environment, it’s gonna hurt it, and B) our oil and gas industry is gone so now. Can you imagine what happened? Our president, whoever that’s going to be, has to call Vladimir Putin or the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and say, hey, we need a little more oil this month. Now the other thing that happens if you take our crude oil out of the market, and your listeners, you, and I can plan on paying five dollars plus for gasoline, and who does that hurt most? Matt Damon, Yoko Ono, they’re going to still fly their jets. They’re going to have money to do that – but the average American, that single mom that drives 60 miles to Charleston to go to work and that two dollars a gallon she was saving buys lots of really nice Christmas presents. Who’s really gonna get hurt by five dollar gasoline? What about those senior citizens that are fixed incomes? Food prices go up, everything goes up, so you know if people don’t understand the energy and where it comes from and how important our oil and gas is to our country. There’s some things we can do to help improve CO2, but we need to do it as a team. We need to have enough gumption and have some leaders that actually understand the truth and actually bring people together, because we can use our renewables in a smart way. We can make some really good things happen and make some good decisions, as long as you’re using truth and good science and not fear and height and then some crap I’m hearing, and that’s why I did the book. I’m an engineer. I didn’t want to go there, but nobody else is talking about this stuff, so that’s the rest of the story.

Peter: And that’s what leaders do. They take on tough topics, and as long as you bring in actual facts and the truth to get that message out. That’s another sign, in my mind, of a great leader, and that may not resonate with all the ears, but at least you’re providing the facts, the truth behind it, showing the benefits, and you know what? That’s that’s the big piece, and especially taking on topics that might be a little more controversial than others, and I admire you for doing that.

Peter: In this conversation that we’ve had we’ve gone from – well we started with Dick Cheney [laughs]

Greg: [laughs]

Peter: and we went we went to soccer, then we went to fracking, then we talked a little bit of politics. We almost have like a whole 360 here.

Greg: But you know I’ll tell you what’s really cool, because I did – I was asked by one of my clients to do a presentation. They needed someone to be on a frack panel at the Vermont School of Law. Can you imagine Vermont? Bernie Sanders. I mean it’s probably as liberal as you can get, but you know they set this thing up right and we really had a good discussion.

Peter: That’s key.

Greg: And it would happen to be the same day as my son was retired from the Navy so I couldn’t stay for the whole thing, and this lady – and you know you never know how everybody perceives everything but clearly they were not pro-frackers – but I got a voicemail I picked up the next morning and she said Mr. Kozera I am so glad that you were able to participate. We had never looked at fracking that way before, and probably what happened was no industry person would dare go up there because they think, you know, I know that’s gonna be like and they’re gonna… and I’m thinking, look, if somebody doesn’t have the guts to stand in front of an audience and tell the truth, and believe me I don’t know everything so I learned. I mean the beauty of what they did is they set up a panel where we all learned something. I learned some things that I needed to know, they learned some things that they needed to know, and I told the girl,I said can you imagine if we could do this in Washington, because everybody gains from this. If we could sit down now, we were the policymakers, and do something really good for this country because we’ve got everybody represented here and we’re all trying to come up with a good answer for everybody, and so we’re actually listening to each other. Think about that. When I listen to my wife I really learn something. [laughs]

Peter: [laughs]

Greg: It’s like, wow, what a novel that you actually listen. If we did that in Washington what they did in Vermont we can do some incredible things. We can have an environment here that’s better than what it is. We can do things for people around the world. Think about it. There’s kids in India, I heard an NPR report few weeks ago Peter, that half the kids in New Delhi have permanent lung damage because the air is so bad. Now if they were starving we’d be sending food over there.

Peter: Right.

Greg: But they’re just gonna die of, who knows, lung damage or whatever, COPD. We can fix that. We have the energy fix that. If we were able to work together and get the dialogue right and forget politics and agendas, let’s do something for the planet, let’s do something to help everybody, not just our people here but people around the world, that’s what I think leaders should be doing.

Peter: Great point. That is what leaders should be doing Before we begin to wrap up I just want to say that, as you’re describing this thing at the Vermont school I was really curious how that was going to turn out, and I tie this back into my book a little bit because you weren’t – you said, we were able to have a conversation. We were able to have a dialogue. We were able to debate, and the only way that you were able to do that is both sides had respect for the other party, and as you said both sides were listening. Where it all falls apart in leadership is when you don’t have respect for the person you’re dealing with. No matter if you’re if you’re in corporate America, you’re at a university, your head of this country or another country, once we lose that respect everything else falls apart.

Greg: You are absolutely spot-on. If anybody wants those books – Just the Fracks, Ma’am and Learned Leadership – they’re out there on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. I got a website GregKozera.com where I do a blog. So they can find my blog, it’s on energy but it’s really mostly leadership stuff, but all they’re all online. Just the Fracks, Ma’am and Learned Leadership

Peter: And we will also have them in the show notes on the website, links to the books, and to his website as well. As we wrap up I like to do this so the audience to get to know maybe a little different side of you. You have not seen these questions. I call them 10 quick questions as a type of rapid-fire piece, so you ready for these ten really tough question?

Greg: Absolutely. Fired up.

Peter: First one: Skyline or White Castle?

Greg: White Castle.

Peter: Baseball or Soccer?

Greg: Soccer. Imagine that. [laughs]

Peter: [laughs] Go figure. What’s your favorite movie?

Greg: Ooo, that’s a tough one. Probably On the Start – no, no, Star Wars.

Peter: Star Wars.

Greg: and this last one – maybe this last one that just came out.

Peter: Wow, I have not I have not seen it yet. I guess I better go see that.

Greg: They did a really great job at tying everything in the past and the present. I mean they just did an awesome job, so I’ll go with the latest Star Wars movie.

Peter: Okay. What’s your favorite city to visit?

Greg: Right now probably Orlando because Disney World is down there. [laughs]

Peter: Yeah, okay. Who’s your most admired leader?

Greg: Wow. Going way back when I’d probably say Lincoln.

Peter: Okay.

Greg: Probably in recent years I’d say Ronald Reagan.

Peter: Okay.

Greg: But you know both, particularly Lincoln, had to deal with incredible amount of conflict. When you talk about the conflict any President has to deal with, and he handled it incredibly well. Reagan because he was really the leader. He was the guy that, I’ve heard it said, that he was like your dad, he was gonna turn the light out in the bedroom at night, but I mean when he stood up said this is what we’re going to do, I can believe it, even if I didn’t agree with him, I could believe it.

Peter: And you can trust him as well.

Greg: Exactly, that trust is so important. You’re right, Peter.

Peter: Five Guys hamburger or Long John Silver’s fish and chips?

Greg: That’s tough. I’ll go with the Five Guys.

Peter: Five Guys. Do you remember Long John Silvers?

Greg: Oh we’ve got one here in town.

Peter: Oh they’re still around?

Greg: Oh absolutely.

Peter: I haven’t seen you in a long time.

Greg: Oh, no. They’re good. That’s why I had to think about that one.

