#14: How to Use Financial Analysis and Cost Control to Grow with CPA William Wu

"Cost optimization isn’t just about cutting expenses; it’s about spending smarter to drive growth."

In this episode of Brewing Business with Brady, Mason Brady is joined by William Wu, a CPA and seasoned consultant with over 25 years of experience. William offers a deep dive into cost management, risk mitigation, and performance benchmarking, along with the role of technology in transforming business operations. With experience in industries like oil and gas, technology, and services, he shares strategies that any business can implement to drive revenue growth and enhance operational efficiency.

Key Takeaways:

• Data-Driven Growth: Use financial statements to uncover opportunities.
• Cost Optimization: Improve structures for sustained profitability.
• Risk Management: Leveraging technology to minimize risks.

Listen to this full episode to learn how you can win a 30-minute consultation with Brady CFO for exclusive 2025 financial strategies! 

Connect with William: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-wu-cpa-4ba9bb/

Connect with Mason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonbrady/

Visit BradyCFO: https://www.bradycfo.com/

If you enjoyed the episode, please be sure to rate, review, and of course, SUBSCRIBE!

LEAVE SOME FEEDBACK: If you enjoyed the series, please rate and review!

Have a business growth question you'd like Mason to cover in an upcoming episode? Email: info@bradycfo.com

Transcript

Mason Brady (00:00.258)
Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Brewing Business with Brady. We are so excited about today's guest. Today we have William Wu, a consulting powerhouse with over 25 years of experience across energy, tech, and more industries. William's got a background at Price Waterhouse, Goopers and Arthur Anderson, and William's seen it all. He's here to share his journey, his formula for business success. So grab your cup and join us for what promises to be an energizing chat.

Well, William, we're really excited to have you on the podcast. So thanks for joining us today. Yeah, Mason. No, thanks for inviting me. Look forward to the conversation. Awesome. Yeah, we we've been friends. We've known each other for what about year, year and a half now. And yeah, you have such a rich background in regards to consulting, but I I'm so excited for us to dive in for the audience today a bit more about what you're specifically doing today and exactly for our audience. We're talking especially about margin enhancement, right? That we're talking about a major way that

our audience can ultimately learn how to improve the margins in their business. And so, yeah, this is really tactful here. So we're really excited about, yeah, diving into this with you. So let's start off though that, what do you got in your coffee cup today? This is Brewing Business with Brady. So we gotta know what you're drinking there. Yeah, so I'll tell you a quick story. And I wanted to get in the spirit of the podcast. so did grab a coffee mug in the house here, but I'll tell you what I have in here is water because...

The story is for me when I started my career in public accounting, I mean, what was in the big six? I remember literally working 42 days in a row, like, you know, nonstop, right?

And the longer I worked, the more days I worked, the more coffee I drank. And I still remember to this day on the 43rd day when I had the day off, I literally had, I mean, I didn't have coffee that morning and I just literally started having the shakes. And I realized that I had gotten addicted to coffee. I will tell you that it's been...

Mason Brady (01:59.274)
over 25 years since I've had a cup of coffee. So that's my anecdote to start off our time here together. 25 years is long time, so you don't even do a latte, espresso or anything? Nothing of that sort? Well, I will tell you. So this year, because of the nature of what I do and getting a chance to meet with people and invariably over coffee, right?

I did break down and had my first cup of cup of Joe and actually wasn't a full cup, but I had a had a cup of Joe This earlier this year for the first time and I've had a couple of cups since then But it was not a full cup and then I'll also tell you that I had problems sleeping that night

Yeah. I wish I could say the same about myself that I probably do about three to four cups a day. So I have the addiction going well and strong. So yeah, I, for our audience that your background is a bit unique in that. Yeah. You are coming from large CPA firms and now you're in a consulting or you own your own consulting practice. So I'd really love to understand a little bit more about your career journey. What did you do at, you know, some of these CPA firms like Price Waterhouse, Arthur Anderson.

