Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to Monument Matters, a podcast produced by the Monument Builders of North America for all things memorialization.
Each episode is an extension of our monthly magazine, MB News. Monument Matters invites everyone to listen and share. You'll find all of the episodes on Apple, Spotify and YouTube.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Hello, and welcome to the last episode of MB&A's Monument Matters Season 1, a podcast produced by the Monument Builders of North America for all things monumental.
MB&A is a 119-year-old association whose mission is to define and promote memorialization in a viable, innovative and diversified way for its members and to enhance awareness of memorialization by the general public and the entire remembrance industry.
In that spirit of promoting memorialization, the MBNA Marketing Committee is providing these podcasts as an extension of our monthly magazine, MB News. Each podcast episode features a discussion related to a magazine theme. Monument Matters podcasts invite everyone to listen and share. You'll find all of the episodes of our first and our upcoming second season on Apple, Spotify and YouTube. I'm your host, Mike John Cmaica from the John Scarabelli Company Cimorano Monuments and Flowers in Cleveland, Ohio. I'm also a past president of the Monument Builders of North America. Joining us on today's podcast are Howard Goldstein and Ryan Worthington. Credit card processing is one of those unavoidable costs that most business owners assume they just have to live with. Today we're talking with an MB and a affinity partner that offers their cost saving services to members. It's part of its member benefit program. Howard Goldstein serves as a regional director of Merchant Advocate, an organization helping businesses reduce payment processing costs, leveraging over a decade of experience and extensive knowledge of the true cost of a transaction. Ryan Worthington, cma, a longtime friend of mine, is co owner of Worthington Monuments in Fort Worth and a past president of mbna. She will share her perspective as a business owner who has used this service. Ryan and Howard, welcome to the show.
[00:02:21] Speaker C: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
[00:02:23] Speaker D: Glad to be here.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Howard. Merchant Advocates is an MB and A partner. Explain what services you offer to our members.
[00:02:30] Speaker C: All right, well, thank you for having me. And Merchant Advocate, in a nutshell, helps merchants save money on credit card processing fees without having to change processors. It's what makes us unique in the industry. We offer a very simple free analysis to determine if someone is being overcharged, and I get into more details about that. But the goal is to determine if they're being overcharged, and if so, with our merchant's permission, our name is what we do. We advocate on their behalf to Negotiate the best possible programs with their current providers so they get to save money without having to change anything. That's it in a nutshell.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Awesome. Ryan, you admit you were skeptical about asking for a review of your fees. Share your experience with having merchant advocates work with you.
[00:03:21] Speaker D: Yeah, it's a super easy process.
I just had to provide a couple months worth of statements so that Howard could. And his team could review and see what fees I was being charged.
And then a couple, you know, had to sign approval for them to go advocate on our behalf. And that was it. Sit back and wait. And then Howard came back and showed us exactly, line by line, what we were being charged, what he was able to negotiate for us, and, you know, show us the very next month how much we were saving. So I don't know, Mike, if you've ever called your credit card processor before and tried to negotiate fees. I sure have. And it's a long process, and there's a lot of terms and industry things that we just don't understand. You know, you're basically in the dark. So before we hired Merchant Advocate, I actually had gone through that process and called, and I had already negotiated as low as I thought I could get it, and then they were still able to come back with more savings. Pretty easy. Easy process. And I know Howard mentioned it, but the best part for me was that we didn't have to switch processors because all of our staff already knew how to. How to use the processor we were using. We had already invested all the money in the actual terminals and all of that. So there was. It wasn't like we were going to have to learn a new software or buy any new equipment. So that was a big plus, too.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: So I'm going to. I'm going to say almost sounds too good to be true.
[00:04:54] Speaker D: Yeah, it's great.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: So if the service is free, who buys your groceries? Howard? How does that work?
[00:05:02] Speaker D: Well, and that's one other thing I meant to mention real quick. Sorry, Howard.
I liked that there's no fee unless they save you money.
So if Howard come. If Howard had come back and said, hey, you did a great job negotiating the rates on your own. I can't save you any more money. There wasn't even going to be a fee for him to review it.
So he doesn't get paid unless he saves you money. And the more money he saves you, the more money he gets paid. Paid because it's a percentage. I don't remember the exact details, but there's an incentive for him to. To find the Absolute, most savings possible.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Okay, so, so Howard gets to benefit from a percentage of what he saves you.
[00:05:44] Speaker D: You got it?
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Got it.