Peter: It was a little surprise to me that you had to think. I mean, I do remember the fish and chips were very, very good back in the day.

Greg: Arthur Treacher’s is gone, but long johns is still here.

Peter: Wow that’s cool.

Greg: Yeah we’ve got several of them in town.

Peter: Interesting. I don’t think there’s anything here in Columbus, but I’m actually gonna take a look after this id one.

Greg: [laughs]

Peter: Cheers or The Big Bang Theory?

Greg: Cheers.

Peter: Coke or Pepsi?

Greg: Coke.

Peter: LeBron James or Michael Jordan?

Greg: I gotta go with the LeBron. That Cleveland championship was just, I mean, isn’t that what we’re talking about. The vision. I mean here’s a guy that has this vision and he’s got the guts to tell everybody I’m coming back to Cleveland and here’s what we’re going to do, and down three games to one he pulls it off. What a classic.

Peter: I mean you can’t write that story.

Greg: No you can’t. It is so powerful.

Peter: ESPN had a 30 for 30 out a few weeks ago called Believe Land, prior to the championship games, and it’s all about how Cleveland sports, and the rough and you know how they always fought, the drive, the fumble, and all of that. I watched it last night and they’ve already changed the ending to put in the championship.

Greg: [laughs] I love that. What a great, I mean, that’s something that, and really even for young people, what an example. I mean A) you never quit,but B) if you know what you want – I mean, you know, what a deal. I mean there’s leadership in so many different areas. And really, I mean we live in Worcester and I felt so bad for people in Cleveland for years, because they were so close

Peter: Right.

Greg: Or in some cases not even close at all. [laughs]

Peter: [laughs] Exactly.

Greg: I mean I was absolutely thrilled for them because, I mean, face it a lot of our NSA buddies are from up there in Cleveland. Like, for them this was one for the all-times.

Peter: Exactly. And the last question. I actually got two questions, but the last one: What’s your favorite restaurant? And it doesn’t have to be in Charleston, it can be anywhere.

Greg: You know I’ll tell you what. I like Polaris Grill. really like that place.

Peter: Okay. Actually it’s about three minutes from my house and we used to go all the time, but now we don’t venture too far, but my wife and her girlfriends go up there a lot.

Peter: And one last question that I do have is what’s the name of your dog?

Greg: Abby.

Peter: Abby, and is Abby there with you isn’t she?

Greg: She sure is.

Peter: Okay. What kind of dog is Abby?

Greg: She’s a golden retriever.

Peter: A golden retriever. Can I see her?

Greg: Absolutely [moves webcam] Can you see her?

Peter: Oh yeah she’s just laying on the floor half asleep. I could hear panting at times in the background so I knew there was a dog.

Greg: She’s paranoid because like, we’ll leave town, and when I come back I can’t go anywhere. I mean I’ll be taking a shower and all of a sudden they’ll be this the door open up and I’m thinking it’s Linda and it’s like, no, it’s the dog. She just want to make sure she knows where we are.

Peter: Well Greg thank you so very much for giving me the time and I greatly appreciate it. I enjoyed this conversation on leadership and learning more about fracking, and tying it all together. I got to know you a little bit better. I’m looking forward to seeing you at the next NSA meeting, and once again thank you very much for your time.

Greg: Thank you, Peter. I had a ball

Peter: Great, and I guess we’ll see everybody on the next episode. Bye now!

Peter: Hey everybody Peter Margaritis here and I’m at the University of Tulsa in the Performing Arts Center. They had a program today I’m very honored and lucky to have Lisa Anderson as my guest, and Lisa – you know what, I’m gonna let Lisa tell you all about herself. So Lisa, first and foremost thank you greatly. I appreciate you taking time to be interviewed.

Lisa: Thank you I am very honored to be interviewed. So, about myself.

Peter: Yes tell us about you are.

Lisa: Who am I? I am Lisa Anderson and I’m a CPA. I am first and foremost, though, a wife and a mom. I have two kids, an almost 18-year-old daughter and almost 15-year-old son.

Peter: And just on a side notes she’s told me so many stories while I’ve been here. They’re absolutely amazing kids.

Lisa: Yes I have to agree they are pretty amazing. They have their moments but they are pretty amazing. Aside from that, I said I’m a CPA focusing on tax. I’m also an ABV, which is accreditation in business valuation to the AICPA as well as a CFF, which is certified in financial forensics. Also another designation through the AICPA. And how did I get here? Well…

Peter: That’s the best story possible. How did you get here?

Lisa: How did I get here? I didn’t go far to get here, I’ll tell you that. I was born raised in Tulsa, went to high school in Tulsa, briefly left Tulsa for a few weeks to attend college outside of Tulsa, came back, got an associate’s degree, ended up at the University of Tulsa then undergrad in accounting, came back right after that, worked on my masters in tax, which of course, ask any of my friends, they thought I was absolutely crazy because why would anybody want to do tax let alone and have a master’s degree in tax, and for whatever reason I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

Peter: Okay

Lisa: And I went to work at Ernst & Young for 5 years, primarily because that was one of the firms that would let me go directly into tax without ever having to do audit, which I to this day thankfully have never had to do an audit and don’t plan to ever do that. And so started my career in tax until I had my daughter, decided I really didn’t want to continue with those long, late hours, went to work for a client as a tax manager just in corporate tax. Few months into it decided that was not the life for me, it was very boring and there just wasn’t enough that was enough going on. So I decided to jump back into the world of public accounting and talked to a CPA that was working for a local firm and found it very interesting. She was talking about the fact that they not only did tax work, they didn’t do any audit work, they did tax, they did some bookkeeping work, but they also did some fraud and some litigation work which greatly intrigued me. I found out more about the company, about the firm interviewed with him, got a job with them, started out doing tax and one of the partners kinda took me under his wing and started teaching me business valuation. I liked it, decided I needed to know a lot more than what he could teach me, so I started working on getting my designation in business valuation. I also decided that would be very smart because we were doing quite a bit of litigation work, and then very, very quickly that without some kind of certification or without the mature older gentleman silver hair, I had no credibility in court. [laughs] Unfortunately that’s the truth.

Peter: [laughs]

Lisa: And so I decided the older man silver hair was not gonna work for me so I got my certification to gain credibility so that I can testify in court. I did valuation work. And working in business valuations also led to quite a bit of divorce work, because a lot of the times people that need business valuations are the people that are getting a divorce.

Peter: Right.

Lisa: So that led to a lot of divorce work and as I was working more in divorce, and actually took the family law mediation course, so I’m actually a qualified family law mediator, I have sat in on a few mediations – nothing too intense. I think in one of the most memorable ones we were discussing who was going to end up with the chickens, and it was quite entertaining. [laughs]

Peter: Okay, how do you value a chick?

Lisa: You know we were just we were splitting assets, we weren’t really putting values on it. We were splitting assets. I was mediating.

Peter: Okay.

