1. English 2960 _...
University of Toledo
March 1, 2011 _.......
To: Professor Anderson-Quinn
From: Adam Jurski
Subject: Summary of the Interview of my Two Professionals
Introduction
As I intend to either major minor or double major in finance and accounting, I
thought that it would be an interesting topic to compare the two side by side with a
professional from both accounting and finance. The two are not completely similar of
course, but they do have many similarities and both rely on each other to achieve a
common goal.
Professional Background
My old neighbor, Mr. David Wright, received a Bachelors of Music in 1980 from
Bowling Green State University. In 2001, Mr. Wright received a Masters Degree as a
Chartered Life Underwriter from The American University, located in Bryn Maur,
Pennsylvania. In 2002, he received another Masters Degree from The American College
in the field of Chartered Financial Consultant. In 1986, he received a life insurance
license for Ohio and Michigan
He has been in the financial planning industry for 24 years, maintaining his own
private office at 5911 Renaissance Place in Toledo, Ohio. His office is affiliated Multi-
Financial Securities Corporation, a large financial consulting firm.

2. Mr. Wright’s duties as a financial consultant include working and assisting clients
and businesses on maximizing the utility of their money and utilizing appropriate
financial products. He also deals with helping customers plan on their own eventual
retirement so that they can live comfortably.
He talks about his job as being a rewarding career when he is able to assist
customers in reaching their own financial goals, but he also describes it as a challenge at
times when he has to deal with the stock market that is unpredictable more times than not
and having to deal with customer’s expectations that may be strained by a difficult stock
market.
Agency Background
Mr. Wright describes his company’s mission as follows; to understand my
customer’s wants and desires and to help deliver a realistic financial plan to help them in
the future. He has worked in the financial business for over 24 years in both Toledo and
Maumee, with his own office created five years ago. His office handles over 250 clients
that represent over 1,000 products, meaning that the customers have a share of those
products through the stock market. Mr. Wright’s office provides many services to its
customers, including Financial Planning, Investment Planning, Retirement Planning,
Protection Planning, and Estate Planning. His office is for profit and receives its money
from fees that it earns from paying customers. He did offer me some free advice, saying
that I should match whatever my company is offering me into my 401k, adding that some
match is better than no match.

3. Professional Background
My friend’s dad, Mr. Brent Cousino, received his Bachelors in Accounting from
the University of Toledo he also received his CPA license at that time and started his own
firm with a few business partners in 1984. He centered his firm on the healthcare niche,
getting involved in assisted living communities, and nursing homes for example. Mr.
Cousino expanded his firm to two offices in Columbus. In 1994, he became the president
of the company and in 1997, he led a merger with his company and Plantemoran, a large
accounting firm. Mr. Cousino became a group managing partner and in 2001, he became
the partner in charge of capital service projects of the senior care and living industry.
Mr. Cousino has a typical office building located behind Meijer on Central
Avenue in Sylvania. He does work all over the United States with current projects in
Phoenix and New Orleans and talking to people in Hawaii and Naples, Florida. They
often meet at the senior community being built or they may meet at the future sight of the
project.
Mr. Cousino has many different responsibilities that come with his job. He has to
interact with all of the parties that are involved in the project. He is the co-leader of all
the projects that the company takes on, meaning that he has to rally the team to succeed.
He also has a foot in the risk management field. That means that they test the risk versus
the reward of doing business with them and for the other various parties that are involved
in the plan.
Mr. Cousino did say that his job is a fun and rewarding career and that everything
that he does is working on the future, which is exciting to him. He also mentioned that
you have to look at the past to succeed in the future. Overall, though, he finds working

4. for a field like the healthcare niche and giving the elderly a place to stay makes all the
traveling time spent worthwhile.
Agency Background
The mission statement of the company states that they are to be a professional
firm that cares about its clients and is committed to client success. If the client is
successful in reaching what they wanted to achieve, then he has done his job successfully.
Mr. Cousino started his company in 1984 and led a merger with PlanteMoran as
stated earlier. Half of the firm works on the accounting aspect of the job while the other
half of the company works on the consulting part of jobs. There are a lot of different
people that are employed at the office, from lawyers, to psychologists, and real estate
agents that all help with the overall goal.
The population that Mr. Cousino serves is the healthcare niche and the people that
plan to build in the healthcare field. That includes assisted living communities, nursing
homes, to even 55 and older housing developments that have a direct sway towards being
aimed at the older generations.
The company is a for-profit company and does various jobs through the company.
His firm gets hired to create financial forecasts to help in the plan of selling bonds to fund
the projects. He is also hired to help create the funding story of the project and to help
create expected results of success. They also do market studies to see if there is even a
market for the desired project to make sure that there would be people to fill the project
before it is built. They also do work that a normal accounting firm would do such as tax

5. work, tax preparation, and auditing. There funding sources are through the fees that they
charge their clients.
Comparison and Summary Impressions
Both Mr. Wright’s and Mr. Cousino’s firm deal with financial situations of their
clients, even though they are in two separate fields. There are some differences between
the two, though, as Mr. Wright deals with the planning of finances of his clients and Mr.
Cousino deals more with advising a client of a certain project that he is doing, yet also
having the ability to do tax work that an accountant normally does. Also, Mr. Wright
requires almost no traveling for his job with all of his clients being local whereas Mr.
Cousino is required to travel all over the United States due to health care facilities being
built all over the United States.
I was very impressed with what Mr. Cousino had to say in what a big part he
plays in the development of a healthcare facility. I was surprised with Mr. Cousino being
an accounting major did as much consulting as he did for a project. My first impression
of accounting majors is doing tax work for companies for clients. He does so much more
than just the tax work for a project.
Mr. Wright’s interview was also very interesting in learning everything that a
financial consultant did. There is so much planning and risk that goes into setting clients
up for their retirement and they are counting on you to send them in the right direction.
I learned that even though I was nervous to do a face to face interview with even
my best friend’s dad who I see quite often, they are still better than doing an interview
through email. Mr. Wright’s was through email and while he still gave me good

6. information, there was a few parts that I wanted more elaboration on or needed
clarification on. In a face to face interview, you can ask the questions right there when
you have them, where as email, you have to reply to them and wait for them to respond
and still have the chance that they may misinterpret what you are asking them. I also
learned that you have to abbreviate a lot due to so much information being thrown out at
you by your interviewee. With this abbreviating, you almost have to work on your
assignment right away so that you remember what exactly you were saying in your notes.