Sam Short Email & Phone Number

Houston, Austin, Dallas And Atlanta

My partner and I are founding members and minority equity owners in a startup venture that required a significant amount of our time and direct participation. We were involved in a very successful long term project related to certain startup entities. The results of that project for us was almost a doubling of our equity ownership and a seven figure payout. The ending of that project has freed me up, I am now open to and available for opportunities in the accounting field. I own and manage three residential properties in Florida and one in Oklahoma that takes virtually none of my time as they have long term tenants.

Tampa, Fl

Meritus Corp is a Financial Services Company, Property Management and Construction Company. My responsibilities included accounting for seven entities, financial statements, forecasting, cash management, accounts payable and a large number of inter-company transactions. Our financial software was Peachtree Premium. I spent a significant amount of time on prior year issues, which after completion permitted year to year GAAP financial comparisons.

Houston, Texas

Storefront Consumer Loans and Check Cashing: This startup business grew into a multi-location store front operation with an annual volume of $60+ million. The check cashing business was sold to Ace Cash Express for a high multiple of earnings, a seven figure number.On-line Lending: This business operated nationally. The initial location was in Delaware. Our collection and call center staff totaled 30+. I shared rotation management of the call centers with the CEO. We had a high of 22,000 accounts. We had a letter of intent and offer of $28M for that business which had a high EBITDA.Rent-To-Own: This start up had a high EBITDA, we operated in Texas, Oklahoma and Michigan and owned a high of 4,000+ vehicles.Ashton Gardens: I am one of three founding members and a minority owner in Ashton Gardens, a operator of Multi-State 5 Star wedding and event venues with spectacular wedding chapels that are mostly glass, set in wooded surroundings with spectacular receptions halls and spiral staircases where the brides can be presented. Ashton Gardens has on-site food service, served from it’s on-site kitchen. Each wedding venue has two reception halls. When doing my pro forma and budgeting of our wedding concept the numbers eventually worked for us only after I added a second reception hall. Having two reception halls enabled us to have back to back weddings which generated the projected profits needed to proceed with such a big unproven project, with churches on about every block it seems. The cost of each venue is $4.5 to $7 million. Ashton Gardens (www.ashtongardens.com) operates 4 wedding venues in 3 cities, Houston, Dallas and Atlanta, it is the premier all inclusive and maybe, the most spectacular wedding concept in the US. We now have another wedding and event venue concept operating near Austin, TX. We had around 30 entities that we consolidated using Microsoft's Great Plains Expertise which had a super inter-company accounting module.

San Juan, Oklahoma City, New York City

CFO/Sr VP-Telemundo, San Juan, PR, 5 yrs., 85-90. Annual EBITDA increased 61% to $36M and annual revenues increased 25% to $125M. Our 250,000 sq. ft. facility produced 2,300 hours of programming annually in 7 production studios. Programming was sold word wide and included: Live Game, Kid, Variety, Musical, Comedy, News, Weather, Sports, TV Series and 1 Novella chapter a day. When I resigned, my salary was continued 1 year as a thank you and I was offered a job at a Telemundo Network station in the US.Controller/VP-KOKH TV, OKC, 3 yrs., 83-85: Blair Broadcasting a public company owned a group of TV & Radio Stations in the US, and then purchased Telemundo (which had a huge programming library) to use as the launch vehicle for a new Spanish language TV network. My Gen. Mgr., and I were promoted to President and CFO and transferred to San Juan to increase EBITDA and become President and CFO of the new Telemundo network that is now a worldwide network owned by NBC Universal. VP Finance/CFO-Sirloin Stockade, OKC, 8 yrs.,74-82, a division of Lucky Stores, a public company: We had 250 restaurants in 23 states, a distribution center(800 items),a meat cutting operation, a fleet of trucks, a const. dept., 4K+ employees and annual revenues of $400M+. We built and opened about 150 free-standing sale-leaseback restaurants during my tenure and operated 3 restaurant chains. Company locations were about 75% of the total. In return for staying on until a buyer was found (Golden Corral) my salary was continued for 1 year by Lucky Stores and they offered me a job in CA.Mgr. of Gen. Acctg. at the Hertz Data Center, NYC & OKC, 5 yrs, 70-74: I relocated the Hertz functions set out here to OKC from NYC, Montreal, Toronto and Miami. I directed a staff of 60+, that managed: Accounts Payable, Franchise Accounting, Rent It Here-Leave It There, Vehicle Capitalization and Accounting for the Hertz fleet of 60,000 vehicles. My position was one of the top accounting positions at Hertz.