Lisa: I also was involved in some much higher profile cases and divorce cases that lasted into three, four years through multiple attorneys, and also got a taste of what I needed a certification in. Financial forensics was because there were quite a few hidden assets and a lot of trail chasing – chasing the cash flow between multiple businesses, between multiple people – and decided I needed a little bit better background in that to be able to do that part of the job better.

Peter: Okay.

Lisa: So did that. Ended up, at the end of the day, with pretty much alphabet soup after my name, now, CPA in tax, an ABV and CFF. I need to start charging by the letter I think,

Peter: [laughs]

Lisa: So I stayed at that firm for about eight years. I came a point that I wasn’t sure that’s where I wanted to be anymore. I took a brief leave and went to the world of recruiting and finding jobs for other accountants, all the while looking for a better job for myself, and I made a few moves after that back into public accounting and into tax, looking for just the right fit. I even decided to try being out of my own for a little while, decided that really wasn’t what I wanted to do either, and I actually missed being around people, which is very interesting considering the whole reason I went into accounting was because I didn’t think I wanted to interact with people. I was going to be quite content sitting behind my computer screen and never talking to anybody and turns out I interact with people multiple times on a daily basis, from clients to, unfortunately, the IRS quite a bit to peers to colleagues to just people in other industries and attorneys a lot, and from all that with my background, with all my work in business valuation and divorce, have ended up being a position to give presentations to try to educate mainly attorneys on some of the finer aspects of tax issues and divorce situations. I’m trying to explain to them things they could do a little bit different so that at the end of the day they don’t have very upset clients when they come to see me with your tax return and learn what went awry in their divorce agreement, things that maybe they could be doing different. Ultimately I would love to educate every divorce attorney I can on some of the valuation issues, specifically some of the tax issues in divorce, so maybe we can clear up some of that beforehand

Peter: What’s the name of the firm you’re working with?

Lisa: Currently I am a partner at Morse and Co., PLLC, and we’re a three partner firm in Tulsa. Background of the firm: there’s two tax partners and an audit partner and I specialize, in addition to all types of income tax, also the litigation, business valuation and specifically divorce issues.

Peter: Okay so we’re going to rewind here for a moment because clearly my audience is going, she’s an extremely bright individual with all of that behind her and she’s industry, and you know when I first realized she was an extremely bright individual was as she was telling you her background, she started when she went to high school in Tulsa, so that to me told me she must have bypassed elementary school and middle school and went right into high school. So when I heard heard that I went, genius.

Lisa: That’s it. I skipped all of that, straight into high school. Okay, from day one: kindergarten, elementary, middle school then high school. Everything’s in Tulsa.

Peter: And two, for those of you who might be listening to this who is a non-accountant, or who’s on the audit side of the business, and you’re thinking about going, stop, I’m going to turn this off, I wouldn’t. I spent the last day with Lisa. I’ve learned a lot about her. She’s got a lot of information, a lot of good information, that you just might need, and we’ll start, you know, as I’ve said, marriage is the leading cause of divorce. That’s not my line, I stole that from somebody who I don’t remember who it is, but you know I say 50% of the marriages fail. And I’ve been married for 30 years, not consecutively, so I’ve been through a divorce, and I’m sitting here thinking, so when you’re dealing with – what information do you want to get out? Because obviously you’re going to say I put on a divorce conference, and your spouse goes, where are you going today, I’m going to a divorce conference, and it’s not gonna work out really well for that…

Lisa: Exactly, I’ve really, really struggled with how do I market getting my knowledge out to the general public. Of course getting this information to the attorneys is a little bit easier. I can market to them. If it’s what they’re doing on a day-to-day basis hopefully they will search me out or come to a presentation so they can be better educated to better help their clients. Reaching the client base, reaching the public themselves, is a little bit more of a struggle because, like you said, who wants to admittedly go to a conference or presentation on divorce. Of course you say I’m going to learn about this for a friend, yeah that doesn’t really fly either

Peter: [laughs]

Lisa: So how do I deal with that? I have done some presentations that are focused on dealing with financial crisis

Peter: Okay.

Lisa: and looking at, you know, what you need to do beforehand, maybe so you can be better prepared for any kind of financial crisis, whether it be divorce or death or disability in the family, anything that’s going to impact the financial situation. A lot of the things upfront that you can plan for are going to be the same in any of those situations, so it’s getting that knowledge out. It’s educating people so they aren’t caught blindsided. Now that being said, there are some issues very specific to divorce that if you don’t understand may come back to bite you at the end of the day. When you’re doing the divorce settlement, when you’re splitting assets, when you’re looking at those asset valuations. Something as simple as who’s entitled to claim the kids on the tax return, it may seem intuitive but it’s not. There’s very specific rules. Unfortunately some of the attorneys, many of the attorneys, don’t really realize that, and just because something’s written in a divorce agreement that doesn’t always trump. Unfortunately the IRS wins many times and you have to follow their rules, and it’s unfortunate that a lot of attorneys either don’t know some of this information or don’t know to seek out the expertise. I can tell you I’ve had people who kind of refrain from reaching out to get that assistance, just because of the costs involved. I can tell you, at the end of the day, whatever it’s going to cost to hire me to look at this upfront, to look over a divorce agreement, to sit down and consult with splitting up of the assets, is going to be a lot less expensive, possibly, than what you’re going to end up spending in taxes at the end of the day because you didn’t realize what the tax consequences were going to be. I’ve more than once seen somebody that thought because they got a certain asset, they’re going to be able to cash out that asset and have X amount of money, not realizing there are taxes to be paid on that transaction and they end up with a whole lot less than they thought they would, and of course they’re screaming, that’s not fair, my attorney said, well sorry your attorney didn’t look and didn’t do you justice by looking into what the details were going to be and how that was going to end.

Peter: You said that the overall cost by hiring usual, for the most part, will be less than if they didn’t hire you and the their tax bill at the end of the day. So I look at, because I’m trying to change the word cost, an investment in your time could save them money in the long run?

Lisa: Absolutely. Just a real quick story: I had a new client come to me. She had asked their joint CPA for some advice. She wasn’t quite sure that he had given her the right advice on a tax situation. They had finalized the divorce, so she got my name from somebody else, came to me, and she had some stock options that she was going to sell as a result of the divorce. That was the part of the divorce agreement, whatever that net from selling, whatever the net cash received, half of it was to go to the husband, which was fine except nobody took into consideration that after she sold that there would be a tax consequence to that. She ended up owning an additional $22,000 in tax as a result of that transaction that she wouldn’t have had the divorce agreement been written a little bit different, if things had been split a little bit different, and so now she’s having to go back to court and incur additional attorneys fees to try to get the money back from the ex-husband to offset that cost of additional $22,000 in tax.

Peter: Wow, that could be, one, a lot of time

Lisa: Yes.

Peter: And two, that money is already spent.

Lisa: It is. You know, it came out of her pocket and it would have been – maybe not real simple, but if we could address that upfront and pointed that out things could have been handled and structured possibly a lot different.

