The son of a successful high school basketball coach, Mark Watts was practically raised on the court. The oldest of three boys, Watts threw his heart into the sport from an early age, devoting a tremendous amount of time to practice in hope of one day becoming a star player on his father’s team. “I would go wherever my dad went,” he recalls. “My world revolved around it.” Now a partner at the CST Group, a Reston, Virginia-based certified public accounting firm serving the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region, Watts applies the drive, dedication, and skill he used when playing basketball in his youth to shoot and score for his clients.
But it was more than just the spirit of play that Watts learned from his family while growing up in Ohio. Hard work, discipline, and success were hallmarks of his upbringing. His mother worked as a teacher’s aide while his father, a Marine Corps veteran of the Korean War, was a well-known basketball coach. It was not uncommon for Coach Watts’s teams to go undefeated and for his players to be recruited by Division I universities. His father’s achievements were recognized with multiple awards and honors, including the state of Ohio’s “Coach of the Year” award. Coach Watts’s leadership and success made him a role model not just for his players, but for his oldest son as well.
Not surprisingly, Watts’s father ran a tight ship at home. “We had to be up at a certain time in the morning, make our beds, do our chores, and always focus on academics,” Watts recounts. “If there was time left over, we could play sports, which of course needed to be practiced a lot if you wanted to be good.”
Although sports took up a lot of Watts’s time, he always made sure he worked during his summer vacations. During these summers, he worked at a local farm where he would pick potatoes for eight cents a bushel. “That was my first experience with accounting,” he recalls fondly. “They assigned us each a number and gave us a set of tags. You put one of your tags on the bushel after you filled it, and at the end of the day, they paid you for each of your tags. For some reason, I could never get mine to add up. I counted and recounted, but it always seemed like they paid me too little. Finally I asked my dad if they were short-changing their employees. He told me they were, and that he knew I would work that fact out for myself. We always got a big kick out of that.”
When Watts was in the fifth grade, he became intrigued by the house being built across the street from where he lived. After watching the construction work being done, he went over to the house and began chiseling mortar off old bricks. The workers took notice of his efforts and decided to pay him a penny for every brick he cleaned. As a result, Watts spent the rest of his summer hammering the mortar off bricks and ensuring he was compensated fairly this time. He used his hard-earned pennies to buy Hostess cakes with his friends at the convenience store down the street.
As Watts approached his teenage years, his father changed careers, moving the family from Ohio to Fairfax County, Virginia to work as the high school principal at Lake Braddock High School in the Fairfax County public school system. Watts was less than thrilled with the move. He was just entering intermediate school, and suddenly found himself the new kid. “I remember sitting in homeroom with a girl on either side of me, and I was just sweating, not wanting to talk to anybody,” he laughs. “As soon as I got to P.E. class, though, I was happy. I felt at home there and could be myself.”
After the transition of intermediate school, Watts found his stride in high school, where he earned his place on the football, basketball, and track teams. “I met a bunch of teammates during my freshman year who are still some of my best friends today,” he affirms.
When it came time for Watts to attend college, he found he was not sure what career path he wanted to take. He had always appreciated school as an avenue for playing sports instead of for academics, so when he had to decide what to pursue for his career, he leaned heavily on his fascination with the FBI. “When it came time to make decisions about my future, I was heavily influenced by all the activity occurring in nearby Washington, D.C.,” he recalls, referring to the Vietnam protests and the Watergate scandal. “My Dad was very connected, so he got me an interview with the FBI. And after that, I was sure it was what I wanted to do. “
During the interview, he was told the FBI was only hiring Special Agent Accountants, so he decided to pursue a degree in accounting. He attended a southern Virginia college, known for its Division III basketball team and noteworthy parties. He played basketball his freshman year before transferring to Asbury College (now Asbury University) in Kentucky for the remainder of school. “At Asbury, I was able to focus equally on playing sports and pursuing my accounting degree. I made some wonderful friends, had a blast, and met a life-changing mentor, Don Winslow.”
Asbury had recently hired Professor Winslow to create and run its accounting department. Watts was one of the first students to go through the program, and he formed a strong mentor/mentee relationship with Winslow. “Don was somebody that really counseled me on my career path, what classes I should be taking, and how I should be studying,” Watts remembers. “He helped me grow from a boy into a man, leaving my old life behind and starting to think like an adult. He really helped me get my feet on the ground.” Devastatingly, Winslow was killed in a car accident several years after Watts graduated. Despite his short life, Winslow greatly impacted the lives he touched, and Watts attributes many of his best qualities to lessons learned from his influential professor.
Following graduation from Asbury, Watts applied for positions at the FBI. Despite landing several interviews, the agency was not hiring accountants at the time. He then focused his sights on public accounting and was hired by Schreiner, Legge & Co, a CPA firm known for auditing federal credit unions. He then partnered with Jack Wallace to form Wallace and Watts CPAs, in Leesburg, Virginia. Together, they ran the firm for ten years before Watts sold his interest to Wallace.
