Dave Cain: Welcome to unsuitable on Rea Radio, the award-winning financial services and business advisory podcast that challenges your old school business practices and the traditional business suit culture. Our guests are industry professionals and experts who will challenge you to think beyond the suit and tie, while offering you meaningful, modern solutions to help enhance your company’s growth. I’m your host, Dave Cain.
The Certified Public Accountant credential is recognized as one of the most trusted business and financial consulting credentials available. Obviously as a CPA firm, we see the value this credential brings to the business community every day. But we also know that not all CPA practices as part of a firm. In fact, businesses often seek out CPAs to join their teams full time, which just so happens to be the case of today’s guest.
For those of you who are longtime listeners of unsuitable, today’s guest needs no introduction, but for those of you who started listening sometime after episode 50, that may not be the case. Therefore, I’m pleased to introduce today’s guest, Mark Van Benschoten. Mark is not only the former director of Rea’s not for profit services team, he was the very first host of unsuitable on Rea Radio.
Mark left Rea a few years ago to accept the chief financial officer position at Roush Honda where CPA credentials continue to drive value. On today’s episode of the podcast, we walk down memory lane a little bit, we will talk about the overall value a CPA brings to the business community and we will talk a little bit about what’s going on in the automotive industry. Really looking forward to today’s conversation.
Welcome back to unsuitable, Mark Van B.
Mark Van Benschoten: Dave it’s great to be here. It’s great to see you. You’re looking very good.
Dave: Good. Not much has changed since you were there. The scripts still suck. They’re hard to read and they give you to the last minute.
Mark: I didn’t want to say dated, but all right. But you have some new equipment.
Dave: Yeah. Looks pretty good.
Mark: It does look very nice.
Dave: You want to talk about obviously the start of this podcast was about four years ago. You were one of the architects along with Rea’s marketing team and here we’re almost 200 episodes later.
Mark: That’s very exciting.
Dave: And what is interesting is, I believe I was your very first guest.
Mark: Yes, you were.
Dave: I don’t know if you know this, but you’re my last guest, last official guest.
Mark: Oh, well that makes me honored. I’ve enjoyed being a part of it. I listened to that regularly. I look back on accomplishments, and being part of this is definitely one of my accomplishments.
Dave: Sure. As we walked down memory lane, you remember where this idea was hatched. There was you, myself and a good friend of ours, Brad Circone …
Mark: Let’s not get carried away.
Dave: Well, that’s true. And we thought, “How in the world we’re going to sell this to the marketing department?” Do you remember that? Well, I do remember that and there’s no way they’re going to buy it. And we talked them into it.
Mark: We did.
Dave: And then we said, “How are we going to sell this to the other partners?”
Mark: And we did.
Dave: And we did. So here we are, congrats.
Mark: It was just an interesting process. Can you have content and obviously you’ve launched that and got over that, and continue to have quality content, which I think is always important. And you’ve got to surround yourself with people that can see, not just a downside, but see what’s the potential. And I think obviously this is a great differentiator between other accounting firms and other professional service firms is being able to do this with sustainability.
Dave: When we started this four years ago, we were certainly on the cutting edge, there weren’t many CPA firms, if any, they had podcasts, but we committed and we were going to do it once a week and we did. And we have. And you guys started that. I want to thank you for that.
Mark: It’s a lot of fun doing it, isn’t it?
Dave: Oh yeah, absolutely. And certainly hats off to the Rea marketing team. Kudos to you guys. And then certainly our producer, Brad Circone, we owe him a lot-
Mark: Does he get paid by the plug?
Dave: He does. He does. He’s wonderful at branding and culture and he recognized that this was something that Rea could use. I gave him a four star rating. I wanted to give them a five star-
Mark: Out of 10?
Dave: No, it was four out of five.
Mark: Oh. Got a spell.
Dave: I wanted to give him the five, but he had that problem a few years ago with farm animals. So I couldn’t really give him a five.
Mark: I thought that didn’t make the news, but I guess I was wrong.
Dave: I guess he has maybe four and a half.
Mark: Four and a half. If you’ve seen the pictures, you still might’ve given him the five.
Dave: That’s a baaad comment. How do we get this thing back?
Mark: I’ve no idea. So obviously the podcast is still a lot of fun to do. It was some of the … Each month I look forward to the … . I think Thursday’s yeah, we did do them on Thursdays and it was always just a lot of fun and always allowed me to be creative. Right. And people’s like, “Oh, accountants aren’t creative.” And that’s-
Dave: Right.
Mark: … maybe some aren’t, but you and I are right and so is Rea. And it was just always very enjoyable to come in here and be creative, learn. I learned so much from interviewing the people and having the conversations and I just thoroughly enjoyed those days. And I miss that. When I went to work Roush I missed doing that.