And then what led you to eventually start your own practice today? Yeah. We'd love to dive in and hear that from you. Yeah. Happy to share that as well to give some context to our conversation. So, you know,

Started off, you know, just a bright-eyed kid out of graduate school, got into public accounting, was on the corporate tax and &A side, so did a lot of compliance and analysis work. And, you know, really thought I would spend my entire career at Arthur Anderson and making it, you know, really just had set my objective to making partner there, which of course we now know that that never would have been possible. But, you know, you look back and think about things, pivotal moments in your life and, you know, really

Mason Brady (03:52.944)
had the opportunity, well, I had an opportunity and this is actually early on, I realized how important relationships are to, you know, not only on the personal side, obviously, but in professional life, because I had stayed in touch with the recruiter from Pricewaterhouse and we had just really become friends even after I had joined Arthur Anderson. And so his journey at Pricewaterhouse, he was recruiting for accounting, but he then moved over to recruit for consulting.

And I still remember him telling me we had gotten together. think it was a lunch and he had just told me, you know, William, you're not an accountant, you're a consultant. And I thought, tell me more about that because it sounds glamorous, right? But the pitch was that I get to be working directly and engaged with clients. And of course, being a tax accountant, I was behind a desk, typically 10 to 12 hours a day. The idea of being in front of clients, being on

side, working with clients, helping them solve business problems really appealed to me. And so I took the plunge and really my career just took a completely different turn. What I was brought in to do at Pricewaterhouse was to learn SAP. This was a dating myself here, but this is a pre Y2K, right? And, you know, just they really trained me up and they were looking for people with financial backgrounds. They trained me up. so I, you know, again, dating myself, this is

the time before there was really an internet, before email had just really started getting assigned to you at work. In fact, I don't think I had an email when I first started Arthur Anderson. I mean, it was something they gave to us while I was working there. Interesting. So, for those of you that aren't old enough to remember what that might have been like. it was just kind of learning and adapting to a new normal, right?

But just again, just kind of taking that background and knowledge and trying to transferring it to helping organizations of a very large size. Presswater House obviously worked with very large global organizations and being able to help on an implementation from a financial aspect was something that I had never expected to be doing coming out of two years after coming out of graduate school. But that's the path that I went down.

Mason Brady (06:23.228)
And I'll tell you at first it also it was all very glamorous got to try I was traveling every week You know going to you know go into client sites and being on these on these very large project teams But after a while I realized that you know, this is not the life. I really wanted to live for the long term and so I ended up Connecting with With a partner that was leaving EY at the time and he was going to start a consulting or business systems consulting practice for

a well at the time was a regional CPA from here in town. Got it. So I decided to go do that, right.

And really learn a lot about how to build a practice from, mean, we had nothing starting and start, you know, kind of, was I, as I joined the, as I joined that, that role or that job really had nothing to start with, right? We really had to build it from the ground up. So that's something I got to, to learn how to do from managing all aspects of the operation as well. you know, from sales to, delivery to support and also managing staff and growing, growing the business.

And after a few years, I then decided that I had kind of the itch to go off and do it on my own, Hang up my own shingle. But as fate would have it, there was another guy that was looking to separate his practice from his accounting, from another accounting firm. And so we joined forces and launched a new business, right? And I did that for a number of years, almost 18 years, building up a technology service.

organization. Got it.

Mason Brady (08:04.138)
So I guess, so that's kind of the backdrop and then really to cut to what I'm doing now, I will tell you that COVID hit our business really hard and we had built it up, but we had over 120 consultants when we did that organically, right? There's no acquisitions, we just kind of brick by brick. And for the first time in our firm's history, we actually had to have layoffs during COVID and that was tough.

And it really kind of got me thinking about what I wanted to do with what I consider to be the back nine of my career, right? Is this, do I want to, I've doing this, I've been doing, I've been in the technology space a very long time, know, sort of reflecting upon, you know, kind of what I'll, again, my future, right? And it just so happens that I had, I got a call from a headhunter.

And I still remember the voicemail and it was, hey, we're looking for CPAs who can sell. Give me a call back. Right. was, was, was, was that, that was that short and succinct. In other words, we're looking for unicorns, right? Yeah, that was the stereotype, right. And I, and I thought, well, that was an interesting, that's, that's an interesting hook. I wonder what that's about.

