Profit First for Real Estate Investors

Mike: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Really excited to have my friend David Richter join us today. We’re gonna be talking about profit first for real estate investors. He just wrote the book on it actually, and it just came out yesterday. So we’re going to talk about the benefits of, I mean, we all get into this business for freedom and financial freedom, specifically a time freedom.

Right. But then we all end up a lot of us end up finding out that we’re working really hard and we are making money, but we don’t really know where it’s at or what’s due or how to manage our finances. Uh, and we just keep plowing forward on the day-to-day of the business. Today, we’re going to fix that.

My friends and David Richter is going to help us welcome to real estate investing in secrets. We’re all looking for freedom and the opportunity to live better, more fulfilling lives. But most of us were trained our entire lives to work for someone else to chase their dreams. How can we use real estate investing as a vehicle to achieve financial freedom?

My life is dedicated to answering your real estate investing questions and helping you build an investing business that allows you to change your. And the world around you [00:01:00] and to enable you to turn your dreams of financial freedom into a reality. My name is Mike Hambright from flipping her.com and your questions get answered here.

Hey David,

David: welcome to the show. CECO aside to be here, Mike, I really appreciate your friendship and just, you know, having me here. I love getting this message out the

Mike: door. Yeah. It’s been great. Getting to know you better over the past few years. I think we’ve probably known each other for. I don’t even know how long five or six years anyway, but I think we’ve gotten to know each other a lot better over the past, you know, 18 months, 24 months or so.

And, uh, you’re a member of our investor fuel mastermind. You’ve been a huge giver to that community and the type of guy that seemingly always just shares and helps other people’s and, and co sometimes you question, what are you getting out of this? You know? Uh, but I know you just have the heart of a servant.

You like to help people. So really excited to have you here. My friend.

David: Thank you. And I really appreciate that. I want to give back I’ve I feel like so many people have poured into me. It’s like, I need to give back, you know, to other people. So really appreciate that.

Mike: Yeah. Well, and I think that mentality, and you know, [00:02:00] this is the part of the culture that we have at investor fuel is the more you give, the more you get.

And, um, you know, we’ve, we’ve clearly seen it. The people that have the biggest hearts that people that give the most, uh, get the most back in return one way or another through reciprocity or the universe or whatever you believe it comes back around caramels alive.

David: Right. Yeah. I totally believe that. And uh, one person puts it be a conduit, not a bucket, you know?

Cause if you just fill up, there’s a women to what you have, but if you’re just conduit and can go right through and as much as humanly possible. Yeah. Well

Mike: your book just came out. I think as of the time we’re recording this and the time this is released, it literally just came out in the past couple of days here.

I was fortunate to get an early version of copy of a profit first for real estate investing. Uh, amazing book, lots of great content in. And I’m excited to talk about it today. Maybe before we start talking about the book, we talk about how you got started in real estate investing at all, because that was a precursor at

David: all of this that’s and [00:03:00] that’s one of the reasons I wrote this book because my background is real estate investing.

Most people look at me and they say, oh, he’s definitely a CPA, or he’s a numbers guy. And I’m like, well, yes and no. So I started off in real estate, investing, reading rich dad, poor dad in college. I bought my first house, fixed it up, you know, like did all that, rented it out, did a lease option with it, turned into a great deal.

Cause the guy cashed me out six months later. So I was like, I got to keep doing this. So I started working with a company outside of Chicago and we did that. Then we took it from like five to seven deals a month, about 25 30 deals a month. So I’ve seen a lot of different deal types, like wholesale turnkey, fixed and flip, you know, lease options, seller finance, like everything in between.

So I’ve got one. A lot of exposure to a lot of different types of deals, been a part of over 850 deals so far in the, and up to this point. So I’ve gotten a lot of that exposure, but that also helped me in the small business world, because we grew from like five employees to like 25 and 30 employees. And so I got to see, you know, that [00:04:00] small business grow and grow and I got to sit in every seat.

