Today we’d like to introduce you to Mason Brady
Hi Mason, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in a very agricultural area of California. When I was young, I remember collecting walnuts to earn side money. Everyone in my family and my friends’ family was associated with agriculture in one way or another. My dad was an ag chemical salesman and, at one point, was a high school ag teacher, and I had grandparents involved in various farming activities.
Given the focus of where I lived was agriculture, my path eventually involved working for agribusinesses.
Funny enough, my first ag-focused job was in college, and I worked for a citrus business that imported fruit from Chile, a South American country next to Argentina, into the port of Houston. I was sent to Houston to manage the summer operations for that enterprise. For my first 6 months at that job, I remember easily working 80+ hours per week and dealing with the brutal Houston summer humidity I had not grown accustomed to. That was my first experience in Houston and sadly, because of my workload, I didn’t have the opportunity to explore and enjoy the city as I would have liked. However, this job provided me with an immense amount of learning and experience that helped catapult my career.
Eventually, I came back to California after that summer season. I continued working for that business but was lucky enough to be able to hire someone to reside in Houston for future seasons, and I provided oversight from afar.
I later found myself with an itch for adventure, so I decided to do an International MBA (master’s in business administration) program in Spain. The program was amazing, as my graduating class included colleagues from 120+ different countries. I personally learned a lot about various country cultures. During the program, I had the opportunity to complete an internship for an agribusiness in Chile. While in Chile, I met a girl who eventually became my wife, and somehow, I convinced her to move back to California with me.
Back in California with a new bride and a ton of international experience, I climbed the corporate ladder while working for agribusinesses focused on fresh fruit farming and distribution with products grown in South America, Mexico, California, and Oregon. I eventually became the CFO and Supply Chain Director of an ag enterprise. I was blessed with the opportunity to build that enterprise by helping it acquire several smaller entities and even start several ventures.
But while I was immensely blessed with a great career path, I found I was not your usual CFO. Others have told me I have a unique ability to understand and manage difficult details, which is often needed for prudent accounting and financial management. But I can also get my head above the weeds to help craft and build a vision for a business. I love focusing on business development and helping a business strategize how to grow. Given that I have this combination of skill set and passion, I felt the next step was to build a business that utilized my unique strengths. I decided to launch a fractional CFO firm with my name, Brady CFO.
With time, I gained experience providing fractional CFO services to clients in multiple industries beyond agriculture, including construction, logistics, and professional services. I also felt called to move my family to Houston, TX from California. My wife has two sisters who reside in Houston and Galveston, and we are very close with them. We felt it would be a blessing to raise our family alongside them. Since marrying my beautiful bride, we have had three daughters who get all my attention outside work. I find myself still learning how to manage a household of significant femininity, as I grew up with only brothers, each of whom only had sons.
Since my move to Houston, I have built Brady CFO beyond myself and added additional team members who serve clients in California and Texas. Brady CFO has a vision of setting THE standard on how a CFO can help grow a business. We don’t help our clients just with their finances; we also help them strategize and build the profitable, cash-flowing business of their dreams.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Becoming an entrepreneur is a refining experience. You will be refined emotionally, physically, spiritually, and mentally. Allow me to explain.
As an entrepreneur, you wake up many days feeling overwhelmed with anxiety about whether your business will fail. It is incredibly easy to spend significant time focused on all the ways you can fail. Your faith will be stretched harder than ever before.
But you have to remind yourself that the reason you started a business was that you felt you needed the freedom to build something on your own and not be tied down to an employer. You wanted to build a vision bigger than yourself and not have an employer hold you back. And because of this, you aren’t really made to work for someone long-term. You were meant to face these struggles and overcome them and once you understand this, you realize there is no turning back. So, you must face your fears.
The truth is that if your venture fails, your experience will be valued by an employer in the marketplace, even if it’s for a temporary period. So, if it fails, you can get a job for a bit until the next right moment to launch something all over again.
You must ask yourself this question: “Who would I bet on to build this business?” If your gut answer is consistently yourself, then you owe it to yourself to push through.
And I believe outside of circumstances you really can’t control (health, death, etc.), as long as you believe that you would bet on yourself repeatedly and keep working hard, everything will turn out okay. That doesn’t mean you won’t face setbacks. You might. But remember, failure is just a stepping-stone to success. You pick yourself right back up and you take all that new experience and knowledge and go build something even better next time.
To that end, I don’t believe any entrepreneur that tells you their story has been all gravy. And I’m not going to tell you that my path to starting and growing my business has been incredibly difficult either, but I do feel that overcoming fear of failure is what will lead any entrepreneur to success. I am still learning how to let go of my personal fears of failure myself. I encourage anyone considering starting a business to surround themselves with a network of other entrepreneurs. These are the people who can understand your challenges, encourage, and support you, and remind you that you’re not alone in this journey.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Brady CFO?
Brady CFO helps value-driven business owners in America’s food, manufacturing, logistics, warehousing/distribution, construction, and professional services industries with annual revenues between $5M and $40M solve their cash flow and financial performance frustrations with strategic financial planning and leadership—taking the CFO hat off their heads for good. We help you grow the business of your dreams and never run out of cash.
We specialize in developing corporate financial strategies for businesses in our target market so that the owners can focus on what they love and areas of their business that bring them joy. They didn’t become entrepreneurs to spend their days trying to manage accounting and cash flows. And we solve this.
Our team serves as part-time CFOs to businesses that are not in a budgetary position to afford a full-time CFO but need the strategy and support that a financial wizard can bring to their business. We’re big believers that for businesses with between $5 and $40 million in annual revenues, investments in excellent financial operations set your business up for an incredible growth trajectory.
For example, we just helped one of our recent clients obtain a credit line 5x bigger than their existing line. This has allowed their leadership team to breathe easier knowing that they have a sustainable cash flow solution to weather seasonality in their business and can now focus on new business development and sales opportunities to grow 2024 revenue and beyond.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
I recommend identifying someone who has experience in your desired position and starting to buy them meals on a regular basis.
You don’t need a formal mentor relationship, but I believe you should respect their time, so the least you can do is take them to a nice lunch or breakfast.
I also believe you will need different mentors at different points in your life, depending on the challenges you face.
So, don’t think you will need that mentor for years. It can be sad to move on from a mentorship relationship because you could develop a deep personal relationship with that person. But the truth is that mentors do a wonderful job when there comes a day when you don’t need them anymore. You should be grateful for that, and your expression of gratitude will involve letting them move on as well.
At one point in my corporate career, I needed a mentor who could instill in me confidence and knowledge of corporate financial excellence and an executive presence to show and present well during corporate board meetings. I found someone who helped me do this, and I developed a deep friendship with him. But, as time went on, I discovered that he wasn’t the right mentor to help me launch and build a business.
Now, I’m working with mentors/coaches who have business-building experience. With them, I’m working on my own fears of failure so that I can learn to hire better, let go, and build a team that will grow my business with me.
In summary, buy your mentors a good meal and understand that mentor relationships are meant to be temporary. If they are not temporary, you probably don’t have the right mentor to help you grow.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bradycfo.com/