And so I called the guy back and he introduced me to this world of expense optimization consulting. The model seems so simple. so I'll give a, you I know we'll talk a little bit more about this, but the idea is that you, you, you engage with clients to evaluate.

what they're spending money on, how they're spending money. And you provide a benchmark and feed benchmarks and feedback on areas where they're probably leaving money on the table and they're spending more than they need to or their prices are higher than they need to be. And we come in and help them optimize that, right? Or reduce their costs without sack. And an important part of that is we're not sacrificing any quality. Sometimes there's this mindset that when we're cutting costs, you're gonna cut the quality of the service

Mason Brady (10:09.872)
or the product that's being purchased and that's not an option in this scenario. I'm interested for us to dive into that quality aspect, right? Cause like you said, it is a perception. They're especially facing this pinnacle point, you know, in that five to 50 million in revenue where all of a sudden the owner is building out a leadership team and they're not in all these vendor engagements anymore, right? That they're not helping to lead things. They're not in the details anymore. And so, yeah, I think, you know,

you talking about what you do is so prime for our audience because they're facing situations where they have a much more complex team or a complex business. They're finally getting into that period of their business life cycle growth and they just don't have a grasp on everything, cost management, what their vendor relationships are, what their vendor contracts look like. And so there is that complexity that buried and I'm sure you probably experienced like there's things that are just.

buried in your income statement that you don't always know exists, right? Because even your accountants aren't pulling out a full list of everything that you're buying and every subscription, et cetera. And so it's buried in there and it's the idea like, what can you really tap into it? I'm excited to talk about this with you today. Yeah, no, I'm happy to share it. And I think I bring that perspective, of course, also of being a shareholder, a business owner, right? And having gone through...

the life cycle or the evolution of the organization as you grow and the amount of things that you just don't have time to address. And in fact, I'll just share the of the anecdote I typically share with my clients and prospects when we have a conversation is you think about insurance, right? That's a good category, just everyone has insurance, right?

And I will also preface it by saying that relationships are really important, again, whether on the personal side or on the business side. And I've referenced that in my opening comments. And you want to have somebody that you rely on and that is there for you. But in all the years that I was, again, almost 18 years, not one time, literally not one time did my insurance premiums ever go down. And so I was conditioned to believe that

Mason Brady (12:22.636)
insurance rates just always go up. This is how that world worked. And typically what would happen then is our CFO who was responsible for essentially handling those conversations with our brokers on a yearly basis, invariably every year the conversation was, we got a renewal quote, the increase was 10%, but I negotiated and I got it down to 6%.

Right. So you're thinking, hey, well, that sounds pretty good. Hey, good job. Right. But then the reality is that from my standpoint, looking back now, and I haven't been on now now with the era group, I realize that, I mean, I had no idea whether that was good or not. I accepted. And frankly, as in for those that have gone through the process, it's not it's to really kind of dive into it. All of it. Right. And we touched on as well already is that all of it to really understand kind of what you know, what

what the vendor relationship is like, what you're paying, what the market is like, that's very time consuming. And the reality is probably it's not worth an executive's time to dive into the details of any specific contract. And the same goes with insurance, right? Because you do rely on your broker to look out for you. But if you take a step back and think about it, your interests aren't necessarily aligned because you're paying a percentage of your premium to your broker. the more that they reduce the

the cost of your policy, the less that they make. And so there's really no one to truly officiate, so to speak, what's really going on in the marketplace. And since I've been with ERA, I'm done.

I've five insurance projects in over a three year period and I'm what's really opened my eyes is that am five for five and helping my clients reduce their premiums even after they've been told by their broker that hey, this is the best that we've been able to get for you. So it's those kinds of.

Mason Brady (14:21.998)
anecdoters or real life case examples where I stopped to think, engaging with us to help monitor or help evaluate and assess and provide feedback from an impartial third party point of view where our interests are 100 % aligned, right? In terms of helping to find the best possible option in the marketplace, I mean, that's essentially what we do. You really bring up something really good there of just the time for business owners too, and just realizing

You know, every business owner has a choice, you know, of where they're going to spend their time. And it's important to have a good general grasp of all things happen in your business. But at the same time, you need to focus your time into your strategic areas where you actually make money. Where are the revenue generation opportunities? And, the idea that a business owner or their, their next, you know, their, their lieutenant next to them needs to completely understand the insurance markets and

which underwriting companies will actually underwrite your business and what underwriters the broker is going to and what do the actual insurance markets look like that, hey, you maybe they didn't have a whole lot of losses last year, so they're actually bringing rates down in your particular industry, et cetera. It's a whole lot to understand, right? Like there's just so much to watch and it's not a core element of your business. And so that's why getting somebody like your help makes a lot of sense because

