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Brad Netzel
Partner - Accounting and Audit
Professional Background
Brad Netzel is a distinguished partner at Sikich, a firm that provides a wide range of accounting, consulting, and advisory services. With over two decades of experience in public accounting, Brad has cultivated a reputation for his expertise in serving both public and private companies. He began his career in public accounting in 2000 and has dedicated himself to the accounting field ever since. Since 2010, his primary focus has been on privately-held and closely-held organizations within the middle market, particularly in Wisconsin and Northern Illinois.
Brad has carved out a niche for himself in key industries, particularly Manufacturing & Distribution and Agriculture/Food and Beverage. His specialist knowledge positions him as a valuable asset for clients navigating the complexities of these sectors. His role involves providing a myriad of services that are crucial for the operational and financial health of businesses.
His work includes assurance and consulting services that focus on financial statement audits and reviews, which help businesses ensure compliance with financial reporting standards. Furthermore, he offers guidance on technical issues related to U.S. GAAP and IFRS, allowing his clients to confidently manage and report their financial activities.
In addition to his core responsibilities, Brad is adept at conducting quality of earnings studies for potential transactions, assisting clients in understanding the implications of their financial decisions. He also emphasizes the importance of internal controls, helping organizations design and evaluate the effectiveness of their control systems. His expertise in global audits facilitates the coordination of foreign audits for multinational companies, an indispensable service in today’s interconnected business landscape.
Through his extensive background and continual commitment to professional development, Brad has been instrumental in identifying performance improvement opportunities across businesses, cementing his status as a trusted advisor in the accounting profession.
Education and Achievements
Brad Netzel has a solid educational foundation that has equipped him with the technical knowledge required for his successful career in accounting. He is a proud alumnus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned his Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) in Accounting. This rigorous academic program provided him the groundwork in accounting principles and practices.
Following his undergraduate studies, Brad further advanced his expertise by obtaining a Master of Accountancy (MAcc) from the Wisconsin School of Business. This graduate degree not only enhanced his technical proficiency but also prepared him for the dynamic challenges he would face in the industry.
Before becoming a partner at Sikich, Brad held various prominent positions in reputable firms. He served as an Audit Staff member at Arthur Andersen LLP, where he began to hone his auditing skills. He progressed to become a Senior Manager at Deloitte & Touche LLP, where he managed auditing processes for a diverse portfolio of clients. His experience continued to expand at Kolb+Co SC as an Audit Manager, where he was responsible for directing audit engagements. Brad then became an Audit and Accounting Senior Manager at Sikich LLP before ascending to the partner level, where he currently provides leadership and comprehensive services to clients.
Brad’s journey through these prominent positions illustrates his dedication to excellence and continued professional education, making him a guiding force for many in the accounting profession.
Achievements
Brad Netzel’s professional journey is marked by significant achievements and contributions to the accounting and auditing field. His active role in various industries reveals his ability to adapt and deliver exceptional service tailored to client needs. Not only has he excelled in his technical proficiencies, but Brad has also established a remarkable track record for successful project completions and client satisfaction.
Having spent considerable time working closely with privately-held and closely-held businesses, Brad has developed critical insights that allow him to provide exceptional service to his clients. His focus on Manufacturing & Distribution and Agriculture/Food and Beverage industries emphasizes his readiness to tackle the unique challenges these sectors face.
Brad’s ability to conduct thorough quality of earnings studies can be seen as one of his standout achievements, enabling clients to make informed decisions based on solid financial evaluations. His oversight on design and evaluation of internal controls has led many organizations to enhance their operational efficiency and compliance, particularly beneficial in today’s regulatory environment.
By coordinating global audits for multinational companies, Brad has demonstrated a remarkable understanding of international accounting standards and practices, solidifying his reputation as a trusted expert. This global perspective has allowed him to provide invaluable guidance to companies looking to expand their footprint in international markets, ensuring they adhere to the highest standards of financial reporting.
Throughout his career at Sikich and other leading firms, Brad has developed an array of long-term relationships with clients, rooted in trust and excellence. This personal commitment to client engagement and satisfaction highlights his passion for not just accounting, but for nurturing the businesses he serves.
Brad Netzel’s career is a clear testament to his resilience, continuous learning, and unwavering dedication to the field of accounting. His ability to mentor upcoming professionals and lead high-level projects has made a significant impact on both his colleagues and clients. As he continues to shine in his role at Sikich, there’s no doubt that he will influence the future of accounting and advisory services positively.
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Mutual Connections
Clay is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Clay centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Clay is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Clay as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Clay offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Clay's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Clay makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Clay's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Clay isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.
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