Peter: Okay so anybody who’s listening who’s thinking about or in the middle of divorce, especially if you’re from the Tulsa area, you better look up Lisa. Outside of that you can still find Lisa, I’ll have her information on the website, how to contact her, but it’s making sure that your attorney and your CPA, or your specialized CPA, are communicating in a manner that the divorce decree is awarded in a way to help both of you put yourself in a better tax position than without having that advice.

Lisa: Exactly. There are many times I will be hired as a joint consultant so that I am advising both parties in a divorce so they both get the same information so they’re both better educated and understand what the outcome is going to be if they divide assets a certain way. Understanding what the true value of an asset is. Like I said, even something as simple as how are we going to file our tax return this year. You know, what filing status do we use, who gets to claim the exemptions for the kids, who get certain tax credits. By moving some exemptions from one parent to the other sometimes there’s some tax credits that get lost, and even though you may be using the CPA, if that CPA is not familiar with some of the very specific aspects related to divorce they’re going to miss that and it may end up costing you additional tax.

Peter: And keep going back to who’s getting the chickens.

Lisa: [laughs] Yes there is that.

Peter: Let’s take a different course, because in your introduction you said you got into accounting because you didn’t like dealing with people and you want to sit behind your desk and look at the computer.

Lisa: Exactly.

Peter: And then in your background you say you deal with people a lot and you’re doing presentations.

Lisa: Yes.

Peter: And we’re having this conversation, we’re actually look at each other in the eye versus our shoes, because you know the introverted accountant from the extrovert accountant? The introvert account, when they’re talking to you, looks at their shoes. The extrovert one looks at your shoes. So we’re actually making eye contact and stuff. So how did you change that philosophy? How did you change that way of working, realizing that you’re in the relationship building business. Very technical, but it involves building relationships.

Lisa: It was not by choice, no.

Peter: [laughs]

Lisa: I jumped into it when I started doing the business valuation work working with attorneys, which had led to the divorce work, which led to working with spouses that were going through a divorce, and it’s amazing how much, especially with sometimes working with women, you become more than just their CPA, you become very involved and I have been to court just to hold their hand. Not for any other reason but I think it’s that interaction – having to interact with people, having to understand people, having to communicate – and in testifying in court, having to take the knowledge I have and break it down for the judge to understand, for a jury to understand, for the parties involved to understand, one, to alleviate some of the arguing. And as far as the presentations, was I terrified to do it? Yes. Am I still? Yes.

Peter: Yes, And. Yes, And.

Lisa: Yes, and. Yes, there is no but. I am so sorry.

Peter: [laughs]

Lisa: Yes I’m still terrified and I know I have it, I have knowledge and I have a skill set that I want to share with people. If I’m not presenting it, it’s not getting out there. So it’s worth having that fear initially. Once I get going I’m fine, but it’s worth having that initial terror – more than fear – of getting in front of people, but I know at the end of the day they walk away better with more knowledge. They were way better educated. I’ve given them something, I’ve given them tools.

Peter: But you also said in our conversation that this terror leading up to it, when you’re done, you always say, “Well it wasn’t that bad.”

Lisa: No it never was that bad.

Peter: But you’re telling yourself, and I understand that you’re telling yourself all the things that could go wrong vs possibly could go right and and and stuff.

Lisa: Absolutely.

Peter: So was it practice over time? Did you take any courses, public speaking courses or anything like that, to help in your presentation skills? Your public speaking?

Lisa: No, the only public speaking course I took was my freshman year in college, and I think it made a B because I didn’t want to present, I just wanted to write.

Peter: So they gave you before not presenting, wow I could have an a-plus-plus.

Lisa: I did present, I probably just did a really, really bad job at it.

Peter: So you’re much more of a writer than a presenter back then.

Lisa: Yes.

Peter: But you’ve had to adapt to different situations. Well I look at it so as your role increased, as your experience increased, it became less technical knowledge but taking that technical knowledge and translating it into a language somebody else could understand, It sounds like you just forced yourself to do it.

Lisa: I did. And it started some also going back to school. I love to learn, I love going to school. If I could get paid to go to school I would. Unfortunately I can’t, so I took it a little bit different Avenue and I taught a few undergrad, a few graduate level online classes. The online classes were okay because there wasn’t that interaction, but it was also not having that interaction with people that made it very, very difficult to teach.

Peter: Mm, yes.

Lisa: Some learned very quickly, it’s much better having that one-on-one interaction, being able to demonstrate something. I took some of what I learned there, took it to the next level in developing presentations, and I think by having a PowerPoint presentation and being able to break everything down and knowing that it’s something I really truly know very well, it’s a very strong knowledge base of mind that I’m explaining. It comes very easy to explain that.

Peter: Okay.

Lisa: So I don’t have that fear, it’s just the fear being in front of people, but I know what I’m saying I know very well.

Peter: So you’re extremely knowledgeable. You’re not so much afraid of the way out type of question because you’ve already pretty much addressed that in some way, shape or form. So you could go in, really, without a PowerPoint presentation, and say okay, what questions do you have, and more or less be able to do that type of presentation because of that thorough knowledge.

Lisa: Unless I totally panicked and forgot everything I know, yes.

Peter: [laughs] Unless you blacked out because I don’t have the powerpoint.

Lisa: [laughs] Yes.

Peter: The other question I had is you said that your husband’s in sales.

Lisa: Yes.

Peter: So he’s got the gift of gab in sales.

Lisa: He does.

Peter: Did he try to help you with this or did he just say okay just have at it now?

Lisa: No, because I don’t think he really understands what drives me to do it. He knows how much of an introvert I was, as I truly am. We started dating in high school so he saw the shy, introverted, nerdy person that I was, and I do revert back to that occasionally, but he’s also seen what that has developed into.

Peter: I think there’s a time of experience, maturity, that we can push through that shy. I think we all can. I just think it’s the ability that we want to do that and get past that. I mean I was very much a very shy individual, and I still at times at social gathers will feel it kick in and I’ll just take it like a step back and say, no no no, just plow through the wall and just what’s the worst thing that – well I’ll just leave it there. [laughs]

Lisa: There are.

Peter: Yeah, I do use my filter much better these days than I did way back in the day, but I’ve learned a lot through that and learned to accept failure and learn from it just in order to get better bit.

Lisa: But – no, no buts – and I’m still learning.

Peter: [laughs]

Lisa: It’s taking that knowledge and the fact that I can give that to people. I love giving people the skills to be able to make decisions. I never want to direct people to make a certain decision, but I want to give them the tools and the knowledge. I want to educate people. I want them to be able to make good decisions. If I can do that through presentations, I would love to. One-on-one consulting with clients, knowing that I am helping them make better decisions, is really what I’m working toward.

Peter: So I hear a passion.

Lsa: Absolutely.

Peter: And there it is again. [laughs] But I do hear that passion, and a lot of times in social settings, a lot of times in public speaking presentation, that passion trumps everything else. That passion helps fuel that need to share this information, because like you said you want to help people. There’s obviously a monetary piece to this, but just listening I don’t think that’s the main driver. I think that’s a component of it but I think the main driver is how much you want to help people, and having to avoid unnecessary costs –

Lisa: Yes.