I was kind of like a utility man there. So go into. Fix the problem let’s move on. So I would, you know, I was in acquisitions dispositions. I was project management, property management, the finances, you know, transaction coordination, like anything you could think of in real estate investing. I sat in that seat.

And so it gave me a good window into the inner workings of a real estate company. And from beginning to end, going from smaller to larger and that’s. Gave me, you know, the passion for real estate investing in for helping people, because I saw like we were changing lives in that business, but then one thing that did strike me was the financial side.

When I sat in that seat, just seeing the money flow from beginning to end and seeing how, okay, how acquisitions flows into all the way from the end to. You know, selling the property or the rental and, you know, making it a rental. And that was just super eyeopening for me. So that’s what I also saw too, in that company, like we were doing 25 30 deals a month, six, [00:05:00] seven figure months spending six, seven figure months till, you know, it was like that vicious cycle.

So I got the good, bad and ugly of like seeing we’re not just a real estate company, but just a small business in how it can, how it can be. So freeing to entrepreneurs, but also can chain them to, you know, almost to their desk, you know, as well too. So that’s how I got started in real estate investing then a little bit of the background on the financial side, but yeah, that my passion is real estate investing.

I had a portfolio of properties and I loved, you know, I loved being inside of the real estate company. Yep. We

Mike: have a sign right inside of my. Office here, you know, I’ve got, um, I’ve got, we’ve got canvas prints everywhere, actually. So many that I don’t even have any more wall space. Uh, but we have one right inside of our door that is kind of my original FlipNerd mantra, which is we help others achieve financial freedom through real estate investing.

That really is my goal. Even through investor fuel investment and all the other business I’ve created, it’s always to help other people achieve financial freedom, uh, or [00:06:00] take it to take their freedom to the next level, or be able to impact more people. Right. But I will tell you this. Most of the best real estate investors.

I know. And you know, a lot of the same people, they’re great operators that are great. Marketers. They’re really good at things. The financial side, not so much, that’s where they struggle. And sometimes they’re making a lot of money, but they just don’t know where the bones are buried and you know, where the coffee cans are or whatever.

And I can tell you a separate little side story. My, my wife, Lindsay, uh, used to be an investment banker on wall street is very savvy. Then she was a consultant for. Oh, bankruptcy and turnaround from, and truthfully not much got turned around. It was mostly liquidations. And she just has this ingrained that she went into.

I mean, talk about massive corporations like MCI back in. They have a huge telecom companies and their biggest problems were. Poor cash management. Like they just didn’t manage their financials. They have these empires and they just crumbled because financially they just didn’t have the right mindset or they weren’t protecting themselves for the very things that you are helping people that you wrote about in this book, the very same things.

Right, [00:07:00]

David: right. It’s amazing to me because most people don’t have Lindsey’s background, like the finances or whatnot. So like that’s where I feel like most people are embarrassed or scared, confused about the financial side. That’s why we don’t go because there are, there’s a ton of information on marketing sales systems, operations, like.

Stuff and like webinars and all this, but like, no, if anyone touches the financial side, it’s how to save money on taxes. And how do you know like that in which is right? Like you need that, or self-directed IRA investing or like, if they’re talking about the financial side, but no one’s tackling like how to actually manage the cash, you know, like your active cash that’s flowing through your business.

And it’s funny, you mentioned that company that she was working with because just yesterday I was on a call. With a multi multimillion dollar real estate company, you know, like doing they’re in there, like five, $6 million range, no idea, no idea what’s going on with their cash. No idea. What’s going like, but they’re having millions of dollars flow through their company.

And it’s the same thing when you’re that big or when you’re just [00:08:00] starting out. Like, unless you have a. Foundation. It’s going to be, it can just, the nightmares only get bigger as a neglected.

Mike: So, David, I know that you have a lot of passion for this and helping real estate investors. And I know that’s part of why you wrote the book, but just tell us, just kind of tell us, like, why did you write the book?

Why, why do you feel the need to share this information with.