While the decision to sell his part was a difficult one, Watts believed that in order to further his career, he needed to be part of a larger firm. “If I wanted to grow technically, I needed to be in a place that had the ability to review my work,” he says.
In Reston, Watts saw a job listing with Cocke Szpanka & Taylor PC, now the CST Group. “I knew the co-founder, Mary Szpanka, because we served on the audit committee together at church,” Watts recalls. “So I called her up to say I was interested in the position.” During his interview, he told the company that if he was hired, he would bring them a new client every week for the first year. They struck a deal, and in 1997, he joined the team. Looking back, Watts feels certain they hired him regardless of his somewhat outlandish offer, but he held up on his promise.
The CST Group was founded by Charles P. Cocke in 1973. Cocke shared his first small office with an insurance agent over a bowling alley at Fairfax Circle. His first big client came when Cocke was having lunch one day at the new McDonalds in town. He struck up a conversation with the franchise owner, and the two commenced to do business together for years, even after Cocke moved the firm to Reston. The firm originally only did tax planning, preparation, and compliance, but as the group grew over the years, it formed an assurance department. When Watts began at CST Group, the firm was comprised of approximately fifteen people, and today, the company has grown to 45 employees.
Cocke had a tremendous reputation in the Washington, D.C. area and Watts strived to learn as much as he could from him. “People automatically assumed I was as skilled as Charles, or at least similarly skilled if he trusted me so much,” Watts recalls. “He turned a lot of clients over to me, and I did a good job with them, so he and I worked quite well together.”
The early 2000s provided a lot of growth for the firm, with revenues doubling and morale high. “The economy fell in 2007, but we’ve still done well,” Watts explains. “I think we do a great job in smart growth. It’s easy to use that term, but hard to actually implement it, and often you don’t even know if you’re doing the right thing, but we’ve managed well.” Watts attributes CST’s smart growth in part to the decision to hire young professionals out of university, rather than sticking with the previous method of only hiring individuals with years of experience. “The market dried up, and you could only afford to hire people if they were brand new,” he recounts. “We had to adapt or the machine was going to go stale, and when you go stale, you go backwards. I think that’s what happened to a lot of larger firms. But we drive ourselves really hard at CST Group. Our young professionals are exceptionally bright and talented, and they help fuel the entrepreneurial spirit of our firm.”
Watts has led a successful career path, though his current position is not one he would have pictured himself holding when he was a scrappy fifth grader sliding across the basketball court in Ohio. As a firm partner at the CST Group, he puts the lessons of hard work, discipline, and success from his youth into every project on which he works. “Our organic growth is due to our reputation for timely service and great quality,” Watts notes. “The firm has a two-tier internal review process, ensuring that all client work is performed thoroughly and accurately and to the same highest standard. Work performed by a staff CPA, be it a tax return or set of financial statements, is reviewed by a senior manager for quality control. A CST Group partner then always performs the final review, not just for further quality control, but also to look for opportunities to improve the work in a way that the client may not have yet considered.”
The high standards of quality set by the CST Group, along with the firm’s commitment to professional development and work-life balance, have won four Washington Business Journal awards and two Washingtonian Magazine awards as one of the region’s best places to work. Furthermore, Watts was among four CST Group partners to be recognized as a “Top Financial Advisor” by Northern Virginia Magazine in 2012. “It’s a tremendous compliment for the firm,” he says. “We work in a bustling environment and we have a lot of employees with young families. We provide them with an environment where they feel empowered to learn and to grow in their careers.”
The CST Group’s partners plan to continue growing the company wisely. “Taking my father’s coaching as a model, I enjoy inspiring and empowering our talented staff at the firm. I am confident that our business will continue to grow. It is our young professionals who are our future partners,” Watts says. “I also enjoy the marketing side of the business. I appreciate having the opportunity to promote to others all that we’re doing here at the CST Group.”
While proud of his career path, Watts is proudest of the relationships and the experiences that have led him to become who he is today, both personally and professionally. Topping the extensive list of connections is the one he shares with his wife, Alison, whom he knew he wanted to marry from the first time they met. The Reston community where he works, lives, and plays in equal parts is also a large part of his life today. “I’d like to give back to my community by serving as a volunteer,” he says. “I think people today take for granted the powerful role our communities play in shaping our lives, and I’m thankful to live in a place that takes that role seriously.”
In advising young entrepreneurs entering the workforce today, Watts emphasizes the importance of self-confidence. “Above all, always believe in yourself,” he encourages. “Don’t worry about mistakes. Use the experience of those mistakes to make yourself a better person. Don’t be afraid to tell your employer what you want out of your career. And if you always give 100 percent, everything will turn out just right. By building your skills, strengthening your discipline, learning from your mistakes, and threading your own personal flare through all that you do, every shot scores.”
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