Peter – unnecessary tax, when it could be structured in a way that would protect them at a lower investment. You would be a lower cost than tax in the long run.

Lisa: That’s a good summary.

Peter: In my mind, that’s the ideal partner in any type of firm. We’re not in a transaction business, we’re in a relationship-building business. We should always keep that content, that knowledge, close to our chest. The more that you can share that information, whether it be through public speaking, whether it be through articles, whether it be through newsletters or whatever, and not charge for it, that’s an attraction because that helps increase your level of authority. And when you get to that level of authority people start gravitating, but it takes a lot of time, a lot of energy, in order to start gaining traction with that.

Lisa: It does. I would love to say I am, that this is just out there and everybody knows who I am and when they have a divorce problem or an IRS problem they come to me. We’re not there yet, but it is gaining traction. I am getting more and more referrals from other clients who have had a divorce situation that now know somebody that are referring clients to me. I’m also getting more and more of a client base with people that are struggling with IRS problems: IRS notices for delinquent taxes; IRS notices for taxes they didn’t know they owed, due to an ex-spouse sometimes; IRS issues due the fact they didn’t file tax returns for a number of years. So that is another smaller niche area that I do quite a bit of work in, which is also stemming somewhat from the divorce arena because, unfortunately, in a divorce situation there’s financial issues, one of the spouses maybe isn’t quite forthcoming on everything and then there ends up being taxes that weren’t paid, things that weren’t reported, and now you’ve got this ex-spouse that is liable for this outstanding tax bill. And then there are ways to handle that, there are ways to relieve that liability, sometimes, for that spouse, but in doing that, because I guess I kind of have a little bit of a reputation for cleaning up IRS tax messes, I also deal with non divorce-related tax issues. But to me that’s helping still helping people. It’s helping people with a problem overcome the problem, acknowledging there’s a problem and figure out how to tackle the problem. We don’t always make it go away entirely, but we find a solution.

Peter: Finding a solution. That’s that’s the key. I like how you worded it earlier, to the fact that I’m trying to educate and help them, because you don’t direct but you want to give them enough tools, enough knowledge, so when they’re in this situation they can make better decisions, or at least know, I don’t remember Lisa talking about this, let’s pick up the phone and give her a call and use you as some type of counsel. I also wrote down in my notes that when you were going to the courthouse with a client just to be there to hold their hand or whatever. I went that’s a huge amount of empathy that you are helping with your client, and empathy is something that maybe our profession doesn’t do enough of. Empathizing with the person in the other shoes. I don’t know – some people I talk to it’s not part of their vocabulary, and I think those who do and it’s part of the vocabulary in building this type of relationship build stronger relationships with their clients than others who do not, because empathy is huge.

Lisa: I do. I try. You do sometimes have to find that fine line between being there twenty-four/seven but also being available when they need it, and that partially, probably, comes from the very first divorce I worked in. We’re sitting in the attorney’s conference room, husband and wife. We’re sitting there, they’ve been married for a number of years, and the awful things that were coming out of that husband’s mouth about the wife. I thought, how in the world were they ever married, how in the world could he ever say he loved her, and I thought I can’t do this job. I cannot cannot listen to this. I cannot be a part of this. And at that moment I can either walk away and not do any of this or I can be there to help people through this. So maybe that is part of the empathy, knowing what they’re going through, that they’ve got a lot of other struggles other than just the financial struggle.

Peter: Yeah. Yes, there are a lot of other struggles, as anybody who’s in the audience who has been through a divorce knows. There’s a lot of emotion that’s going on. A lot of raw emotion that’s going on, and the ability to separate negotiations from these types of conversations, to really get the emotion out and just work with the facts tends to go a longer way, but still having that empathy for that person, knowing that they’re coming to you, but there’s a lot behind them that you might not be seeing, and that even just holding their hand or giving him a hug goes a long way.

Lisa: It does, and I think it’s part of that – seeing a litigated divorce, and a very nasty litigated divorce – that’s also let me to become very involved with a group in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There’s a collaborative divorce group. It is a group of attorneys, financial professionals and mental health professionals, and in a nutshell it is non-litigated divorce. You agree from the very beginning that this is not going to go to trial, is not going to be litigated. If someone should through the process decide to litigate it, any parties that you’ve been using can no longer be involved in the divorce process. It’s just a much nicer way of handling the divorce. It’s easier on the parties, easier on the children. Everybody’s a lot more forthcoming and things tend to work easier.

Peter: And this is what again?

Lisa: It’s called collaborative divorce.

Peter: Never heard about that one but that’s interesting. It does sound like a kinder, gentler type of a divorce vs the litigation, the nastiness, and and when I think of litigation, the nastiness that surrounds a divorce, I go immediately to Wedding Crashers, the opening scene where they just call each other these terrible names but once they were able to take the emotion out of it and just stick to kind of the facts, things worked out.

Lisa: Right, and not not to get off subject but in a collaborative divorce, you know, everybody that is involved, all the professionals, have been trained. They have been through hours of training on this process. Everybody’s on the same page. Everybody’s working together.

Peter: Maybe that’s the way of divorces. We’re working together towards a common goal, all the while knowing that we will be separated at some point. At least being civil, because in most cases you’ve got children involved. Yeah it does leave a scar on a lot of children and stuff. So to see mom and dad divorced in a kinder, gentler way,

Lisa: Yes.

Peter: Hopefully that’s the wave of the future.

Lisa: We’re trying to make it that way. I’d love if everybody could do this. Of course it doesn’t work for everybody. Some people are just going to want to fight and be nasty and not be forthcoming and that’s just going to happen, but for those that it could work for it’s a much better way, and because you also have a financial person involved you know there’s somebody there working with both parties as a neutral on some of the financial issues.

Peter: Wow. I don’t know about you guys but I’ve now been schooled in the areas of tax, divorce, and you know it’s a very niche market but it is a very – I said marriage is a leading cause of divorce, and if you’re thinking about going with her divorce or in the process of one, just know that you might need a little bit more information. I will have all the information, if you’re in Tulsa or if you’re not in Tulsa, on how to contact Lisa and her firm to maybe help you along. An investment in her may save you a lot of money in the long run. Lisa, once again thank you so very much. I’ve enjoyed this conversation much more so than I thought when we first started, because, one, the fascination of your background, and, two, how you’re out there and really, truly have this passion for trying to help people, which is a great thing. So once again, thank you for being here. I greatly appreciate it.

Lisa: And thank you. I greatly appreciate the opportunity and I love sharing what I’m passionate about.

Peter: Cool. Well Lisa, before we wrap up this podcast I like to let my audience get to know the person just a little bit better, so I’ve come up with ten quick kind of rapid-fire questions I’d like you to answer. Are you up for this?

Lisa: Sure.

Peter: Okay, she says that with not a lot of confidence.

Lisa: No, no confidence at all.

