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.
Well, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end and this holds true when it comes to my time here as host of unsuitable as I enter into the wonderful world of retirement. Believe me, after nearly 150 episodes under my belt, I’m pretty invested in the success of the show, so it is important to me to leave it in good hands. Fortunately, picking my successor was an easy decision and I’m pleased to introduce you to the next host of unsuitable on Rea Radio, Doug Houser.
He’s more than just a pretty face. He’s well connected in the business community, is a great coach and mentor, has a handicap index of four, and has fresh ideas for this little podcast of ours. Today, we’re going to get to know Doug a little bit better before he officially takes over the mic. Hello Doug, how are you? Welcome.
Doug Houser: Dave. Great to be here.
Dave: Welcome. What do you think about taking over for unsuitable on Rea Radio?
Doug: A lot of pressure. It’s bittersweet because I love listening to you, but I will do my best to to fill your shoes and we’re going to have some fun with it.
Dave: That’s right.
Doug: Absolutely.
Dave: I think later on in the podcast we’re going to give our listeners a chance to win a gift card, win a hundred bucks for just listening to us. How’s that sound?
Doug: It sounds great.
Dave: Let’s talk about who is Doug Houser. Our listeners want to know. You know, who is this guy? You’ve been on before as a guest before, so we can go back.
Doug: I have, yes.
Dave: Tell us a little bit about your pedigree.
Doug: Well, I’ve got a little bit of a different background for a CPA. I started my career in public accounting 30 years ago. Then got into some different things. Went to grad school full time, got into finance, was a private industry CFO, and now I’m back in the public accounting world. A little bit of a circuitous route and it’s been fun, learned a lot, learned what to do and, and some of what not to do as well. I try to take those experiences and learn a little bit from each and every day and apply it to what I do and go forward.
Dave: And a little did you know that you were going to be in charge of this podcast?
Doug: Who knew?
Dave: I think you’ll have some fun with it. Let’s talk a little bit about, and I’ll kind of take the mic from here, about why you were selected to be a good host. Your name just wasn’t drawn out of a random.
Doug: Random?
Dave: That was a option one and that didn’t work, so we’ve got you now. One of the things that appealed to our audience in our production crew is just your vast background in many different things. I think that will come in handy as you begin to interview our guests, etc. But as you step forward and you’ve had chance to think about that, do you have any future goals for the show or anything you want to change?
Doug: I don’t know, maybe just a few tweaks, kind of bring my own spin to it. I’m not going to change the successful model that we’ve got here, and you and Mark before you have brought to brought to bear here. I think just a few little tweaks from my own image and own experience. One of the things I’ve learned over the years is to try to be a good listener. I spend a lot of time out there talking to companies and businesses, whether there are other third party advisors like ourselves, or business owners, or any of the folks that help them. I just try to learn a little bit each day from them, ask the right questions, let them speak and try to interject where needed and maybe bring a little little humor and arcane knowledge to it as well.
Dave: Sure. I think as you jump into this, what you’ll find out is just how valuable a raised practice growth and marketing department is in this whole process. I mean, they’re the ones that put this together behind the scenes and it made my life a lot easier doing this podcast and it’ll do the same.
Doug: Absolutely.
Dave: I think you’ll find that some of the content that we talk about coincides with the firm’s strategy, the marketing strategy, the marketing budgeting, and things like that. They tie it really nicely together. Be nice, as they say. You know, tip your bartender, tip your waiter, your waitress, be nice to this team, the marketing team, they’ll take care of you.
Doug: Absolutely. I know that well. My youngest daughter’s a waitress right now, so you have to take care of those that work hard.
Dave: They like the tips.
Doug: Yeah, absolutely.
Dave: Are there any particular questions you have for me at this time? I mean, that’s kind of the forum of today’s podcast is we’re going to talk about this podcast. Again, before we turn it over to you, I would tell you that greatest compliment that you will find as you go through this is when a competitor comes to you and says, “Hey, I heard your podcast,” or they try to replicate the podcast. By the time you take over, you’ll be taking over right about the 200, which is four years doing a Unsuitable on Rea Radio, which when we started, we never thought that would be the case. We never thought it would survive 30 days, but it did.
Doug: Yeah. It’s scary. Yeah.
Dave: We’ll turn the mic over for you and have you asked some questions if you want. I’ll try to answer them the best I can.
Doug: I think, you know, a couple of weeks back, you and I had lunch and we sort of talked about the change that’s coming and all that and I tried to pick your brain a little bit, so we’ll try and do a little bit more of that here today. But from your perspective, what do you think has changed from when you started doing this? I mean, obviously technology continues to advance where you can access the podcasts, all those things, so I mean, what do you do to adapt over time?
