Age: 38
Tax Accountant, President and Founder of Piascik & Associates
PERSONAL BACKGROUND:
A licensed CPA and huge Red Sox fan dating back to his youth in Massachusetts, Mr. Piascik worked early in his accounting career with a small Virginia firm that did taxes for many professional athletes. He says it was just luck that he was chosen to work for the pro baseball players the firm served. He later worked as a tax accountant for KPMG in Richmond, Va., but five years ago gave up the partner- ship track in favor of launching his own company. His childhood hero was Boston Red Sox outfielder Dwight Evans, num- ber 24; today Mr. Piascik wears the num- ber 12 in the adult soccer league he plays in. That's half of 24, he explains, since Mr. Evans's number wasn't available.
HOW HE GOT THE JOB:
After leaving the small Virginia firm, Mr. Piascik maintained his relationships with the athletes' managers over the years, and when he began think- ing about going out on his own, he zeroed in on athletes as a potential client group. "I was searching for people who could actually afford our fees and would really need our services," he recalls. "Before I knew it, one company gave me 23 athletes, another gave me three, another two." Now, Mr. Piascik says, his firm has clients throughout the National Football League, National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball, and is mak- ing inroads into professional golf.
WHAT HE DOES:
Mainly tax accounting. But another popular thing Mr. Piascik does is provide his athlete clients, like Jets guard Brandon Moore, with a series of tools to help them get organized about money. "We give athletes a leather portfolio to take on the road to record their expenses and help them think about their budgeting and their tax-preparation is- sues throughout the year," Mr. Piascik says. "If they have a laptop, we can give them the tools on CD. If they don't fill things out, there are envelopes for each month and they can just slip receipts in. We make it simple, and we'll save them tens of thousands of dollars in taxes." Mr. Moore agrees: "My wife helps me stay on top of that stuff now, but he was the one who put me on track to organize things before I was married."
COOL ANECDOTE:
Sometimes, the coolest thing about rubbing elbows with stars is simply being able to impress his kids. "We were watching a Jets-Redskins game and Brandon Moore was playing. My 7-year-old is thrilled that his dad knows these guys," Mr. Piascik says. And when his 9-year-old daughter went off to basketball camp this summer and he sent a signed 76ers jersey along with her, "she was so proud that her dad does the taxes for this guy!"
BEST PART OF THE JOB:
"I get a lot of cool stuff, like signed balls," Mr. Piascik says. The hallways and lobby in his company's Glen Allen, Va., office are lined with jerseys signed by athletes who are clients of the firm. "But what still gets me," he says, "is that all my athletes have my cellphone number. I'll take a call and a friend will ask who it was and I'll say, 'It's one of my 76ers,' and they'll be floored."
WORST PART OF THE JOB:
Despite the intense travel demands of a business that re- quires a lot of face time with clients who are themselves constantly on the road, Mr. Piascik doesn't mind being a road warrior. What does get old sometimes is "always being available to the clients." With clients scattered across the country and the globe, he is at the mercy of the multiple time zones they live in. "We like to have our clients not be inconvenienced," he says. "That means we work on their time schedules." Add that to the 12-hour minimum workday that he puts in, and he finds that he's often the one who gets inconvenienced. "Don't get me wrong, I love doing this for my clients," he adds, "but this doesn't allow me even one full day of vacation, and sometimes even I just need a break."
— Alison Overholt