It just, it's not a core element. I encourage business owners that get help where it's not a really strategic core element of your business and that, you know, somebody can be watching out for you though, and making sure that you're getting the margin that you need. So it's good. Can you provide us another example? Cause I, especially in blue collar space that at Brady CFO that we specialize with like agribusinesses, construction, logistics, transportation. One of the things that I knew

packaging, for example, in agribusiness, actually having to pack the products into packaging and the reality of how few vendors actually serve the ag market and what that looks like and making sure that you're getting the best rates on your packaging because those really can eat into your returns very quickly. the problem is too, is with packaging is that you have to buy a bunch of inventory ahead of time and there's a bunch of shrink too, right? So if all of a sudden you're paying more,

Mason Brady (16:33.486)
if your shrink count is 5%, you're just throwing more away too. It's not just the idea of how much you're paying upfront for it, it's how much you're throwing out the door as well. And I'd love to understand how does ERA group, how do they help very focused situations like that? Like insurance is, feels like every business is working and operating that, but when it gets into an industry specific kind of case study like that, like how do you all work? What does that look like? Yeah, so that's a point for me to maybe.

kind of highlight here is that, what a.

What attracted me to joining Era Group was the fact that we cover over 60 different cost categories, right? So we're not, and there are, there are consultants out there that maybe specialize in certain areas, you know, the, the utilities or the telecom, you know, maybe merchant card fees, right? Just throwing out a few examples of, of players I've seen in the marketplace. But what's unique about us is that we have all of that under one, one roof, right? We have category specialists at all.

they do every day is help clients that really optimize their spin in their specific area. And so I'm not qualified to maybe get into the details of the packaging or some of the logistics that you ask, but I can tell you that in terms of the process, we absolutely have people that can come in and evaluate that and provide assessment. And further, what's also, I think, maybe unique,

and what we do is that we will monitor it and continually provide input as long as we are engaged. We typically are engaged in three year cycles, right? So we're not just here to tell you, hey, you should save money in this area. We've given you some information, so good luck with that. We're actually the extension of the team to go out and get better pricing in terms while also reviewing processes, also constantly monitoring to make sure that things are working the way it should internally from a process

Mason Brady (18:34.978)
standpoint and at the same time monitoring that the supplier is doing what they're supposed to be doing, right, both from a, I would say, but from a quality and service and customer service standpoint and making sure that things are working the way it should be and that you're getting charged correctly for it. Cause I've also seen scenarios where

vendors and suppliers, you know, they have, they have contractual rates and guess what? Over time, they just start charging a higher, a higher price without, without notifying, without notifying their, their, their, client or our client. Oops. The invoice went out, you know? Yeah. And then the reality is that it's not, it's not caught, right? And part of our review is to do that assessment, do that evaluation, do that analysis and make sure that, know, again, it's just part of the optimization process.

Right. So, and we do, I mean, I think what you mentioned before in terms of the freight and logistics, the packaging, we have category experts, that's what they do. And they can certainly provide input on how to maybe do it better, right, from a process standpoint. What I know that what they also can definitely do is look at what available options are out there in the marketplace from different suppliers. Maybe it's simple as doing some consolidation in terms

of deliveries and or how you might package up your deliveries, right, to just gain some efficiencies. And that's really part of, and I think really as I'm saying this in my mind, really maybe the message to kind of reinforce to anyone that's listening to this is that we want to be, and I think we do effectively serve as an extension of your team, right? We are certainly a consulting organization, but we view ourselves as an extension of the team to be able to take on things

that really there's not enough time or there's not the expertise to really go do what in your mind needs to be done. Again, going back to my insurance example, it's something that if I had the time or anyone has the time, yeah, we probably could have done a little bit better even without a third party like an area group. business owners are focused typically on driving revenue, driving growth, right? And I think the cost standpoint or the cost

Mason Brady (20:53.644)
management of the businesses is typically, you know, it's almost an afterthought. And I experienced that myself having gone through building practices and building organizations. That's actually a good segue into our next question or the question that I have for you. A lot of founders or existing ownership CEOs, they're a visionary mindset, right? They're thinking about that top line growth and the new opportunities. And there's only so many decisions you can make in a day, right? And they're thinking.

Yeah, you know, I might save a little bit here and there, but I want to focus my time on getting that next sale that I need to be focused on these next big initiatives. I can't be spending my time on some of this cost management stuff that we need to be talking, we need to be thinking bigger. And eventually the margins will play out as a result of just, Hey, we're going to grow and we'll add additional revenue while trying to maintain fixed costs or something of the sort. Right. And so what, what do you have to say about why cost management is so important when

It can be kind of an afterthought or it can be unattractive naturally to visionaries that are thinking about the future and forward growth. What do you say to that? mean, I would say I get it, right? Because that's that was my mindset.