Dave: Well, it’s just like any other specialty that you and I have been involved in. This looks easy, sounds easy, but our production team, our marketing team begins about a week ahead of the production to put the scripts together, and we’ve got to research the topic, and study, practice it, stand in front of the mirror. Not stand in the mirror that much, but I do practice, because sometimes they throw a little tongue twister at you, so be sure you prepared.
Doug: Watch out for the alliteration.
Dave: Something like that, dangling participles, you know. You’ve got to watch those.
Doug: Got it.
Dave: But yeah, that’s probably the thing that’s changed the most as you get more experienced with being in front of the mic that it just flows pretty easily.
Doug: Yeah. What’s your thought going into it? I mean, do you treat it more as a conversation or really more like an interview, or does it depend on the guest?
Dave: Conversation. I try to make it conversational. Again, I think we can use today’s platform for folks out there that are thinking about doing their own podcast and that’s kind of what we’ve done internally. Of course, hats off to our producer, Brad Zirconia, he’s actually very excellent at setting up the concepts, the ideas, he gives you tips and training, and you’re talking and he’ll kick you in the shins if something’s not going right, but he’s done a nice job of putting it all together for Rae & Associates.
Doug: Love it. Yeah.
Dave: Hopefully I didn’t ruin that for you. Hopefully they’ll do that. What you’ll find, that you’ll have some favorite favorite podcasts. You’ll have some favorite moments, some will go really well. Others, not so well.
Doug: A little bit of a train wreck now and then?
Dave: A little bit of a train wreck and it’s up to you to bring that train back on the tracks because you’ve got to bring it home.
Doug: Yeah. You know, that’s, I think for me, going to be the biggest challenge. I’m used to being out there, as I said, talking to people, business owners, professionals, things like that, but sometimes the conversation can get derailed a little bit, and you get off on a tangent, and next thing you know it’s 20 minutes later and you’ve not really addressed the topics that you perhaps intended to address.
Dave: Sometimes that just happens. You go where your guests takes you.
Doug: Yeah. I think for me, that’s going to probably be the biggest challenge is make sure that I can reign it in.
Dave: You know, when we began this process, it was interesting, none of us had any training, communication training. We’re CPAs, by golly, you know?
Doug: Right. Cut, paste, and assemble.
Dave: That’s right. That’s right. Debits and credits and away you go. But none of us ever had any experience behind a mic, and and so it was a learning curve, and it will be for you or any of our listeners that that do do a podcast.
Doug: Absolutely. I hope everybody’s a little patient.
Dave: I do have a favor for you. I’ve been trying to get the music changed, the intro and the ending music for about four years. I’ve gotten nowhere.
Doug: Nowhere. Okay.
Dave: I don’t know whether you can get that in. You can maybe get some Clash going.
Doug: Yeah, absolutely.
Dave: Except we’d have to pay a royalty, so we’ll have to figure that out.
Doug: Yeah. Would love to.
Dave: I know you’ve positioned with Rea & Associates, you oversee the construction and real estate segment, and I’m sure you will bring a lot of that industry expertise into the podcast, which will be greatly welcomed by a lot of our listeners because that’s a heavy concentration of our client group, so feel free to do that. While I got you here, I’ve got to find out what’s going on in the construction world?
Doug: It’s a hot and heavy right now. If you’re not making money, if you’re not printing money, in fact, then you probably got issues. Frankly, the two biggest things that we’re seeing out there from folks, as everybody knows, a lack of quality workforce, so most of the construction industry is struggling with that. But probably more importantly, we’re seeing some that are just taking on too much business, frankly, and it’s straining liquidity, straining efficiency, so you’ve got to be careful. The opportunities, in some cases, really are almost too robust out there. It’s a bit of a challenge to manage, but Hey, we’ll take this for as long as we can ride it, so why not.
Dave: Sure, sure. Let’s take a few minutes to maybe go down memory lane. As I kind of thought through this, some of my favorite podcasts, I can kind of share those with you.
Doug: Absolutely. I’d love to hear.
Dave: Certainly back in in May, you know, start out with one that we did with a principal of ours, Tim McDaniel, who was recently diagnosed with ALS and the podcast crew production team did a riveting interview with Tim. If half of our listeners have not heard that, maybe go back. It’s a was released mid-May. That was certainly very eventful for this team.
Doug: Sure. Super emotional. Absolutely.
Dave: Another kind of favorite of mine was early on we had an interview with Victoria Burton from Burton Metal Finishing where they had sustained a major, major and lost a lot of their business and facility. We had a very touching conversation about what that meant. The good part about that presentation is there were no injuries, no loss of life, just lost of a facility, but a great story of a great family that struggled to get back on their feet after a catastrophic event.