Dave: So to our listeners, if they’re thinking about a podcast, a starting or just thinking, I think a conversation with-
Mark: Brad Circone?
Dave: … Rea’s marketing team.
Mark: Well that’s three.
Dave: He’s out on the farm Fridays. So he may not be able-
Mark: That’s true. Right, if you’re contemplating talking to the Rea marketing team, they can understand, what you need from equipment to host, commitment from your other partners or other owners who you’re going to have and just schedule all of that out. It takes a lot of work and there is a little, you don’t want to fail, but you can’t not do something because you might fail you still have to go forward.
Dave: Yeah. One of my takeaways that I learned just how important a marketing team and a marketing strategy can be in any business. And a take the podcast for example, and the content and that team worked hard to make sure the content was … They studied it and the content was where it needed to be.
Mark: I agree. I was going to say appropriate, but after I last few comments, I’m not sure, but generally appropriate.
Dave: Sure, sure. And those were in my notes. I didn’t make that up. Those were in my notes.
Mark: It’s interesting the marketing and the branding. Roush for an auto dealership and retail and a big movement under foot for us the last few months is digital, YouTube, social media. And you guys, Rea was in front of that with the podcast before our retail organization. That’s commendable, to see the benefit of that, to drive traffic, to get that notice.
Dave: Right, right. You don’t want to talk about the auto industry because it’s … An economy goes, like the auto industry goes. It’s such a driver. And of course I see Roush Honda’s name all over Columbus, Roush Ford all over Columbus. So you guys have done a fantastic job of branding-
Mark: Thank you.
Dave: … and hope you’re building on your own.
Mark: It’s important. We’d love to sell you a car today, but it’s more important for us to sell you a car in two years, in three years and have your kids buy cars and your grandkids and give them serviced. Similar to the public accounting, it’s that relationship is really what we’re striving for. Making an investment into the communities where we live, where we work is also important to get that brand recognition that we’re not just here again, “Oh, we’re going to sell you this car, we’re going to make us money on that car as possible.” But understanding we want to buy that business so you’re going to keep coming back to us.
Dave: The Roush name has been in the marketplace since the 60s, I believe.
Mark: Correct.
Dave: And you guys are an ESOP.
Mark: 100% owned. First auto dealership to be 100% owned in the country.
Dave: Wonderful. That’s a great fact. That’s a fantastic organization and thought process.
Mark: It’s interesting that you have a dealer agreement with a manufacturer and somebody has to sign their name and says, “I am the guy.” When it hits the fan, “I’m the guy.” And they didn’t like, “Well, you’re an ESOP. Who’s the guy?” I guess as father of three daughters, who’s the individual? Who’s the woman? They’d been very slow to overcome this, but you have publicly traded auto dealerships and somehow they get by. But us being employee owned that they struggle with that.
Dave: Right.
Mark: And then when we purchased the Ford Store, Ford had no problem, had no problem. So it’s just interesting that dynamic is-
Dave: Right.
Mark: … what the hurdle is to who can own a dealership.
Dave: As we look at today’s media and what’s ahead of us, at your industry certainly the discussion about tariffs and the taxation and the investment in fuel efficient or electric cars. Can you talk a little bit about, let’s start with the tariffs.
Mark: Sure. I can talk a lot.
Dave: Well, I know you can.
Mark: Wind me up.
Dave: Yeah.
Mark: So the tariffs, we get our cars from our manufacturers, Honda and Ford, we don’t get to negotiate the price. They say, “Here’s your truckload of cars, here’s what you’re going to pay off.” And-
Dave: Here’s what it is.
Mark: A lot of times that money comes out of our bank account even before we get to cars. So-
Dave: To novelty idea-
Mark: And we don’t have a lot of say in that. So the tariffs that are being paid, it doesn’t affect us directly. Ultimately gets passed along to the end consumer, the end buyer. So they’re the ones that any impact, I’m glad to say that units currently are up for us, which obviously very exciting. So we haven’t seen that much of an impact of any tariffs or concern about that. Our business issues tend to relate it to the overall economy interest rates and how do people feel? And I think the economy is doing good right now. I think the economy is doing better than people feel it’s doing. So it’s working well for us.
Dave: Right, right. And so I think we’re just maybe seeing the tip of the iceberg on this tariff thing and you pointed out it’s going to be passed along to the consumer.
Mark: At the end. Correct.
Dave: At the end. I don’t know how any business would not pass that along. You just have to just like any other costs.
Mark: Correct.