100 % my mindset or our mindset wasn't just necessarily mine. think all the shareholders at my prior firm, were, our planning meetings was driven around client growth and client retention. wasn't, I don't recall really spending any time talking about how do we manage our costs better. Take a step back and think about it purely from an accountant's perspective, right? In terms of maximizing your cashflow in EBITDA, right?

20 % margins, you have to generate $5 of additional revenue to have the same impact of saving $1. And so and what do you have more control over typically is probably actually being able to manage your costs a little bit better. that's, that's not, I think you're exactly right. That's not very, that's not very visionary. That's not what, that's not what we did. I we focused on, we focused on growth. And so really the, you know, again, maybe to underscore again, I mean, a lot of times,

Mason Brady (23:04.076)
is just not having that either that discipline or showing the resource availability, right? Whether it's yourself as a business owner or even among your team to go out and really truly evaluate what the market has to offer. I guess you'd expect me to say this, but really having an advisor or consultant that you trust that can come in and provide that support and analysis and market feedback. mean, it's worth, mean, again, from my

standpoint and that's why this business model attracted me and it was so appealing to me is you know why wouldn't you do it because I guess I haven't even even shared the kicker to our business model is that we are 100 % contingency based right so you can engage us and that probably tells you something about the the amount I mean the the confidence level that we have to be able to positively impact our clients organization right

in a positive way, of course, right? And it's basically based off of the savings that we can generate, do we share a percentage of that? And, this...

What I'll also say is that we're not well known. In all the years that I've been in consulting, I have never come across this business model or this business service. And it's not only until a recruiter called me and tried to suck me into this world that I realized that this does exist. It seems so simple. And my reaction to it is like, who would say no to this?

part of being on this podcast is really kind of sharing to anyone who's listening, hopefully, they're still listening, that we are out here and I'm a big believer in what we do and I think in every and I will also tell you that every client that's engaged with me so far, can help, we have positively impacted their financials in some way, right? mean, because if a business owner is being honest with themselves, mean, even if they're just thinking about it, they should know that

Mason Brady (25:14.134)
they are not fully optimized in all aspects of their business. I mean, that's, it's not, it's not really possible. I think they need a team around them. And I think to your point, like, as you were talking that, you know, it's even as a business owner myself, and as you, as a, you know, previous business owner and with lots of, you know, deep experience in that I've grown, I mean, you mentioned you grew a team to 120 people, like, you know, and when we're talking to our audience here of business owners between five to 50 million, some of them haven't even reached that.

point yet. So you have the experience in the shops to say a lot to this, but I can't help but think to myself, even when I'm making decisions as a business owner, that it's like, yeah, right now as I'm growing things, I'm taking a set amount of pay for myself that I'm going to live on, but every additional dollar I'm putting back into some type of marketing and sales initiative that with the intent that, hey, I'm going to get future revenue off of this. Like I have to have a forward mindset. And I think good cost management and diligence in the cost side of things

is reinvestable funds into sales and marketing that it may not be about literally, hey, we're going to actually improve EBITDA, we're gonna improve your net income. It's rather that you can take those funds that were being given to some vendor and you can reinvest it, go get the marketing director that you've been waiting and trying to get because you wanna finally have somebody else on your team that can handle some of these projects that you've got going on or.

You know, can finally start that engagement with that marketing agency, or you can finally go do that trade show or whatever the case is that all of a sudden you have funds that you can take that we're sitting on your income statement, going else, go into some other third party and you can reinvest it with the intent that what impact can that have on your revenue? What confidence level do you have that that's going to show up? And then some on the top line next year and the couple following years as a result of that action. So, I do want to.

I wanna go in here though, because there is something unique about this, right? That it's, this is a unique model. I mean, especially it being contingency, you would think like, why isn't every company just running with this? Why wouldn't every company just say absolutely yes to this? We're gonna give time to this. And you brought up the word or the words trusted advisor. How do you build that trust? Like what does trust look like for you in building relationships with clients?