Doug: Absolutely.
Dave: Those are two that come to mind that are probably the most emotional and you’ll have those emotional ones. I encourage you to bring some of those to the table.
Doug: Absolutely.
Dave: Again, beware. There are some things that happen. Occasionally you just get lost in the podcast. We learned this trick probably in episode number two when we had our guests and they were very nervous.
Doug: Okay. People get nervous, really?
Dave: They do. Now remember, this about 198 episodes that we thought, okay, let’s have a portable bar set up. Someone comes in feeling relaxed, they could get an ice tea, a water, an adult beverage. We continued that, and you know, about half our guests take advantage of that. But we had an episode probably back in in April where our first guests start out very nervous. They had a beer, and of course they weren’t going to have a beer unless I had a beer
Doug: Uh-oh. Okay.
Dave: I said, “Okay, I’ll have a beer with you.”
Doug: Sure. Take one for the team. Nicely done.
Dave: Yeah. Second guest, and guests bring gifts. They bring gifts. Second guest brings gin to the table. He says, “I’ll have a gin an if you have a gin.” So I have a gin. Problem is, he does two episodes back to back, so we had a gin with each podcast.
Doug: On top of the beer. Sure. All right.
Dave: On top of the beer. That’s over, I think. Thank goodness. Okay. We’re going to clean this up. We’re going to do one more episode. In walks our director of state and local tax, Joe Popp, and Joe has a barrel of Four Roses Bourbon. He says, “Well, I’ll have a bourbon if you have a bourbon,” so I said, “Okay.” Now I’ve had beer, two gins, heavy gins, and a heavy Four Roses, so about halfway through the podcast I was done. It was over.
Doug: You were driving the struggle bus?
Dave: I was driving the struggle bus. I could not think of a question. I could not think of a comeback. I could barely talk. Luckily, Joe, we had some hand signals and he took it home from there. So, we have a podcast that goes on where there’s really no host, just the guest continues to speak.
Doug: I love it.
Dave: That certainly was kind of a fun event. After that I had a partner meeting I had to attend. I walk in and these guys look at me like, “Oh, what do you been? Oh, must have been must been podcast day.” Those will happen. You might have to Uber home once in awhile from the podcast.
Doug: Yeah. I live pretty far away, too. I might have to put a cot in the office or something.
Dave: Yeah. Then kind of a cool one for me was I got to interview my son-in-law, Austin Black, who left corporate America and started his own business, a mechanical engineering firm in Jackson Center, Ohio. It was great to hear him talk about the entrepreneurial spirit.
Doug: That’s awesome.
Dave: Great for me because he’s a great family man, and now he’s off and running in his business, and that’s probably the one of my favorite ones as well.
Doug: That’s great.
Dave: So be prepared to get your scrapbook ready and get some favorites.
Doug: I look forward to it. I’ve got a few connections that I’ve talked to that are certainly looking forward to coming on. Well, you know, we’ll mix it up a little bit, and reminisce, and probably tell some embarrassing stories. It’s all good. You’ve got to enjoy it.
Dave: Certainly, we want the advice of our listeners and we’ll talk later on in the podcast about taking the survey for chance to win a one hundred dollar Amazon card, and that’ll give you some ideas. But you know, I don’t know. Like I said, we’re pushing 200 episodes. That’s fantastic.
Doug: We’ve outlasted the iPod. They stopped making that two years ago, right?
Dave: I think you’re right. Maybe more than that.
Doug: Maybe we should change the name. It’s not really a podcast anymore, right?
Dave: Let me ask you a couple of questions just to see where your head’s at as we go here. You’re going to bring up, you’re going to touch on, politics. As you take over, the 2020 elections will be rocking and rolling, so, you know, you can’t ignore that, big boy. What’s going on?
Doug: We’ll try to avoid that as much as we can, but I am frankly kind of a closet economist, so I’ll probably get into economics quite a bit, but we’ll try to keep the politics out of it as best as we can.
Dave: Let’s see, we’ve got economics, rock and roll, construction, real estate, interest rates, loan documents, loan proposals. This is going to be kind of interesting. I might have to listen once in a while.
Doug: Baseball.
Dave: Baseball.
Doug: I know a lot of baseball history. Can name every world series winner, all 114 of them.
Dave: You can name every?
Doug: Everyone.
Dave: Okay. How about 1948?
Doug: That’s easy, the Indians.
Dave: How about 1954?
Doug: ’54, New York Giants.