Dave: It’s a cost of the year-
Mark: Cost of
Dave: … the widget.
Mark: Correct.
Dave: Yeah. So what about the fuel efficient cars? You know that we are beginning to see in the carbon footprint reduction, what do you sense it had for you guys?
Mark: I don’t want to say it’s a concern. It’s an opportunity. Our business is going to change. Car ownership in theory is on the decline. Here, they keep saying, it was like 17 million new cars were sold last year. And like, “Oh, it’s not going to be that we’re proud pace right now. Probably do 17.19.” That’s not just us.
Dave: Right. I’m just say, “Oh boy, you’re buying.”
Mark: That’s on a national level. But who’s buying those cars? The Uber’s, the Lyfts, these big companies are buying these cars. Rental companies are buying a lot of these cars. So individual ownership is probably on the decline. So what does that mean to us? And we have to figure that out. And the autonomous vehicles, what does that mean? Body shop probably going to go down, the fuel efficient cars, the electric cars, your service department’s going to take a hit on that. But there’s still a lot of cars on the road. It’s not like it’s going to happen tomorrow.
But you have to start thinking about that as to what does that do to your business, your business model? And you have 10 bays, do you need 10 bays? Maybe that could be something else. We need to be proactive, we’re talking about those things as to, “What’s it going to look like in five years, in 10 years, and what will our customers need?” And it’s probably going to be different than what we’re providing today. And you have to be willing to accept that and not run away from it.
Dave: This is again the value of a CPA placed in a very, very complex industry that has the ability to look strategically and also look at the metrics and that’s why we invited you back, Mark. The value is CPA.
Mark: Well I appreciate being back and when I left, Rea? It was a very hard decision. I’d been in public accounting for 29 years, had been at Rea for 10 years and just thoroughly enjoyed the Rea culture, the environment, the opportunity, the people, the clients. And I have a hard time saying no to people. And our president Jeff, he would talk to me about us and say, “Well, what about this? Okay, don’t worry. Well what about this? Don’t worry about it.” And so every hurdle I threw up, he just kept knocking it down until I had nothing else. So I said, “Yes.” And then I got really nervous. I’m like, “Oh man, what if this doesn’t work?”
What am I going to do? well, I haven’t burned any bridges at Rea I think so. But I was nervous. And on my very first day getting around lunchtime and I said, “Jeff, do you have plans for lunch?” He goes, “No.” I said, “Well, let’s go to lunch.” And I went to my goal, “I think we made a mistake. I have no idea what I’m doing.” And he just laughed at me and we still talk about today, and he’s just like, “Just slow down. Everything’s going to be fine.”
And it took me a little while to get my feet underneath me. But being able to add value, think about things strategically from a different lens, I would like to think I have helped. But being able to take your time and say, “Let’s not be reactionary. Let’s just take our time. Let’s figure it out. Let’s be strategic about these things. It’s not just this decision on a Thursday. Well, what’s this mean next Thursday when the same thing’s going to come up, how are we going to handle that one? Let’s get a system, let’s get procedures in place.” And I do think that I added some value to that and that makes me proud.
Dave: Sure. Well, you brought some of the attributes that you learned in the public accounting profession out into industry. You totally did that.
Mark: Oh, correct. Being able to take your time into read contracts, just a lot of contracts. And well, before we sign that, let’s take our time and read that and make sure we’re comfortable and even if we can’t change it, let’s know that you know what we’re getting into.
Dave: Right.
Mark: And that’s, I think has been helpful.
Dave: In your career you were also a longtime director, board of directors on the Ohio Society of CPAs. And then you were the president of the Ohio Society of CPAs, which is a wonderful organization for folks in the CPA profession. But also we learned our Ohio CPA profession is one of the leaders in the country as far as association. You were the president of that organization at one time.
Mark: Another thing that I’m proud of. It is a leader. They tend to think of associations, the bigger the better. Like New York gets a lot of attention, California, Texas. But from a representation standpoint and a thought leader, Ohio is right up there, if not leading that whole group to commitment of people of their time, their passion, dollars, to make that happen. And it’s not a go, “Okay, we’re going to do it for a few years.”
Clark Price was there for a long time. He retired, then they brought in Scott Wiley. And he was definitely the right hire. And it’s fun being part of things successful. It does make it more enjoyable.
Dave: Right, right. Well, the CPA designated-
Mark: Kind of like being a Yankee Fan.
Dave: Oh, you’re that and a giants fan for sure. But the CPA profession for both of us has been just a wonderful profession and I think, would you do it again?
Mark: For sure.
Dave: Would you?
Mark: How did you pick accounting as your profession?
