“Where is your favorite place to go hunting?” and 9 Questions with Ben Wilson
Question 1:
You’re a basketball fan and a Fort Hays State graduate. Recently, the Fort Hays State Tigers, a Division II team, beat Kansas State, 81-68. How good did that feel?
Ben:
It feels fantastic. And the cherry on top is, we were without several players and coaches. There was some COVID-tracing going on, so we weren't even at full strength and still put a good whupping on K-State.
I have two older sisters, and I'm the youngest. They would both tell you that I'm the spoiled one that never got in trouble for anything.
It makes a lot of sense, now that I've got three kids of my own. My oldest is a boy and my younger two are daughters. My son is certainly being held to the much higher standard. He's supposed to watch them, make sure they don't do anything bad, or he gets in trouble for stuff that they have done.
Question 3:
You married your high school sweetheart. At what grade did you two meet?
Ben:
We met in middle school. Her last name was Wolf. My last name is Wilson, so we ended up with lockers fairly close to one another.
She was very athletic, and we both played pretty much all the sports that were offered in middle school and high school. So on basketball buses, and all these other things, you’re around the sports teams a lot.
We did not start dating until the week after I turned 16. I convinced my Dad to let me drive his truck and take a girl on a date, so she was the first real date. Dinner and a movie. Traditional first date-type stuff.
Bonus Question:
Do you remember the movie?
Ben:
It was one of the Austin Powers movies.
I think it may have been “Austin Powers in Goldmember.”
Question 4:
What do you enjoy most about being a CPA?
Ben:
Internally, my coworkers at Adams Brown—the people that we get to mentor and the people we get mentored by. Externally, my clients.
For a lot of our clients, outside of their spouses, we probably know more about them than anybody else. Finances are a very, very personal piece of all of our lives. People let us into that part of their lives, and so there's a vulnerability to that relationship.
We don't work with publicly traded companies, and we don't work with huge multi-tiered private equity firm groups out of California and New York. Most of our clients are owner-operator, small- to medium-size businesses. They live and breathe what they do for a living.
It's a really powerful thing when you get to work with them, advise them, help them save on taxes, and all of those different aspects of helping to improve their financial position. You're really helping their life position.
So I really enjoy the touch-and-feel of the owner-operator, family business-type client. It's a lot more personal in nature.
More than once, we’ve ended-up in semi-marriage counseling conversations!
Question 5:
How did you get involved with AgencyKPI, and what do you think about the insurtech space?
Ben:
My connection to AgencyKPI springs from my personal relationship with Trent Richmond. I've worked with Trent for basically my entire working career. He's a very active guy and he seems to find his way into a lot of really creative, interesting things.
Now, I'm not going to pretend to be a technical guru or even a real insurance guru when it comes to the insurtech space, but I would tell you one of the things I see that is unique.
All of these insurance groups are struggling with the same problem. It seems unique to me, in comparison to some other industries, how they appear to be pooling together and working together.
While they may be competing for customers, they appear to be willing to band together to make everybody's life better. I know Trent's very passionate about what you’re putting together and very excited about getting it to market and seeing the leverage that these companies can get out of it.
Question 6:
Who taught you how to hunt?
Ben:
My Dad. We didn't have a lot of video games or even many TV channels! There wasn’t much to do other than go outside and do something.
As little as five- or six-years-old, I can remember going pheasant hunting and quail hunting, and following my dad through fields, while holding on to his belt loop, so I didn't get lost in the grass.
We always had a couple of bird dogs growing up, and so we did quite a bit of work with them, training and working with them even when it wasn't hunting season. Always had a lot of fun with bird dogs.
Somewhere right around the end of high school, we had some very bad winters. Central Kansas got smacked hard, and bird hunting fell to basically nothing.
As a young kid, I can remember going hunting for pheasant and quail and everybody would limit out before lunch.
By the end of high school, we'd have 20 guys and five dogs, and we'd walk all day long, and you might get enough to make a meal.
There's a lot of conjecture on the causes. Some of it could be farming and farming technology. The equipment gets better every year, so there's less and less left on the ground for the animals to eat.
Another thought is that there’s no money in fur-trapping anymore, so nobody is out there trapping for possums, skunks, bobcats, coyotes, and all those things. I think letting those predator populations go unchecked is pretty rough on those bird populations.
The other reason is turkeys, which sounds kind of weird. But turkeys will actually eat baby pheasants and quail when they find them in the nest. A turkey's kind of like a goat. They'll eat anything.
Question 7:
Where is your favorite place to go hunting?
Ben:
I always really look forward to going elk hunting in Colorado. The experience of being out there is completely different than what you can get out your back door.
I think I probably started going when I was about 10 or 11 with my Dad. My Grandpa was going still at that time. My Grandpa doesn't go anymore, since he's about 88 now. But my nine-year-old son went with me, my Dad and my father-in-law for the first time this year. So these trips are special for the scenery, the hunting, but also just getting to spend some time away with family.
LINK: Colorado Parks & Wildlife Big Game Season Dates and Fees
In 2014, I took my first trip to Alaska. And I can undoubtedly say that Alaska is the coolest place left on Earth.
Colorado is cool. It's wilderness and you're out there in the elements. But Alaska is that times a hundred. You don’t drive a four-wheel drive truck on a trail back to where you camp. You get dropped-off by a float plane with 50 pounds of gear to live on for 10 days.
It's a whole different perspective on hunting and remote and survival. It's just all of those things wrapped into one. It's awesome and something that I think everybody should experience.
The first trip in 2014 was a moose hunt. I was with my Dad and my father-in-law. We spent 11 days on the river hunting moose. I was able to get one. My Dad, he passed on one. He had the ability to get one, but he was holding out for a bigger one. He already had one on his wall, so he was trying to one-up it.
My Dad and I went back to Alaska last year for caribou. We were the last hunters of the season, and so we got snowed on a lot. It got much colder than what we thought it would. We had decent gear, but it got very cold. We were in a little two-man tent with a rain fly over it. It snowed almost every night and there were no heaters.
My dad actually ended up getting frostbite on two of his toes. He had a couple toenails and some skin die and fall off, but they all grew back. So no permanent damage, but it was pretty brutal.
It's an adrenaline rush that many people don’t experience. It's survival. I mean, you're out there on your own.
LINK: Alaska Department of Fish & Game, Introduction to Alaska Big Game Hunting
Question 8:
Let's talk about the Chiefs. Are we looking at a return to the Super Bowl?
Ben:
Anything less than that is probably going to be viewed as a failure.
Having been a lifelong Chiefs fan, I've been through it all. We had some rough stretches, so this is a very timely winning cycle, considering that I have a nine-year-old son. He will now be a life-long Chiefs fan. You're very impressionable around that age. I've seen a lot of other people grow up as lifelong Steelers fans or lifelong New England Patriots fans, just because those were the powerhouse teams when they were growing up.
I'm very thankful that we get that at this time.
Question 9:
Speaking of championships, you claim to have won a first-place trophy in a beautiful baby contest. Can we see that trophy?
Ben:
Yes, we can. It's on my desk at home in my office.
We lived in Solomon, Kansas until I was 5-years-old. There was a fair-festival type thing and they had a beautiful baby contest. They would put young children in swimming suits and have them walk across a stage. It's kind of weird now, but completely normal at the time.
I won—and this was back before everybody wins. This was back when there were winners and losers.
I got first place, and it is one of those competitive things between me and my siblings. Neither of them ever won first place at the beautiful baby contest.
But there's no joke about it. I mean, I could have been the Gerber baby!