Summary: Following the recent announcement that Wisconsin-based CPA firm Schenck team members will be joining CLA, Denny Schleper has a short Q&A with Schenck CEO Dan Young.<br> [00:00:02]<br> Narrator: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate.<br> [00:00:15]<br> Denny: Hello, CLA family. This is Denny coming to you once again in the month of December, getting towards the end of a very, very successful year of 2018. Thank you for everyone within the CLA family for really transforming CLA from what we thought was that very good firm to really that great firm, and having truly a great year thanks to everyone’s efforts within the family. Obviously, as we look into 2019, we’re gonna be looking to say, “How can we become an even greater firm?”<br> And as part of that today, we have some exciting news that was announced last week, and I know everyone within the CLA family is aware that the Schenck CPA firm based out of Wisconsin and with multiple locations in Wisconsin will be joining the CLA family as of January 1st. Today I have with me Dan Young, who’s the CEO of Schenck. Dan and I first met each other back in January of this year, so we’ve worked together for about a year, trying to make sure that bringing these two fine organizations together made sense for not only all of the people, but also the clients that we all serve.<br> So, Dan, welcome to the CLA family, and I’d love for you just to introduce yourself a little bit.<br> [00:01:42]<br> Dan: Sure. Hi, Denny. Happy holidays to you, first of all. Yeah, I’ve been with Schenck for about 35, 38 years, something like that. Grew up in Appleton. Have a lovely wife by the name of Karen. We’ve been married a long time, and that’s another story we can share sometime. But I practiced in the area of—before I took this role as CEO—I practiced in the insurance side of things. I was partner in charge of the Green Bay office and was just recently elected, January, to the role of CEO.<br> And I kinda laugh now that—I tell the folks that this is the shortest tenured CEO president in the history of Schenck. I’ll last one year.<br> Denny: [laughs] Yes. Let’s go back, actually, Dan, to January of this year and as we carry through ’18, I know that a lot of things we had to work through, and whatever we didn’t see eye-to-eye, you eventually convinced me and I caved, right? That’s what happened through the…<br> [00:02:41]<br> Dan: [laughs] I didn’t know that you realized that, but I’m glad you do.<br> [00:02:48]<br> Denny: But we obviously made it through that process. Just share with the CLA family a little bit what, really, you’ve gone through in the last year, somewhat emotionally, probably, but also just some of the major milestones that have brought us to where we are today.<br> [00:03:05]<br> Dan: Well, when we first met, it was at the major firms group, I believe, back in January. And I think two days before I met with you, I had a crown, a dental crown, put in. And then that didn’t work, and then a day before I met you, I had a root canal, so you met me at my worst. I was in a lot of pain the first day, and just trying to survive that. But once we got beyond that, a couple things that we had to do here when I first took the role as president of Schenck.<br> [00:03:35]<br> We wanted to get our deferred comp in line, and we did do that. We acquired a firm in July 1 called Winter, Kloman, Moter, & Repp. It’s a firm in Milwaukee that had about $9 million of revenue, so we closed on that July 1. I believe we started our actual, serious discussions probably sometime in May. So from May until now, we’ve been working diligently together in terms of viewpoints and structure and things like that.