[00:05:46] Speaker D: And I don't know all those details, but Howard can explain that, I'm sure.
[00:05:50] Speaker C: So we are a performance based business model, as Ryan said, if we don't save someone money, there's absolutely no charge for our attempt to do so. So there's no downside risk.
Once again, if someone is a candidate for our service, and let me address that right now, if we can't put at least $1,200 a year on someone's bottom line, net net savings, we're not going to bring them on as a client. So we actually have an MB and a member who wrote us a wonderful testimonial because we were only able to save them about $1,000.
So I gave them free advice. I said, do this, do this, do this. And they gave us a five star review on Google review. And we're now using that in some of our marketing because we just give free advice. So how do we share in the savings? We normally share in the savings 50 50.
But as an MBNA member, we do a 6040 split in the member's favor because we truly are a member benefit of being part of the mbna. If someone was to come to us off the street, we again share in the savings 50, 50. But we want it to be more of an advantage to an MB and a member to take advantage of our service. And we do a very simple before and after picture. As Ryan mentioned, she sent us statements. So we asked people to send us their latest three months of statements to determine. We're going to do a preliminary analysis to simply determine are they a candidate for our service or not, Is there enough savings to bring them on as a client?
So in a 6040 split, we have to find at least $2,000 in gross savings. 60% of $2,000 would put $1,200 on the merchant's bottom line. So if they are a candidate for our service, we would again, with their permission, negotiate on their behalf with their current company. And as Ryan mentioned, this industry, if anyone's ever tried to, I'm sure everyone's looked at their statements. But to try to make sense of your statements, they are, as I like to say, confusing by design.
The acronyms, the language, all of the various. And these companies know that.
So they have a marked advantage over merchants when they do try to do this on their own. And kudos to Ryan, what we find is that when our merchants do try to negotiate on their own, they will usually get 20 to 25 cents on the dollar of available savings when they are trying to negotiate. These companies understand that the merchants don't understand the ins and outs. What's negotiable, what's not negotiable, what's a completely, totally unnecessary fee, where the hidden fees lie. All of these various factors that come into play, unfortunately, puts the merchant at a disadvantage.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: Absolutely. I can attest, I'm the one that looks at those statements for us, and more often than not, frankly, I'm just not looking at them because they are.
I'm not getting anything out of the experience because it's, it's Greek. So I think it's a great idea to have an advocate that you could trust based on the participation in the affinity program through mbna. You know, MBNA has vetted Howard and his company to say this is a guy that you could trust, because we know we've been down the road. So, again, another.
Not only is it a benefit that MB&A offers, but the fact that MB&A is offering it, it's like a double whammy. Right? You've got that endorsement as well as the potential for savings. So I think that's, that's fabulous.
[00:09:46] Speaker C: And Mike, I just did want to add just one quick thing. Our company was founded by a gentleman name of Eric Cohen, who comes from the industry. He was in the industry a good decade before, or he created Merchant Advocate, and he was creating a company again, that would advocate on behalf of merchants. I've been in the merchant services industry for 19 years. So if you will, we're industry insiders. We know how the game is played. And unfortunately, the rules are stacked against the merchants. And that's why we help people navigate these waters. But we do come from the industry, and I just wanted to make that point.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: All right, so we know why they're so expensive and we know why they're difficult to understand.
We've covered that. Again, I think having the opportunity to bring your, bring your book to an expert is, is a great way to go for sure. So is there a. Of the merchants that you have worked with in and out of our industry, what percentage have you had to say? Well, you're. You've got it made, I can't save you a dollar.
[00:10:51] Speaker C: Very good find. And statistically, and we have this up on our website, and I have found this just personally within my own portfolio of clients that I have worked with over the last 13 years. I've been the regional director for merchant advocate for 13 years. About one third of the statements that we look at actually have a good program. We cannot help everyone. There are a lot of scoundrels in this industry, but there's also some good people. Okay, so that's. That's encouraging. But about two thirds of the statements that we do look at, the merchants are candidates for our service. So there's a tremendous opportunity to help people. And I did look it up before I came on board here. We have helped MB&A members just. I ran the report this morning. I was very pleased to see that the net savings added to the bottom lines, including Ryan's bottom line, has surpassed $100,000 as of January of 2026. And this is just in the past three years that we've been doing this. So we're just scratching the surface for.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: NBN, if I understood you right, that's $100,000 savings across the membership. Is that right?