Peter: [laughs] By the way, just for full transparency, I forgot to ask these questions when I was at Tulsa and we were doing this face-to-face so now we’re doing it over FaceTime, and when I asked Lisa what she was doing today she said she was at work answering IRS notices, and she said that she can find a fun way to answer IRS notices, which absolutely made me laugh. So just a little transparency with what’s going on in her life today, and she’s smiling and she’s answering IRS notices.

Lisa: I guess you have to find the entertainment value, otherwise it would just be a very mundane, boring day.

Peter: I think you should write a column, an article or a book – maybe that’s the title of a book that you can get out: How To Make IRS Notices Entertaining.

Lisa: Entertaining, yes. I wouldn’t say fun. Entertaining, yes.

Peter: Okay, first question: chicken-fried steak or chicken-fried chicken?

Lisa: Both

Peter: Okay, I’m afraid to ask this but what’s the difference between chicken-fried steak and chicken-fried chicken?

Lisa: Chicken-fried steak the meat is steak, it’s beef. Chicken-fried chicken is chicken.

Peter: It’s chicken, okay.

Lisa: They’re just cooked the same way.

Peter: The reason why I asked this question is because on my trip to Tulsa I got introduced to chicken-fried steak at a restaurant that claims that they’re the best in Tulsa, and quite frankly it was very very good, but both of them require gravy, right?

Lisa: Right, yes. Absolutely.

Peter: Can’t have it without gravy.

Lisa: No.

Peter: Then it’s just nothing.

Lisa: No you wouldn’t eat it without gravy.

Peter: You wouldn’t eat it without gravy. Then if you eat it without gravy you can use it to keep your table from wobbling.

Lisa: Absolutely.

Peter: What’s your favorite movie?

Lisa: That’s hard and there’s lots of them but American Graffiti and Top Gun.

Peter: American Graffiti. Wow, okay. I get Top Gun, but it is not too many people, women especially, who say, I really never like Top Gun and all, especially the volleyball scene, I really didn’t like that.

Lisa: Yeah, no.

Peter: Yeah my wife keeps that on a loop. Who’s your favorite actor or actress?

Lisa: Richard Gere.

Peter: Richard Gere. An Officer and a Gentleman.

Lisa: Yeah but he was too young.

Peter: What’s one of his more recent ones that you’ve seen?

Lisa: I absolutely can’t remember at the moment.

Peter: [laughs] She drew a blank.

Lisa: I did.

Peter: Next question: Coke or Pepsi?

Lisa: Coke.

Peter: Cheers or Family Ties?

Lisa: Cheers.

Peter: Halloween or Thanksgiving?

Lisa: Halloween.

Peter: I knew that one. [laughs] Oh here’s a good one for you. The golden driller or the golden arches?

Lisa: The golden driller of course.

Peter: Of course. Golden driller is a big statue in Tulsa of a golden driller.

Lisa: Yes and his name is Derek. He’s Derek the Driller.

Peter: Derek the Driller.

Lisa: Yes.

Peter: Like Thomas the Train, but Derek the Driller.

Lisa: Mmm, kinda.

Peter: Kinda… different. [laughs]

Lisa: [laughs]

Peter: What’s your favorite boy band? [laughs]

Lisa: [laughs] I don’t know that I could have a favorite boy band.

Peter: [laughs] Okay, Madonna or Eminem?

Lisa: Madonna.

Peter: And the last question, outside of being on this podcast, what is one item on your bucket list that you wish you could check off sooner than later?

Lisa: A trip to Alaska.

Peter: A trip to Alaska. That would be fun.

Lisa: Yes.

Peter: See, it wasn’t that painful at all was it.

Lisa: No, it was much better than I anticipated.

Peter: And we got a great laugh out of it, so once again thank you for taking time and we will get this put into the podcast so everybody can also get a good laugh from it. Thank you very much Lisa.

Lisa: Thank you

Improv Is No Joke – Episode 18 – Mark Wyssbrod

Peter: Hey everybody I’m really excited that I’ve got the Mark here with me, Mark Wyssbrod. First and foremost, Mark, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule. I know you’re a very busy individual as I follow you on Facebook and you’re always somewhere. I think recently I saw you were either in China or somewhere in the Far East, so thank you for taking time. I greatly appreciate it.

Mark: Well I appreciate being here Peter. I always enjoyed our conversations and time together.

Peter: So Mark why don’t you tell the audience a little bit about yourself.

Mark: Sure, I am a CPA. I grew up in the small firm world and decided to go out on my own. I had a special firm called Pro@ctive CPA. I wanted that to be the mindset instead of reacting to circumstances. To be proactive. And that led to a stint in Improv, during what I call the small business depression. I had to learn how learn how to re-communicate with my clients. Being able to really communicate, but also improv allowed me to always look for solutions. It helps to address a lot of the challenging mindsets and financial conditions we face. So as we came out of those challenges my clients were well-positioned. About three years ago, I sold my tax firm and I vowed to transition my life into what I call a local capitalist. I spend a lot more time with my family, a lot more time volunteering, and I now have a firm called Small Business CFO where I have invested directly into local businesses and take a CFO position.

Peter: Wow. I guess the audience have picked up when you said the magic word on why we enjoy each other’s conversation so much, when you said the word improv, and just so you know that mark is also a contributing author in the book Improv to Improve Your Business. He contributed chapter 11 called Pro-Solution Thinking. It’s still out there on Amazon. It’s a good read. I’ve read two or three times over the years. I always go back and try to read a lot of my improv books like that that I’ve purchased, and I’m just always trying to get ideas. So tell us how you were able to have better communication? Looking for solutions during a very difficult time. Are there any type of examples that you could share with us that you did with your clients in order to achieve that goal?

Mark: Yes there’s a homebuilder, $20 million home builder at the time and my largest client, and I was in my late twenties. I approached him in mid-2007 and shared with him my concerns, and his response was, and I’m paraphrasing, but his response was, “change your attitude or I’m going to find a new CPA,”

Peter: [laughs]

Mark: And I went, well, that wasn’t the response I was looking for. And so I said well the problem is probably that I’ve gotten used to my accounting chair and and I need to be able to effectively communicate, and part of that was remembering a childhood lesson and that was, I want to tell you the the phrase that I was told: if you’re going to complain about something or say something’s wrong you have to bring three solutions or don’t open your mouth. And so the combination of creativity in solution orienting from that childhood lesson, combined with improv, allowed me to then go back to this home builder and better communicate the challenges I see, and where they needed to try to adjust their strategy going into the tail end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008.

Peter: And how did he take to that conversation when you went back to him? Because I absolutely love that. Don’t bring your problems, bring me the problem along with three solutions to fix it.

Mark: Yeah, he listened, and that was important. That’s phase one. It took about three to four months of you, you know – Just because I took an improv class or decided I have the solution doesn’t mean he would listen right away. He makes his living in this industry. He doesn’t want to hear bad news. He has all his net worth at stake. He has leverage, and those are risks, so it was a fallout conversation, and letting him see some what if scenarios for him to begin making decisions about what risks were acceptable to him, and bringing up his own examples: Well would you have done this five or ten years ago? You’ve been in building 30-plus years, does this sound normal to you?