Mason Brady (27:33.95)
You know, it's a great question and you made a great point earlier by the way Mason because that is 100 %

absolutely true, right? In terms of just having that cash to do something else and to do something else with, right? And there's some that may just want to just put it in their pocket and that's okay too, right? But in terms of, yes, being a trusted advisor is something that I always strive to do because I'm a big believer that you're only as good as your last project or the last experience a client has with you. It is about building that trust. So how do do that? By delivering something

value to your clients on a continual and consistent basis. I learned this from fairly early on in my career, but in the professional services business, you want to be that first call from your client. No matter what it is, the goal should be, or that I think about is, how do I make myself the first call from my client? And you've done it, and when they start calling you about things that it's not even really necessarily

in your area of expertise. Being formerly in technology, typically the questions that get only, is there something going, you typically only get calls when there's something wrong with their technology stack, right? But if they start actually asking you questions about, know what, it's maybe as simple as knowing a good referral in some other line of work, you know, a good attorney, and you know, a good banker, right? Then you know you've started establishing that trust because they value your opinion. You they value the people that

you're associated with. what, you know, again, this in terms of what Era Group does, I just felt like it was just such a straightforward way to be able to measure in numbers, which I'm a big numbers guy, to measure in numbers kind of the impact that we can have on our organization. know, probably not surprising, just it feels really good when you can help when you deliver results to your clients, right? And I mentioned earlier, and that also just popped into my head, I mentioned

Mason Brady (29:38.278)
earlier that, you know, I don't think people generally know about this business and certainly they don't know about Era Group, but we've been around for over 30 years. I we're a thousand people strong worldwide. So it's not, you know, it's not even in the way that we operate, we all have our individual practices and clients that we work with. We have so much expertise in our organization, again, over 60 different cost categories that really what I realized and then what I'm leading up to is that when I first started with Era Group,

a little over three years ago, I was so gung-ho, so fired up and my messaging was, hey, know, just we'll help you save money, right? We're going to come in and do all these great things. And I realized that message, first of all, it's kind of a tired one, right? Because executives hear that all the time from providers and it wasn't a way to build trust, right? Because I sound like just like every other guy. And so what I've really started leaning, what I've leaned toward and I learned from that because I wasn't getting the

response to the reaction or the wow, this is you know, this is this is fantastic I'm so glad I met you right that it wasn't that wasn't the reaction I was getting so what I realized and taking a step back and thinking about that You know that the mindset of becoming a trusted advisor is I wouldn't want to be sold to like that, right? So it's about just really trying to find a way where you can help a client, right? So you so the really it's really just about what is what is there? What is their challenge? What is their obstacle? What are their issues? All right

anything to do, may not, I mean again, it may not, it's not likely to be, man, I'm cost is the top agenda item on my list, right? I think it's gotten more attention, of course, over the last couple of years, especially with inflation, inflationary pressure, which makes our job frankly a little bit harder, but we deal in absolute numbers. Our goal is to just find better pricing in terms for our clients for the same quality goes to service. But you have to do that in a way where the client's ready for

timing is everything again in lots of ways in life too. But you find the right time to insert yourself but along the way you just try to help wherever you can even if it's not directly related to the business that I'm in. And just having those types of conversations I feels like helps build that credibility, build that rapport to get you on the way to becoming a trusted advisor which also makes it really important to have friends like you Mason. I think a lot of it is the people that you associate with.

Mason Brady (32:07.788)
my answer. Yeah. I'm interested because, you know, following on the aspect of trust, like even I've had to make decisions this way as a business owner, but even in my corporate career, you know, as a head of supply chain, I, yeah, managed multimillion dollar procurement budgets, you know, for whether it be logistics, transportation, or whether it be for packaging, et cetera, all things that went into our operational or our supply chain ultimately. And

I was in agribusiness industry and for packaging there were very few vendors that we could work with. Like, I mean, it was segmented in the sense of what you did is for smaller companies, you had what were called these consolidators where, you know, you could get all of your plastic and your cardboard from one place, but they would buy it from the bigger guys that were specific to cardboard paper and they were specific to plastic. And so you have these manufacturers, these big manufacturers that

were specific in their categories, but then you'd have these little consolidators that would serve the smaller guys, which we were one of the smaller guys, right? And of the consolidators in our industry, there's three, right? And the biggest things in my mind, as you're speaking, that managing those relationships, because you, you know, in one aspect, I mean, it's practically an oligopoly, right? In regards to the market of what's available to you, they weren't going to want to,

take off a customer relationship and get a bad name. But at the same time, there was very few options and you didn't want to burn bridges as a customer either, right? You didn't want to burn bridges because the reality is that if something happened with one, you wanted to keep the relationship alive with the other for that Mayday call and that emergency call. And they would step in and say, I've been vying for your business, let's go. And they actually want to be your vendor.