[00:12:05] Speaker C: And this is the beautiful part, you know, this is. This is a slow build. This is what we do with associations. We start with one, and then the word starts to grow. And we work with some associations. We've helped hundreds of their members right now. We have helped 10 MB and A members so far put over $100,000 collectively on their bottom lines. And I really want to thank Ryan for having the vision and the trust in us to prove this out. We've worked with, you know, just a handful, and that's why we're coming to the conference later in February. I'm looking forward to meeting people. And I always say we can't help people if they don't know that we exist. So it's platforms like this that give us an opportunity for people to be aware of what we do, and more and more people will take advantage of what we do, and those numbers will simply grow over time. So we're excited about continuing to build upon this relationship. Relationship.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: No, I think this is a great addition to the affinity programs that MB and A is offering. For sure. I know that, you know, especially now as there. There continues to be a movement toward passing on some of these processing fees to our customers. You know, Ryan, I don't know if you've started to do that, but we've started to look at it and. And we're analyzing ways to implement that because, frankly, last year that was over $15,000 processing that just went right off the bottom line. So credit card processing is a big number especially, and it's mostly hidden, I think. I don't think people really spend the Time to understand what they're up against there, for sure. So from your perspective, Ryan and then Howard, you could fill in the blanks if she misses any, which I kind of doubt.
What's the process look like? How much time did it take on your part? How long did it take for Howard to get back to you? When did you know? How did it all come together?
[00:14:09] Speaker D: I mean, the hardest part was trying to find my statements. They send them every month, but like you said, we don't always look at them, so. No, really, I mean, that was it. Just getting the statements to him and then sit back and. And wait. There's no.
Sorry.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: Watch the money flow.
[00:14:27] Speaker D: That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Howard, I have it set up where he just charges me monthly, so I don't even have to pay. You know, he automatically charges me, so I don't even have to do anything, you know, on a daily monthly basis or anything, so.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Okay, Howard, anything you want to add to that?
[00:14:45] Speaker C: Absolutely. And the third phase of what we do, and I appreciate you give me an opportunity to explain, so we. We do an analysis.
Then if someone is a candidate for a service, with their permission, again, we're going to negotiate on their behalf, but we then audit. The ongoing value of what we do is critical. We audit the account on a monthly basis.
Because as you both know, and as those that are watching this podcast know, this industry reserves the right to raise the rates on merchants whenever they choose. This is an un. It's a very important point. This is an unregulated industry.
They can charge you whatever they want, and they can raise the rates on you whenever they choose. So just because you have a contract with a merchant service provider does not lock them into charging you whatever they're charging you. The company that Ryan is with, they try to raise the rates, get on proactively, get out on the phone, and do our best to eliminate those rate increases. And we've caught thousands of rate increases over the last 19 years. Merchant Advocates has been in business for 19 years. And when we do catch a rate increase, we get back on the phone and we say, excuse me, this merchant is a clean client of ours. We noticed that the rate went from here to here. This fee went from here to here. And they always.
They rarely. I don't say I shouldn't say always, because we're seeing some really egregious rate increases. The rate increases are usually very small.
Why?
Because you're not going to notice 50 or 75 or $100 that gets lost in the Shuffle. We are looking at every single statement, every single line item, looking for variances.
And we catch those rate increases. Again, we get back on the phone to advocate on your behalf, to do our best to eliminate them. We work with any business that takes credit cards. And we're very. We work with a lot of. We're very deep in the dental world, dental and medical. And just giving this as an example, it has been particularly active in the last month.
We have multiple examples of clients who have gotten their rates right, raised. They've had their rates raised in November by two and a half percent.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: It cost.
[00:17:13] Speaker C: It cost one of our orthodontists over $12,000 in the month of November.
Another 1, 4, 800. Just thousands and thousands of dollars in unnecessary fees. So we are on the castle walls protecting you from this industry as you try to run your business.
You know, I use a little medieval metaphor, but in fun, but we really are. This industry is really.
We're protecting you from the excesses of this industry.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Sure.
So you mentioned that the audit process will rarely result in the need for you to change processors, but does it happen?
[00:18:02] Speaker C: Great question.
The vast majority of our clients stay with their current provider.
If they are unhappy with their current provider or we do not have a fully successful negotiation, we do have preferred providers that we can recommend that they can move to, and we will help them navigate those waters as well. We hold their hand every step of the way. And so that's a key component of what we do. It's a small percentage of our clients, but a number of them, the ones that do that are unhappy.