Dave: Oh, I don’t know. I had a relative that was in accounting and he was making a lot of money and he was in industry. I thought, “Oh boy, I want to make a lot of money.” And he was in industry.
That was a wrong way to make the decision, but I saw some of the material things he was able to provide for his family, and it was the CPA designation that I think drew through that too.
Again, ethics, CPAs go through ethics testing on a regular basis. I’ve worked with you enough. I know you take ethics very seriously along with and a lot of our colleagues in the profession. I think that’s one of the things that sticks out for me in the CPA profession is the ethics side of business. How does that translate to today’s business environment folks that you’ve run across?
Mark: Well, it is powerful. At the end of the day, you to be able to put your head down on the pillow and be able to go to sleep. You have to be able to look yourself in the mirror and hopefully not cringe. And you’re making choices throughout the day. And sometimes you do it right. Sometimes you do it wrong, but hopefully when you do it wrong, you go back in and you make it correct. It just has to be imperative. Certified Public Account, you’re trusted. You have a standard, not just to the people that you know of, but those people that you don’t even know that have trusted you with this designation.
You need to uphold that, you can’t shy away from that. And so dealing in business, I would like to think, even if you don’t have a license requirement or an ethics requirement, you’re still going to hold yourself to a standard that you’re proud of and needs to be. And I wish everybody had a little gut check every now and then and say, “What’s the right thing?” Not just from a legal standpoint or regulatory, but what’s the right thing to do? But it doesn’t bother me to take the ethics training that we have to. I enjoy that. I enjoy the thought process, step back and little self evaluation as to what you go through. I think it’s important and I do think it sets us apart.
Dave: As we have learned that young people are shying away from the profession of bit, the numbers are down. I think recently they’ve come up a bit, but again, I think it’s a big springboard to anything that anybody wants to do.
Mark: I agree with that. As I was telling my story before about not going to fit in, I could not think of any better training that I had than to be a CPA and to be a CPA at Rea to go to work in industry and to help my current employer Roush. It was just awesome.
Dave: Prepared you-
Mark: Correct.
Dave: … automatically prepared you.
Mark: From again being creative, being committed to lifelong learning, to building professional relationships, to being able to multitask, to be able to represent yourself and your employer in a positive way. It can go on and on. If you want to get technical about reading contracts, developing pay plans, issuing financial statements. It just goes on and on that the impact that my public accounting experience has helped Roush. I think you should bill him.
Dave: Oh well. We’re getting the billing clerk in here. Yeah, sorry Jeff. Sorry, there it comes. But it goes beyond the metrics and the numbers and I think the stereotype with CPAs are you guys are good at numbers and you’re square. That’s the stereotype. I don’t think you fit that stereotype.
Mark: I don’t think you do either. Right? And they would say we’re not good communicators, but here we’re doing a podcast.
Dave: And it’s helped us.
Mark: Yes. It has.
Dave: It’s helped us. But I think the metrics are one thing. We know enough about the metrics and knowing you, I think it’s the CPA profession gave us an opportunity to expand our leadership skills, our communication skills probably more than any other profession. Because look how many times you had to speak in front of a lot of groups. They’ll come many times you had to mentor and coach.
Mark: It was interesting. I read an article in time, that said that if you’re the smartest person in the room but nobody will listen to you, what good is it? I knew I was never going to be the smartest person in the room, so I had to get people to listen to me. And so trying just to understand people and how they work, how they react and read people and you learn that in public accounting, try to get something across to a client or to a partner or to a friend has been impactful.
I’m not the best accountant. That might be a shock to some people, but I do think when I have something to say, I think people like, they’re going to give me a little bit of credibility in the beginning to listen to me. And it’s not because I’m the smartest accountant.
Dave: I do want to jump back a little bit. As a very successful CFO for Roush Honda being in the automotive industry, can I ask you a couple of questions
Mark: Sure. Yeah.
Dave: You change your own oil?
Mark: Do not.
Dave: You fix your brakes?
Mark: Do not.
Dave: Have you ever sold a car?
Mark: Have not. I need a license to do that. That’s not ethical.
Dave: There you go. Well, why don’t you get the … You could sell a car.
Mark: I could sell a car. Correct.
Dave: Yeah. Now there’s a real talent there.
Mark: There’s a real talent there. I’ve seen the individuals work and there is a real talent there and it it is impressive to be. Again, our mantra isn’t just today’s car, we could sell them some that they don’t need, but they get them it’s like, “No you really don’t need to know that Mustang GT. How about just the regular Mustang that might be fit for what you’re talking about?” And to see them get through that and the people drive off happy and a positive review, that’s a real talent.
Dave: What’s the trade in value of a black Mercedes? You got any?