All that said, you know, the first thing that comes to mind is, yeah, cost isn't necessarily everything, right? There is a service aspect and you've talked about quality. You've talked about trust. Like, what would you say to the old me that was in that decision making process that, yeah, costs are important and I would sit there and I would negotiate amongst those suppliers and try to get the best price. But I knew that, hey, this, this vendor is probably the one I want to end up working with anyways, even if they're

Mason Brady (34:27.664)
a little bit over on price because when I have a call in of getting a load in that day, I'm going to get it. And I'm going to have that level of service that I absolutely love. And so what would you say to that of somebody that's really thinking about some of that qualitative perspective of a relationship with a vendor and how do you all manage that?

And Mason, that's a great question, right? And now what I would say first and foremost is that not all categories may be a viable candidate for us to get involved with because of that reason, right? However, even in that scenario, I do feel like we can provide some, again, some independent perspective.

Right. We would engage with if we if you were still interested in getting some feedback in that in that space, we can certainly provide it. And maybe we have and we're just kind of playing hypothetical here, but maybe we do have some other alternatives that we can bring to the table. Right. One example kind of comes to mind also. And I hope I don't mess up this story. But we had a had a project we're doing just on uniforms cost. Right. And, you know, it was it was a

it was a rural area and there was I think only two like uniform companies that were in that area. And this and this and our client really just want to work with local businesses which we certainly understand and respect right and we'll always work within the parameters of our whatever our clients preferences are. But just you know just to share the solution or the you know the way that we're able to drive savings in that specific project was that we actually found someone that didn't provide the

of uniforms that that company was looking for, but we found someone that was willing to start making them for that client, right? And guess what? At a lower cost, right? So, but again, the client has to validate and verify the quality was as good or hopefully better. And I wasn't directly involved with that, but it's really about just trying to look for other options or really engaging with just different alternatives. Again, something that's probably a typical business

Mason Brady (36:39.25)
to do. But going back to your scenario, will tell you that going, kind of touching on, we're making sure we understand the situation, understand the client's maybe perspective on things, because again, the relationships are important and if someone's been a trusted supplier for you for a good period of time, you don't want to damage that relationship. So we can come in very soft in terms of, hey, this is not a Mason thing. If you're the point of contact for that

supplier. A typical approach would be that we've been engaged by the executive team to do an all up review of the key suppliers in the organization. Even if we're only working on that one project, to remove the potential, any sort of animosity towards you, like, why are we, what's going on here? Really our purpose is to be able to assess what the best pricing is available

potentially among, in your case, all three of those suppliers, right? And what I have found is time and time again, being that third party, being a mouthpiece for our client, kind of removes that direct conflict, right? Or kind of questioning, well, I mean, well- You're the fall guy.

I like to think we do it very professionally, but the idea is really just to sometimes rattle the cage just a little bit. And we have clients that tell us, we really, I this is a really important relationship to us. And so we'll be extra sensitive in that messaging. And we've also had clients said, we need that supplier, but we don't really like them. So in that case, maybe rattle the cage a little harder. And I think the other thing that comes out of that is that we also

can really flush out which suppliers really value your business. Like, who are the suppliers that are really wanting to work with you? And we can bring that, again, that independent feedback back to our clients to help them evaluate. And by the way, we do not, we cannot, I mean, it's written in our contracts, we can't force you to take any options we put on the table. Our job really is just to find the options and find ones that are attractive, appealing enough to hopefully, you you're in a better position and we'll get paid.

Mason Brady (38:56.876)
but we can't force you to do it. So our incentive was always to try to find the best available option without disrupting any existing relationship. And I think one other tidbit, I'll share another fact toy here I'll share with you, is that interestingly enough, mean, maybe not surprisingly, but it's interesting that over two thirds of our clients still stay with their incumbent. Even after we are engaged in the process, we're just able to get better pricing and terms on their behalf with the incumbent because of our involvement.

not surprising, I think, because if there's really nothing broken in that supplier relationship, even if you can get better savings options from an alternative supplier who's obviously trying to get in the door through lower pricing, most clients aren't willing to take that because they have a good relationship. They've been taken care of by their incumbent supplier and now we get it. So hopefully that, I think I addressed the question. Hopefully I did. No, you did. I think, yeah, the key, and it's a big reason.

