How do you bring an Entrepreneurial heritage of the “big picture” to the corporate world of departmentalized thinking? Mark started working at an early age for his family’s business which consisted of 1 gas and auto parts store and grew to be a NASDAQ publicly traded chain of 70 stores, with 1500 employees and $100 million in revenues. The most important training Mark ever received over these 12 years of work was from his nightly kitchen table discussions of that day’s opportunities to serve his Action Auto customers.
The kitchen table ideas of customer focus, marketing, merchandising, and finance are brought together in the workplace. The corporate board room is screaming for their employees to focus on the “big picture”. Mark has it and brings it.
How to be a strategic, problem-solver to help the bottom-line?
Working as the lead financial executive at KIRO TV Mark guided the station to a 5 year, 15% cut in overall operating expenses, effectively absorbing significant contractual and programming cost increases. Without resorting to short-term solutions of significant people or promotion cutbacks, Mark helped keep the vision on long-term goals by implementing efficiencies through improved purchase order systems, enhanced budgetary understandings and instilling a mind-set of “investment spending”.
The entity’s core strength was not victimized by cost cuts, and allowed for the station to grow in audience share, revenue share, and cash flow percentages during a down-turn in overall market growth.
Who Audits the Auditors? Bringing “Best Practices” Approach to Organizations.
Working as a consultant to the US Department of Labor, Mark performed compliance audits on the then Big 8 CPA firms. Mark examined the largest CPA firm’s workpapers of Fortune 500 clients to determine the adequacy of documentation to support Pension Plan audit opinions. Mark also was employed by Paramount Pictures/Viacom to perform detailed “pre-audit” reviews of variance analyses, internal controls, operating efficiencies, and then implementing solutions to allow the individual locations to be managed with flexibility AND controls.
Mark brings relevant, practical experience to the intent of documenting controls, testing, and developing processes to ensure sound business operations. Mark was a lead speaker at a Sarbanes-Oxley seminar in Seattle designed for an audience of CEOs, Attorneys, CPAs, and CTOs.
Performing Due Diligence and Valuation studies on TV Stations valued in the hundreds of millions.
Working for Viacom, and later for Cox Broadcasting, Mark performed due diligence, business valuations, and goodwill analyses on TV stations with cumulative values in excess of $1 billion.
Mark was seen as a station expert in assisting in acquisitions of stations in Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, and Seattle. Additionally, Mark performed all business plan evaluations, purchase price accounting, opening balance sheet work, operating policy implementations and programming valuation analysis.
What’s the plan for short-term, long-term? How to communicate?
Mark is known for his easily understood budgeting plans, employing item-level, drill-down capabilities. Mark also co-authored a labor-tracking system with Deloitte & Touche to enable personnel costs to be associated on a project-level basis for improved budgeting and reporting purposes.
The better the goals are understood, the better the likelihood of achieving them. Mark has consistently brought together various department heads and staff to understand the goals and directions of the entire organization. Excellent communication and monitoring has resulted in organization’s staying focused and on budget.
To assist clients by understanding client needs.
Mark’s experience is as broad as it is specialized.
Mark is ready and available to help; knowledgeable, Christian and ethically-based in working with world class companies.