Mark: Black Mercedes?
Dave: Yeah,
Mark: … the dent on the driver’s side door?
Dave: Yeah. That one. That one. Yeah. What do you think? Tommy Miles you got on that-
Mark Van: Totaled.
Dave: Totaled, totaled. The automotive industry again is I think on the cutting edge. I think you guys are gonna explode.
Mark: Thank you.
Dave: On the economic side. It just feels that way.
Mark: I agree with you and I don’t know if I’m fooling myself. Right now it is very exciting. A lot of challenges, but a lot of opportunities for us and I think we’re positioned to take advantage of those.
Dave: Right. We review some of the things we talked about. Certainly we talked about ESOP. If there’s our listeners who are thinking about an ESOP or having an ESOP that isn’t quite working correctly and we needed to reach out to you,
Mark: Feel free
Dave: Could you talk to them about these? Have you guys got a right? Certainly we talked about what’s new in the auto industry and what’s going on in the value of a CPA and certainly the benefits of the podcast. As we close today’s episode, can you remember some of your favorite moments of unsuitable on Rea Radio?
Mark: Sure.
Dave: Okay. So you remembered, can you share them? I know you remember …
Mark: We were in a conference room and right outside the window was a parking lot. And one time somebody’s car alarm was going off and I just went on this little riff about, “Oh that’s very alarming what you’re saying. Well that’s kind of disturbing.” And I don’t remember who it was. I don’t know if anybody else noticed it, but I was just so proud of myself doing that.
Dave: Yeah.
Mark: And then we had a gentleman to ask your question. I don’t know if you still ask a question like, “If you were a superhero, who would you want to be?”
Dave: No, that was you. That was your blueprint.
Mark: And, something like captain backup or something like that. And he said that he wanted to walk around with big D on his chest.
Dave: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark: How did you handle that? Did the producer leave that in there?
Dave: I just thought that was just gold.
Mark: I’m tearing up thinking about that. I still-
Dave: Oh, folks we’ve lost the room. I don’t know what to tell you. We’ve lost the room.
Mark: And then there was a guy from, I think it was a marketing company, it was the Three30 Group and he was a younger guy. And, and I said, “well why not the Four20 group? And he just looked at me that, “Ah.” He knew what I was saying ….
So nothing of any content quality, but for me being a smart ass. Sure. I love going to Con …
Dave: Hey, you should do a podcast on the automotive industry. I can fix you up with some marketing talent. I can fix you up with a production crew.
Mark: We’ve talked about that at the dealership. But we’re trying to get going, as I mentioned with the YouTube and social media. And I think that’s the next people are buying into that. So I think they could be the next evolution for us. Sure.
Dave: Well, car buying has changed the way people buy cars, has changed.
Mark: Yes.
Dave: Let’s be honest about it, it’s crazy.
Mark: They say that people would go to dealership to find a car. Now they find a car to find … it’s reversed. This is, “Oh, I see you have this car. I want that car.” Before they’d come and say, “Oh, what do you have?” And you could sell what you have on your lot. It has completely flipped.
Dave: And you go on the website and all of a sudden there’s somebody ready to talk to you. What do you need?
Mark: Correct.
Dave: Put your order.
Mark: Correct.
Dave: Our guest today has been Mark Van Benschoten. I did pronounce that correctly.
Mark: You should take-
Dave: There’s one of the few people that can.
Mark: I would see people at Rea could do it. My previous employer but prior to Rea could not. So I appreciate that coming. I only worked there 17 years and they couldn’t get it right.
Dave: They couldn’t get it right. So we know you as Van B. So our guest today has been Van B, CFO of Roush Honda. Mark, thanks for joining us today.
Mark: Thank you very much. You’ve done a great job and good luck in retirement.
Dave: Thank you. You continue to be a great advocate for the CPA profession as well as a great ambassador for Rea and associates. Thanks for coming back to talk to us and hopefully come back sometime soon again.
Listeners, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to unsuitable on Rea Radio, on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, or YouTube. Or visit www.reacpa.com incite and subscribe to our weekly podcast email and get a weekly reminder when a new episode hits. In the meantime, you can help us share today’s episode by liking it, giving it a thumbs up, commenting on it, and sharing it with your network.
Until next time, I’m Dave Cain, accompanied by Mark Van Benschoten alongside Abbey, Becca, Bixler, and Brad.
I encourage you to loosen up your tie and think outside the box.
Disclaimer: If you’ve expressed on unsuitable on Rea radio are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Rea and associates. The podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the professional advice you would receive elsewhere. Consult with a trusted advisor about your unique situation so they can expertly guide you to the best solution for your specific circumstance.