Peter: So I like how you did that. You put it in a context that he could understand. You said the magic word and he listened, which is the key, and really to everything but it’s really the key and improv. And getting him to the point of listening and then helping him understand the challenges that he was facing because, quite frankly, I don’t know too many entrepreneurs who like bad news. [laughs]

Mark: But you know, I tend to have a good accounting side where I don’t like surprises, good or bad. Bad news isn’t always bad news, it’s how we interpret it. So the ventures I’m in now all have challenges. I’m there for solutions. I want to put my happy face on, but if we didn’t have these challenges, good or bad, as professionals we wouldn’t be needed.

Peter: That’s a very good point. You know, I believe that I embrace change, actually embrace challenges, because, to your point, without them what would we be doing? It wouldn’t be any any fun – it just wouldn’t be any fun. It could go either way, good or bad, I guess that’s one thing that, when I think about improv, its ability to take risks, accept risks, accept that failure is part – as long as it’s not major failure – is part of that the process to find a better solution. And you were able to bring this at a CFO level to, you said, smaller kind of businesses that are out there.

Frank: Correct. So the the 4 or 5 major businesses I’m on now, for the most part, are under $10 million in revenue and couldn’t necessarily afforded a full-time CFO position, but what the vision and where these companies are heading, they need that guidance and they need the experience and they need someone that they could be open and honest with them and help navigate the course. These are individuals that I’ve known for, in some cases, up to 10 years, so there’s a comfort already in the trust. So you cannot be more direct in those cases with your communication but you still have to make sure that those experiences, that if you have a good idea or suggestion, you still have to communicate in a way where someone will hear. It’s interesting that this year has been a challenging year in a handful those ventures, and what I’ve loved about it is no one’s panicked. Most of the cases everyone’s come back down to the basics and one conversation I had last week I said, “It’s amazing how hard, sometimes, the basics can be.” I think a good part that we have to remember as business owners and managers is, during those times of extreme stress, duress and challenge to stay focused, be bold, be strong, and definitely don’t panic.

Peter: And would you say that during those times that chaos surrounds us, do you think sometimes that maybe business owners or individuals themselves tend to focus on things they can’t control and get caught up in that process, versus – I think one of things that improv has taught me is only in those chaotic situations I tend to see more clear now because I focus only on the things that I can control, not the things that I can’t control.

Mark: I’m gonna indirectly answer that question, maybe, and say that the crisis shows who the real leaders are, and who the people on your team that have character are. It’s really easy to run a business when everything goes smoothly. It’s really easy to be the nice guy when everyone says hello to you. But when you have a couple hiccups, you find out who is ready to step up. For most people it’s very comforting to go back to, during those challenging times, to go to what they feel that they could excel at, but that’s only one part of your business. For most of us, as small business owners, we’re pulled in a facet of different directions, and we only specialize in a couple of them, and so we have to be really cautious in those times that we’re not just doing what we enjoy to do.

Peter: Yeah. We have to do the hard stuff as well, but I like the way how you also said maintain that intense focus and not panic. I think sometimes when we panic we just exacerbate the whole situation even more. We get caught up in a little bit too much drama in itself and maybe make more out of it versus, at times, just taking a simple deep breath and then let’s just think this through for a moment.

Mark: That’s right. Fear’s a dangerous force and it spirals out of control and you use all your your mind power on these what if scenarios that the probability of happening is close to zero.

Peter: So basically you tell me I need to quit doing the “what if I win the the lottery” scenarios [laughs]

Mark: [laughs] Stop “what if” and start saying “yes, and.”

Peter: You know you may have just coined something there my friend. Stop saying What If and start saying Yes, I will give you credit all the time for that, but that is brilliant. Thank you.

Mark: I’m going to write that on my whiteboard after this.

Peter: I’m doing the same thing, and I’ll just put your name beside it because when I do use it – which I will be – then I will give you credit for that. But that was worth the price of admission right there. So you’re in the Atlanta area, you’re in the Georgia Society of CPAs. Can you tell the audience – I just want to take a little curve here. I do believe, if my memory serves me correctly, over the last year or so you’ve received some pretty impressive awards, my friend.

Mark: Yeah I guess I won the the Super Bowl and then retired. In 2013, I was honored with a Small Business Person of the Year by the Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce. Spring of 2015 it was the Public Service Award by the Georgia Society of CPAs, and then I’m going to give away my age to a degree. I was named Top 40 Under 40 last Fall by the North Atlanta Business Post, and a lot of those were not just business contributions, but I love giving back. It’s true volunteering. This isn’t networking, it’s not marketing, it’s how do I improve my community, how did I take care of my neighbors in need?

Peter: You are very philanthropic my friend, and congratulations on those Awards. Well-deserved. And I think that’s something that maybe we forget about at times because we get caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday, and then with family and kids and everything else, and I’m guilty of that as well – of forgetting to give back, forgetting just to volunteer and just to help, and I’m trying to find new ways of doing that. But you know that that’s also speaks to your character, which is of very high-quality

Mark: Well thank you. And I’ll challenge you, Peter. Find something you’re passionate about. There’s a there’s a non-profit out there, and if you align your passion, or one of your passions, with a local nonprofit it becomes a part of you. It becomes very natural to start giving more and more of your time and resources and energies to it.

Peter: Yeah I agree and I’m kibitzing a little bit on my giving back. For a number years I was on the Ohio CPA Foundation, you know, I helped them feed the pipeline. I owe a lot back to the profession, I will keep doing that in different ways, but it’s what is that passionate outside of that it. And I know what it is, I have to take the step and volunteer and get more involved with it, but that’s something that we all should be doing. So we’ve got entrepreneur extraordinaire, a gentleman who has embraced the principles of improvisation and continually uses them, as you’ve heard him talk about how to bring solutions. What has been the biggest challenge in all of this? That you could say, in taking that improv mindset, applied it into business and getting the buy in on the other end?

Mark: I think for me it is my personality. I’m very data-centric, so you could feed me data and then more data. I love it. I can’t get enough of it. And matter-of-fact, in a lot of conversations I will give you facts and then I’ll give you more facts and that’s, I guess, that’s my comfort zone. A lot of people don’t necessarily appreciate all the facts though, because they say that’s called speaking accounting instead of speaking English or human.

Peter: [laughs]

Mark: It’s remembering that you still have to connect to a diverse audience. In each one of the business ventures there’s unique personalities and characters and being able to relate to them. That means I have to come out of my shell and my comfort zone, but I need to know my personality, because the worst part is my personality says, under stress or duress. I become even more data-centric, until I have to make the conscious decision to make sure my word selection and phrases are appropriate for this situation. And I’ll tell you that can be challenging to me. I tend to be more that accountant personality, and I wish I was a better oracle, I guess. Communication, but I have to work on the continuously.