David: So, like I said, that kind of starts with that story of the real estate investor. I was working with up in Northwest Indiana, outside of Chicago because he lost everything in 2008 and nine, like all of his rental properties and then was building up this big business again, like starting from scratch, like square one, starting again.

And then I saw him kind of get into that rat race again, like at the bigger level. And I’m like, I don’t want this to happen. Like I love this guy. This guy has mentored me. For five years, you know, I want to like help people and get, not get to that point. But then also five years into that, I also had the ability to live anywhere.

At that point we sold off properties, you know, was able to become financially free. So [00:09:00] then we moved across the country. I started working with another investor because that’s my passion. I wanted to help him. And I liked partnering up with people. So started working with. First thing I said was, I got to see your numbers.

Like, let me look at your books, let me look at this data because you can tell me anything, but the numbers don’t lie. So like, let me see them. So I dove in and the numbers were a mess. Like they weren’t, they weren’t in order. And so I didn’t see a clear picture of his story of like what his business was doing.

So I said, let me help. Let’s get this in order first, before we start rocking and rolling. So what I did right away, we saw, and then we saw that he had a little portfolio. But he had poured a ton of his own money into them, like where budgets went over or didn’t get enough private lending or whatnot. So he poured a lot of his own money in there and we saw like we could refinance some of those properties and he was able to, and he got like several hundred thousand dollars just from a few properties.

And he looked at me and said, More clarity over my numbers than I’ve ever had. And now I’ve got this cash sitting in my account like this has, this is transformational [00:10:00] because I feel in control of my business now because of the, I can control it from data and not just from my gut feeling all the time.

And that was to me, the light bulb moment of. I want to help other investors. Like if I buy, could have done this bag in Northwest Indiana or something like this, or like the same thing I want to help more investors just realize that you don’t have to be a numbers whiz. You don’t have to be like some, you didn’t have to get any degree in accounting because I that’s not my background.

So I just, there needed to be someone who could take it simply and say, here’s how you simply manage the cash inside your business. So I called a mentor, a person we know. Uh, together, Mike, it was a Gary Harper at that time, I called him and said, I’m thinking about starting this fractional CFO company to help real estate investors with their finances.

Like, I don’t see someone helping them and like speaking their language. He said, yes, do that. That sounds great. But have you read profit first? The book by Mike Macau it’s and I said, no, I’ve never read that book. So I did, I downloaded [00:11:00] that book that night took like 10 pages of notes and said, this is an amazing framework to help manage just the cat.

The the, what really matters from the financial aspect inside of a business when you’re no matter where you are the first thing to get a handle on, to feel in control. So that’s where I then started implementing it with real estate investors for about a year, then went to Mike and said, you know what, to Mike Macau it’s and said, Hey, this has been working.

People are getting clarity. Like people are getting confidence in their business control. Like I want to write the book if you don’t mind about for profit first for real estate investing, because there’s so many nuances, like there’s so many things, this is not a service-based business. This is not cut and dry.

You get this payment every single month, you know, like even if you have a rentals, you know, it’s not just always running rollercoaster. Right. Exactly. It’s a rollercoaster. So I said, what do you think about that? And he said, yes, let’s do that. You know, like I would love to get that out there. And so that’s where I saw finally, like this was my chance to [00:12:00] give back in a big way to the real estate investing community that had poured like 10 years into me.

And this was like, here, I can get this info out. So people don’t have to feel stuck in the rat race. They don’t have to feel like a living deal to deal always on that roller coaster and like helping them even out one of them. Scary. And one of the most, you know, big hurdles inside of the business. So that’s really what got me started in writing the book.

Mike: Well, that’s great. Hey, before I want, I want you to share a couple of the key points that are in the book, but before we do again, wants everybody to see the book here. Where do you get the book out? How do you it’s available now? I know it’s been, you’ve been, I’ve seen you from the beginning. When you told me you were going to write the book and I think it’s, gosh, it’s been what?

Probably 18 months. It’s been awhile. It’s been awhile. You’ve put a lot into this. I know there’s a lot of great information here to help people.