And it comes down to a mathematical equation, right? If me.
If there's $12,000 a year in potential savings and the merchant service provider comes back with a $3,000 worth of savings and there's $9,000 being left on the table, we can have that conversation, but it is always a plan B.
But we do have a pathway to victory for our clients. If we think there's $8,000 in savings and they come back with, you know, $7,000. Okay, so there's $1,000 more worth of savings. Is it worth going down that road? Probably not. But we just simply present that to our merchants and give them the opportunity to make an educated decision.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: Okay, so we're just coming up on, as of this recording, 20 days into the month of January.
Is now a good time to start this process? Should I wait? Is there better times? When worst times. What do you advise?
[00:19:46] Speaker C: Sour.
I think anytime is a good time to get a checkup. Right. Just find out if you're being overcharged. And so all we ask, and we do have a landing page as a, as a partner, affinity partner of the MBNA. If you go to merchantadvocate.com MBNA it's a simple landing page where you can enter your information and you can upload statements right there. It goes into our, our very secure system and we will reach out within 24 hours and touch base and then we'll do an analysis. And the analysis, as Ryan said, the big ask is sending us statements. Right. We're not asking for a lot of time. Once I ask people that if they can set a 30 minute meeting with me four business days after sending us those statements, if they have a good program, our meeting will be less than 15 minutes. I'm going to give some free advice, help them clean up whatever they can clean up. Again, they keep 100% of those savings if they are a candidate for our service. We'll take those 30 minutes to review. Our very simple one page agreement that Ryan can attest to is very straightforward. It's eight very simple points that articulate our business model and it is our permission slip, if you will, our authorization to advocate on their behalf. But my goal is to always keep my clients time to an absolute minimum. You have a business to run. We don't want you to spend a lot of time working on this. That's why you engage our service so that we can truly advocate on your behalf.
[00:21:28] Speaker D: I can attest to that. If he sets a 30 minute meeting, you're not going to be on the phone for more than 30 minutes.
[00:21:33] Speaker C: Thank you, Ryan.
[00:21:34] Speaker D: Yeah, and we also took advantage of some of Howard's free advice that he gave us in that initial meeting. As far as, you know, when you run a card, make sure you're entering all this information. Just different things that save, you know, half a percent here and in there. But, but yeah, I think we got a good like boot camp, you know, when we first signed on too. And so it's been, I think we've been using you guys since 20, 23. 3.
I think I looked it up.
[00:22:02] Speaker E: Right.
[00:22:02] Speaker C: I looked it up before I came on board. It's been 30 months.
[00:22:06] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:22:07] Speaker C: We've opted you out of a number of rate increases with the company that you're with. We've prevented, if we were not monitoring your account, your fees would be thousands of dollars more than where they are now. All of these companies reserve the right to raise your, your rates. We just were actually, we just yesterday I You're on my list of people to reach out to. We just opted you out of a. I believe it was a 0.1% increase and the monthly fee was going to be raised from 1995 to 4995. This is just a real life example. Claudia. My assistant submitted the opt out yesterday because we became aware of this coming down the line. That prevented them from charging you $360 a year just on the monthly fee. And I have to double check on what the other increase was, but at a minimum was $360. We avoided them from charging you. So it's just a real life example from just. Actually it was on Friday we had to submit the.
The opt out. So. Yeah.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: So Howard, would you repeat that landing page again for our audience?
[00:23:16] Speaker C: Sure. It's just HTTPs://merchant advocate.com and forward/mbna.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: All right, audience, be sure to take a look at that and save yourself a bunch of money. Howard, what about things like PCI compliance? Does your firm help with that?
[00:23:38] Speaker C: It's a great question for those who don't know PCI compliance. PCI stands for the payment card industry.
And they created a Data Security Standards Council that established best practices.
So every merchant in America has to fill out an annual survey attesting to those best practices.
And if you don't, your processor, your merchant service provider will charge you a non compliance fee. I have a slide in my deck that I present when I travel the country. I give presentations and I do webinars and it shows PCI non compliance fee 2995-3495-6995-9495 all the way up to. There's one company out there that charges $200 when people are PCI noncompliance. This industry is making millions of dollars on PCI non compliance. So we absolutely do assist in that process. We can't do the survey for our clients. We'll help them through that initial survey. Some of the auto renewals that go on on a yearly basis, with their permission, we'll just do the auto renew them renewal for them. But I like my clients being in that first meeting so that we can walk through those questions together. Whole language, a whole industry of it, stuff that was above, you know, most people's, you know, we help our clients, we give them websites to go to, customer service numbers to go to, and in many cases, like Ryan, my assistant, with her particular company, we help with the process to make sure it's a big pet peeve of mine. I hate seeing people getting charged for PCI non compliance. And you'd be shocked how many people have no idea what PCI non compliance is. And so they're just getting charged for something they didn't even know they needed to fill out a survey. So it's an area that we really focus a lot of our energy on.