Peter: I applaud you for working on it because I think a lot of lot of people in the profession, who are very data-centric, the professional financial services or whatever don’t go the extra mile in what I call translating the accounting language, the data, into English. Because we do speak a different language in the financial community, and accounting is the language of business, but we need to become better translators. So I applaud you for recognizing that fact and finding different ways to connect with others who are not like you. A lot of people in the profession, and I know a number of them, refused to change that language because maybe it makes them feel smarter than their client. But what they’re doing is they’re really not connecting with them. And you’ve gotten out of your comfort zone, you’ve connected with them, and clearly you say you wish you were a better oracle, but I’ve known you for a while. I’ll meet you in Atlanta and in Columbus, and for the times that we’ve gotten together man I would not call you a data-centric kind of guy.

Mark: [laughs]

Peter: So I’m learning a little bit more about you now. [laughs]

Mark: When it comes down to it we’re in relationships with one another. The end product when I was in my CPA firm was a tax return or some type of financial analysis or correcting quickbooks, but if you can’t connect with your client, if they don’t understand your value proposition, if you can’t speak their language then you’re really just a bill to them. They don’t understand you, they don’t get you, so you’re just a bill, and what you want to be is that confidant, what you want to be is that professional, that right hand arm – someone they could turn to not just in good times but in bad times to present solutions in ways that they could understand, so they could go implement them in their business.

Peter: Man, you just hit the nail on the head, and you put it so well. Because, as you well know in our profession, where we keep throwing around the word trusted business advisor, but to your point if you’re not connecting with your client you’re just a bill. You’re just the CPA, You’re just the accountant. But when you can connect with them then you get different perception about yourself and you’re seeing someone who can help them in their business, not just provide this end product. And that’s number two that you’ve said already today. I mean, I don’t know if you saw me but when you’re talking about that I had my hands up, and inside my head I’m going, “Woo hoo!” That’s what I’ve been talking about, and I don’t know if you saw in Accounting Today, in the May addition, I had an article published. It says it’s time for us to get from behind a desk, basically speaking to that point. But the way you described it, if we’re just perceived as a bill or naturally connecting is huge.

Mark: Well thank you. Oh you know it just reminds me of another example. What I love about some of the different ventures is I get to do different things and get out of the desk and see the other side of accounting. And one of the ventures I’m in imports product from overseas, and to build rapport with the warehouse team when a container comes in I actually go there and help them unload the container, and they want to see that the accountant is getting his hands dirty, but I also brought in the account manager who’s there every day. And why am I getting my hands dirty? One, it gives me product knowledge. It has built more spirit decor than I would have thought. But also we’re doing the count as the stuff comes off the container instead of taking it off the container and then doing the count. There’s a lot of efficiency, so you know, getting out of behind your desk can be very beneficial, not just to you but for the the whole team.

Peter: That’s well put because, “What’s the CFO doing down here? Is something wrong? Is he bringing an Excel spreadsheet for me to look at? What do you mean he’s rolling up his sleeves and counting? I mean, I can see the warehouse. It’d be instant connection.

Mark: It’s great. I don’t mind being a little dirty and we get to high five and kind of feel good about one another, and it’s good work, so I enjoy it when one of those containers comes in. At the same time I’ll tell you, part of that spirit in building that relationship is, I’ve missed a couple of containers. So today when I showed up, I got teased: Where was I for the last two?

Peter: [laughs]

Mark: So, when you start something like that, you better stick around.

Peter: Well said, well said. So out what type of our industries are your clients? Obviously we have an import business. Who else are you managing out there?

Mark: That one is a water collection business, and there’s a small fund shop, a development company and a payroll company.

Peter: And is it just you and the business? Or do you have a team?

Mark: So the payroll company I’m a Founder and I sit on the board and give strategic direction, so that’s pretty fun. In the development company my role is from office manager to bookkeeper to CFO, so it’s like us being an entrepreneur, right? I’m janitor,

Peter: [laughs]

Mark: and yeah I might have some initials but sometimes you do everything. In the water coaching business I’m the CFO and do a lot of presentations and meet with some venture capitalists, primarily to tell them no, but to fine tune my pitch and to hear what the what the marketplace is willing to offer. They sent me to China to visit factories, to look at inventory timing, increase efficiency, so that’s what I love. I love the challenge of putting all the pieces together, and just when you think you have them together then technology changes, or there’s some business interrupter that keeps you on your toes.

Peter: Yeah, yeah. It doesn’t sound like you have a boring day at all with all the hats you’re wearing.

Mark: No, it’s a quite entertaining.

Peter: So wait do you wake up on a Monday and you go, which hat am I supposed to be wearing today?

Mark: [laughs] Well, Mondays are usually the developer days. So I know where I’m going on Mondays.

Peter: How long were you in China?

Mark: I was in China almost two weeks. I started off in the Hong Kong area, kinda up the coast, and then in the Shanghai area when we exited. But just what what an amazing experience. And some people say the Chinese love it when you go in person because it shows respect and, you know, builds a relationship, but I gotta tell you Peter, I think anything in person – if you share a meal or a cup of coffee with someone – when you put that time, that effort or willingness, I think it’s just a basic human thing that you’re going to build relationships.

Peter: Yeah I completely agree with that, but I like the word respect. Even having breakfast or lunch face-to-face with somebody here in the States, whatever, there is a matter of respect that’s immediately baked into that. So you’re there for two weeks. Was this your first trip to China?

Mark: It was my first trip to China.

Peter: So how’s your Chinese?

Mark: What I remember I’ve forgotten unfortunately. But I can speak ein wenig Deutsch.

Peter: What does that mean?

Mark: A little german

Peter: Oh, okay [laughs]

Mark: We have suppliers for that company also in German, actually.

Peter: Do you have plans on going to Germany anytime soon?

Mark: The two others owners enjoy going to Germany so they’ll probably a take that one for me, unfortunately, but I actually really enjoyed China. It gives you a cultural perspective and appreciation

Peter: Yeah I can only imagine. I was in Tokyo, many years ago, for Victoria’s Secret, and it gave me a different perspective on the rest of the world and some of the challenges the rest of the world has. Mark I tell you what, I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. You’ve knocked two of them completely out of the park and I’m writing them on my whiteboard as soon as we’re done. I can’t thank you enough for sharing your wisdom, sharing your stories on this podcast. I know you’ve been a great supporter of mine and I am a supporter of yours, and I look forward to the next time we see each other. It’s more likely that I’m gonna be in Atlanta than you’re gonna come to Columbus

Mark: Well don’t count me out.

Peter: [laughs]

Mark: But I look forward to your next trip here to Atlanta.

Peter: I believe I’m down there in the Fall sometime, but I’ll give you that information. Thank you again for taking time. I believe this audience is gonna walk away with a lot. I will have all your information, your email, contact. I won’t put your phone number out there, but your contact information if people would like to get ahold of you, especially in the Atlanta area if you want to pick up a new client too.

Mark: I appreciate that Peter. I always enjoy our time together.

Peter: Thank you

Mark: Thank you