40 Years Old And A $8 Million Book: M&K's Bukzin Stakes Out Opportunity

As a child, David Bukzin watched his dad drive a truck, delivering magazines "in the ghettos of the Bronx. He'd be in the roughest, meanest, most dangerous neighborhoods of New York in the middle of the night so that he could support his family." Then he'd go work two other jobs. "Everything in our

So it doesn't occur to Bukzin, 40, that the thousands of hours he's spent building the sec practice at Marcum & Kliegman headquartered in Melville, N. Y., has been particularly painful. "Because of what my dad did, I could get an education. I get to wear a suit to work. I get to work in a pretty building with air conditioning and carpet on the floor. I'm not slugging magazines, so I don't feel like I've had to sacrifice anything."

But Bukzin is being modest. After all, how many 40-year-olds manage a $8 million book of business and have played a crucial role in building an $18 million practice at a $60 million firm?

Bukzin joined M&K as part of a merger. He worked at a 17-person Manhattan firm that M&K acquired in 1996. Bukzin was barely 30, but he was excited about the prospect of helping build M&K's SEC practice, which at the time generated about $600,000 annually. Ultimately, the merger didn't work out, but Bukzin opted to stay with M&K when the firms demerged. M&K set up a Manhattan office that became Bukzin's beachhead.

In nine short years, Bukzin grew that beachhead to more than 90 SEC clients who average $200,000 each in annual fees. Bukzin is the partner in charge of M&K's SEC practice, its broker-dealer and its New York City assurance practice. Firmwide, M&K has FY04 net revenue of $60 million, 31 partners, 264 total staff and five offices. Although many firms avoid sec work, the principles that Bukzin and M&K applied and the lessons they learned are applicable to anyone trying to grow a niche and a firm: Perseverance. Hard work. Internal support. Continuous learning. A strategic approach. Passion. Nurturing of staff.

"Dave is one of the most self-motivated people I know," says M&K Managing Partner Jeff Weiner. "He's not satisfied with the status quo. I met him when he was 30 years old, and I saw a bright, young, aggressive guy who understood the economics of public accounting and shared my vision for the firm. My job was to figure out how to harness his talent, drive and energy - and to make sure he had the resources he needed - so that he could carry out his role in helping the firm grow and succeed."

Weiner's mentoring, along with a strong support system of partners, managers and other professionals, was essential to his meteoric rise, Bukzin is quick to point out. "Our managers in the audit practice are partner-level people and phenomenally bright," he tells IPA. One manager who works for him manages a $1.8 million book of business. As the firm and the practice grew, M&K created more partners whose strengths lie in their technical and client services skills rather than in rainmaking. "We promoted people to partner because of our volume," he says. "We needed people with both technical expertise and partner-level authority to help us handle the volume that rainmaking partners bring in," Bukzin says. "The practice grew so fast that we needed new partners to handle the work."

Bukzin spends little time on formalized marketing efforts, and a centralized quality assurance system helps relieve time devoted to technical issues. He spends much of his time on engagement management, and the "transactional business" of the SEC practice is one of his passions: raising money, merger and acquisition work, turnaround engagements, helping companies go public, and liquidation work.

"The old-time accountants wait for a bank to give them three or four names, and then they go through the beauty pageant process and bid for the work. I realized that if I got into transactional business, I could be hi a position where people know me and my expertise, and we'd be positioned for more opportunities for new business. Professionals such as CPAs, lawyers and bankers generally are up for grabs. I didn't want to work that way. Transactional work is the opposite. Companies often look to change professionals such as CPAs, lawyers and bankers when a transaction is under way.

Transactional Work: 'A High-Risk, HighReward Business'

M&K is known as an expert in reverse IPO transactions, and it's one of the specialties that clients come to Bukzin's practice for most frequently. In these transactions, public company shells with no assets acquire private companies, which then automatically become public companies. M&K's practice has completed approximately 40 reverse IPO transactions. Referrals come from investment bankers, lawyers and owners of companies looking to go public. "It's a high-risk, high-reward business. Not every transaction works out," Bukzin says.

When he started, Bukzin approached M&K's SEC practice "like a real business. I identified targets: lawyers, investment bankers, small public companies with less than $250 million in revenue. I developed marketing materials and activities: brochures, seminars, databases. I went to lots of breakfasts, did a lot of handshaking, and became a good networker. And I learned to ask for referrals always. I'm a major closer: I ask and ask and ask for the business until the prospect says either, "Yes," or "Get out of here!"

Now the practice has moved upstream. "These days, we get referrals from companies that we once only dreamed about. For example, TheStreet.com is a new client that used to be an Ernst & Young client. In the old audit business, clients would go to a Big Four firm because the investment banks told them to. Now we've got five major investment banks to accept our opinions."

Bukzin invested a lot of shoe leather to get that credibility. "It required a lot of pounding the pavement and hard work. In one case, I spent six weeks educating a single investment bank about M&K and its processes. Getting that bank to accept our opinions is one of my proudest moments."

Bukzin cites two mentors who have been instrumental in his success: Weiner, 48, and Philip Strassler, 57, an M&K tax partner.

Strassler taught him about making rain. "In terms of installing confidence across the table and networking, nobody's taught me as much as Phil has. He's the best networker in America. I'm still mentored by both of them. I talk to Jeff four times a day. Then I pick up the phone and call Phil."

'Take Care Of The Firm, And You Take Care Of Yourself'

From Weiner, Bukzin learned about structure, organization and managing. "He's taught me to focus on the firm first. Jeff always preaches that if you take care of the firm, you take care of yourself- and I needed somebody to teach me that. He's right. He's taught me that client loyalty isn't what it used to be: great clients come and go, no matter how great you treat them, but great staff stays forever if you're great to them. And that's really a lot more valuable: There's no telling how many great clients that a single great staff person will serve and make happy during a lifetime if that great staff person stays. Jeff also says that he gets up every morning and thinks, 'I've got 264 families to support today, 264 mortgages to pay.' I've learned to think that way too, and we both believe that supporting those families includes making sure that our people have a quality of life off the job as well as on the job."

But he might need a nudge from his wife, Meredith, when it comes to hisown personal time. "I committed to her last year that I would work no more than 10 Saturdays a year," which frees him up to spend more time with her and their kids: Hannah, 6; Lillie, 3; and Matthew, 2 months. Bukzin estimates that he works 3,000 hours a year, but that's an improvement: In 1996, he worked 13 straight weeks without a day off. He works out in the gym four to five days a week and recently started taking guitar lessons again.

"David's a good auditor with good technical skills, and he's a great rainmaker," says Weiner. "But what really makes him valuable to us is that he has great people skills. People love him. He's passionate. He's at his desk at 6:30 every morning, because he wants to be there, not because he has to be there. He wakes up and has to accomplish something or he's just not going to be happy. A firm is lucky if it has a David Bukzin."