Dave: Ooh. Man, this is pretty good. Can you remember the tax code as well as you can remember the world series?
Doug: No, taxes, I’m better with financial statements, certainly. I’ve spent 30 years doing that. But the tax side, that’s why we have experts like Chris Axene and our whole team here.
Dave: Right, right. Again, as we go forward with the podcast, I would again lean on you to make some changes that need to be occur, what a better way to make some changes when you replace the host and so forth. Have at it.
Doug: We’ll have some fun. Like I we’ll try to put a little spin on it, but take what you’ve done so well, and use those strengths, and try to try to listen to the audience a little bit and see what we get back from the survey, and we’ll go from there.
Dave: Sure, sure. I think that as we wrap up and look at our statistics, human resource stuff always is very well received. Renee West has been on our podcast.
Doug: She’s great.
Dave: Renee oversees Rea’s HR department. Her episodes are fantastic. Of course Joe Popp, you never know what you get. You’re going to get a lot of state and local taxation.
Doug: Bourbon?
Dave: And maybe a lot of bourbon. Chris Axine, our listeners have heard Chris, and again, subject matter expert on a number of things.
Doug: Yeah. Technology is something I’d like to delve into a little bit. Certainly we’ve got some experts in various areas of technology, and that’s certainly changing all of our lives and will continue to do so. We’ll have some fun with that. Like I said, some economics and certainly finance topics, accounting topics, all of the above.
Dave: You know, and sometimes the production crew, they get a little bit out of hand. One of the guys in the back taking the pictures, OB as we referre to him, just gets kind of out of hand, so you may have to keep him in line.
Doug: Watch out? What kind of advice can you give me to do that?
Dave: Just staring down. Just staring down.
Doug: Stare him down? All right.
Dave: And you know, give him the slash look and he’ll jump in line. He’s a good guy. He’ll certainly take take care of you.
Doug: Good.
Dave: My advice to you is work with our marketing team. They’re fantastic if you don’t know that already. You’ll find that they work very hard behind the scenes. This couldn’t be what it is without that team.
Doug: Absolutely. Yeah.
Dave: They’re wonderful. You learn a lot more about marketing than you’ve ever maybe want to know in your entire life. This term content will keep coming up. You’re like, “Okay. Wow. “But they do a fantastic job.
Doug: Good. Absolutely.
Dave: They’re your friends, so there you go.
Listeners, it’s been an incredible journey and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to interview so many wonderful guests just like Doug Houser along the path the last few years. I hope you enjoyed our time together as much as I have. But before I go, I want to invite you to take a moment and visit www.reacpa.com/unsuitable-survey to take a short survey. Your feedback will be vital as we work to create the next chapter of unsuitable. We want you to know what you like. We want to know what you don’t like, what topics you would like us to cover in the future, suggestions for future guests, all that kind of good stuff. In return if you take this survey, I think you and your relatives can’t win this survey, or whatever that fine language goes.
Doug: Not at all. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Dave: You know, that fine print. But in return, you’re entered into a drawing for a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card. Let me give our listeners that a website again. It’s www.raecpa.com/unsuitable-survey. Jump on there and take a shot at it. We’d love the feedback.
Doug: Great. I’ve got one last request for you, though, Dave.
Dave: Uh-oh. Okay.
Doug: Will you agree to come on as a guest occasional?
Dave: Oh, absolutely.
Doug: Good.
Dave: Absolutely.
Doug: Good. I’d love to do that.
Dave: I can come in and give a retirement tips from a retired CPA, something like that.
Doug: I like it. Yeah. Sort of like Saturday Night Live when some of the old cast members come back to host the show.
Dave: Yeah. This would be like Chevy Chase coming back, you know?
Doug: Right.
Dave: There you go. Anyway, you’ve interrupted my-
Doug: Sorry.
Dave: I’m coming back. I’m coming back. The survey’s open, so go ahead and take the survey. We just lost a production crew folks, they’re all over the place. We have no idea what’s going on here. We’ve lost control. See what happens?
Doug: Yeah. And we didn’t even have bourbon. Geeze.
Dave: We didn’t even have bourbon. But anyway, take that survey. It’ open. Win some money. It’ll close on August 16th, which is a Friday. Please take a couple minutes to help us make unsuitable on Rea Radio even more valuable in the future. I’d really appreciate it and Doug will as well. I hope you give Doug Houser a warm welcome going forward. Come in, be a guest, listen to him, send him some feedback. I think you’re really going to enjoy this guy. Now for one last time, I’m Dave Cain, encouraging you to loosen up your tie and think outside the box
Disclaimer: The views expressed on unsuitable on Rea Radio are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Rea & 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.