[00:25:42] Speaker B: Yep, I'm one of those.
It took a while to figure it out that we were getting charged for something, you know, really stupid.
[00:25:52] Speaker C: And let me, let me just add a caveat. Just, you know, as part of my free advice to people.
If you're processing over the Internet, okay.
And you're not using a technology that uses point to point encryption, it's called P2PE.
Okay. Ryan's system is using P2P E technology, so she does not need to get her network scanned for Those not using P2P E technology.
P2P E technology encrypts the card number before it passes over your company's computer network.
If you are not using P2P E technology, you have to get your network scanned. They scan the 443 port just to get a little technical. It's basically your on ramp to the Internet from your company. They scan that port to make sure you're following, firewalls are in place and your TLS triple layer security is up to date and your SSL certificate is up to date, etc. Etc.
And if it's not, you will then be non compliant. It gives you the remediation to correct whatever the mistakes are, which you can give to your IT person. But the bottom line is you have to pass that scan on a quarterly basis and you have to attest to passing the scan. This industry creates a lot of stumbling blocks that people can trip over that wind up costing them money. So please reach out to me. I'm happy to give you some guidance on PCI compliance. It's a tricky, you know, it's a little challenging to navigate, but I'm happy to give you some advice in that area.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: Awesome.
Well, Howard, it sounds like you are a affinity program that a member really can't do without.
[00:27:45] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: And I applaud you for bringing the program to our members. I applaud MBNA for putting it in place as another member benefit. You know, I can't tell you how many times I hear, why should I join mbna? What's in it for me? Well, you know, that's why we're building the affinity program program. But beyond that, it's conversations like this, whether you're having them in a webinar format, or you're having them across the table at convention in Fort Worth in February, or you're having them on the telephone because you met another member. I just can't stress how valuable membership in MBNA has been for me and my company and should be the same for you and yours. I'm sure, Ryan, you can tell the same story. It doesn't matter how much time you put into mbna, what you get back out is just exponentially greater.
[00:28:43] Speaker D: Yep. Yeah. This program can pay for your membership many times over.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:28:47] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: And I think that's often true of each of the affinity programs. One way or another, most of them will pay for your membership.
So you know it.
It's costing you to not be a member and take advantage.
[00:29:04] Speaker D: Right?
[00:29:05] Speaker B: With that, I will say thank you again, Ryan Worthington and Howard Goldstein, for sharing your talents and time with our audience today. MB&A members should log into the MBNA website. Look for the discounts and affinity partners under the resource tab. This upcoming issue of MB News will have more information on that topic.
So thank you for listening to monument matters. MB&A invites you to stay connected through Facebook and LinkedIn or visit, as I said, bww.monumentbuilders.org for upcoming events and webinars. Please keep in mind that this credit card fee check is just one of the many cost saving affinity programs. As I said, exclusively available to members of Monument Builders of North America. For more information about these again, Visit our website, www.monumentbuilders.
for MBNA. I'm Michael Johns. Thanks for taking time out of your day to listen.
If you found this worthwhile, please take a minute and share the link with a friend for comments and feedback. We'd love to hear from you, so please drop A note to infoonmentbuilders.org Howard Ryan, thanks again. Have a great day and looking forward to seeing both of you in warm Fort Worth.
[00:30:18] Speaker D: All right, sounds good. Thanks, Mike.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: All right, take care.
[00:30:21] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:30:22] Speaker E: Now, as we wrap up season one of the Mind Matters podcast, I want to share a sincere thank you. What began as an experiment has turned into something truly meaningful. And that's because of all of you.
To our guests, not just from today, but all guests from season one, thank you for sharing your knowledge and stories. To our listeners, thank you for logging in and supporting the show.
And to the MBNA leadership, thank you for believing in improving the professionalism of the monument industry through new and exciting vehicles like the Monument.
I'm excited to announce that my contract has been renewed and season two is on its way with more conversations, insights and voices from across the monument industry. And unlike other streaming services, you won't have to wait months for its release.