I wanted to have you on the podcast, that I think that this is kind of an elusive, misunderstood thing. it has been, your group has been around for 30 years, but for a lot of business owners, I know that I had your group reach out when I was a corporate CFO, but I think for a lot of business owners directly to understand the value that you bring. But I think I wanted to make sure that are understood of the relationship, focus and aspect and the fact that it's contingency based too, that they're

not going to shove something down your throat and you still have to accept their, you know, their recommendations. And like you said, that oftentimes two thirds of all of your clients still stay with incumbents. Like I, you're still, you're still engaged in that vendor relationship. So I think if people are wondering, my gosh, is this a potential beginning of the end? No, it doesn't have to be that you could be way overthinking it. And so, no, this was great, William, that I, I really appreciate your insights into this, that especially

The aspect of building that trust and the relationships part of it that I think we can't forget in business, right? That people buy from people they like and they form those relationships over time. so relationships and trust are so important in addition to actually bringing the value too. I mean, they have to all go hand in hand. There's nothing, I wouldn't say that one thing is more important than the other. It's really, but it's, they have to go hand in hand with each other. And so it was great to learn more with you. So yeah, what's.

Mason Brady (41:23.524)
One key final takeaway that you want our audience to go home with, what would you like to tell them? What I'd like to offer and something that we started doing over the last year or so is to really just offer, in my opinion, it never hurts to have a conversation. That's where it starts. And for consultants that are eager to prove their worth,

you for what I would like to put on the table for anyone that's listening is if you're interested in just getting some feedback or some benchmarking on, you know, if you're thinking in your head that, man, I think I'm paying more than I need to be in some area or that my costs have really escalated in another area, you know, we can provide some immediate feedback on whether or not that in fact is true, right? And then we can kind of dive down and we perform what we call the spend assessment and to provide clients some immediate feedback on, hey, here's what we see based on our data.

data, provide some benchmarking, providing some trends and also kind of breaking out, you know, just really understanding their supplier mix. Who are they buying from? What are they buying? How much are they buying from each supplier? Does that make sense? Right. And again, our category specialist can weigh in and, you know, there's no cost or obligation for that exercise, but I would have found it valuable as a former business owner if I were on the other side of the table, right, just to get that input.

Absolutely. So yeah, tell our audience that, you know, you're offering that let's have that conversation. Tell our audience where they can, they can find you that where can they learn more about William.

Well, I appreciate that plug and really just call or email me directly. My phone number is 7 1 3 4 8 7 5 5 6 8 or at w w u at ERA group.com or I mean, it may even better. Contact Mason, right? Mason and I are pretty closely aligned and, you know, I've been, I've been, I've been looking forward to doing this and I'm looking forward to doing more with you in the future. Awesome. Thanks, Will. I mean, yeah, don't forget to subscribe. And we actually have started to give away to

Mason Brady (43:26.578)
audience that if they comment below brewing business, so whether you're in YouTube or whatever podcast, you know, Apple podcasts, wherever you're listening, comment brewing business. And we're offering a free 30 minute consultation for as a giveaway to, somebody that comments brewing business. of the first 10, we're going to select one, one of those people to get a free 30 minute consultation, as well as you'll get entered into a grand prize giveaway where once a month we give away one of our Brady CFO coffee mugs for brewing.

doing business with Brady and so you'll be entered into the grand prize giveaway. But yeah, to that point, if they want to reach out to me, that's great. But the fact is, is that there's so much value that we're trying to bring in these episodes that we're talking to business owners, we're talking to strategic partners. And the reality is, is I definitely am an adamant believer that a CFO is a hub to bring in solutions like William that can help in cost and efficiency management.

And we're trying to bring on guests on this episode as well that, you know, bring value in other areas. had experts in CRM implementation for, you know, businesses five to 50 million. We've had sales and marketing experts, you know, sales trainers and leaders that actually develop sales systems inside companies, et cetera, et cetera. And so the idea is that, you know, we're big believers that financial performance is driven by quote unquote non-financial things oftentimes too. And so.

Yeah, we appreciate guests like William and thank you so much for listening. And yeah, hopefully you found this episode valuable today. So thanks everybody. Have a good one. Thanks, William. Appreciate it.