David: So you can go to simple C F O book.com. That’s where you can order it. It’s also available on Amazon. So if you just type it in there, they, I only mentioned that other website too.

Cause if you’re doing any bulk ordering whatnot for friends, yourself, a group or [00:13:00] whatnot, and we give discounts there that Amazon doesn’t give. So that’s where you can pick it up either place. So say that link one more time. Simple. C F O. Dot com CFO, chief financial officer. Yes.

Mike: Yes. Okay. So, so tell us a little bit about, um, what the main kind of points that people buy the book.

And honestly, maybe you can even talk to the people that might be having some pain points that they’re having and stuff. If you, if you have this issue, here’s why you should read the book. Kind of tell us a little bit about.

David: Who’s going to win. So profit versus made up of two big things. Two main points, I would say the mindset and then the practical use behind it.

So the mindset is we’ve heard this formula probably from a lot of different places, maybe our CPAs or accountants or whatnot, where we hear sales minus expenses equals profit. Meaning I make a sale, I pay all my expenses. Then hopefully I have something leftover at the end of the day. You know, hopefully there’s profit at the end of the year or whatever.

And then. But we’re hoping and praying for profit. You know, hopefully it’s this event that happens, but profit first says it’s sales minus [00:14:00] profit equals expenses. That’s the formula. That’s the correct formula that we should be as healthy business owners. Meaning I make a sale, I take the profit first and then we have to live on what’s left over for the business, which radically.

Train transforms our mindset from always being scarcity almost to like, I feel like now this is the abundance of like now I make sure that we’re healthy. So that way the whole business and my mindset can be healthy. And the only problem with this though, when I read profit first is I know what this sounds familiar.

Like I’ve read this in rich dad, poor dad, or like the richest man in Babylon, or like all these books that say pay yourself first. I’m like, this is, this is that concept. But then I started reading more and that’s where. The second big point is the practical application. Like, how do you pay yourself first?

I’m like, boom, this is why I love this system because there’s that practical steps behind it to make profit a habit inside of your business. Because one of the biggest things we see is. Most people look at their profitability, like on a deal basis, but maybe not the [00:15:00] whole organization or like they start getting into real estate and they’re like, oh, I just made 25,000 on this deal.

Guess what? $25,000 for marketing baby, you know, like I’m just going to pour it, dump everything back into it. And they’re not thinking. The long-term or how to structure it like a true business. And that’s where taking that mindset and making it a reality, getting that formula in place and then making it a reality, which is the second portion, which is made up of three steps.

But I’ll only go over one because in the book you can read the first and third step in, which is really about where you are and where you’re going. But the big step is if you’ve ever heard of the envelope system, like Dave, Ramsey’s made that popular and maybe you do it with your personal finances or heard it at your church or whatever, you know, like put, you know, you have these envelopes and then you put cash inside there for your different expenses.

It’s the same thing in. For profit first, the system where you set up literal bank accounts to separate out your money. Because the biggest mistake we see investors make that I do like working with dozens and hundreds of [00:16:00] businesses now that we have seen is where everyone just has this one big bank.

Where all their income and expenses go out of, and it’s just this cash salad that they’re just keep tossing. I have no idea what’s going on inside of their business, running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Like we have money today. Like let’s go spend. And then tomorrow it’s all gone because everything gets zapped out of their payroll hits and you know, all these marketing, you know, hit and then it’s like, what just happened?

So that’s what. If you set up bank accounts that help you, the business owner have control. And what are those bank accounts? I, like I said, I look like the finance person. I look like that nerd, so I totally embrace this. So that’s where I love the big epic stories like star wars or Harry Potter. They always have three main heroes inside the business.

Like Lou Khan layout, always pushing the story forward for good. They’re always making sure good wins in the end. Your business is your epic story. It’s your saga that you’re living right now. And if you don’t have specific heroes for yourself, and especially on the financial side, [00:17:00] you’re going to burn out, you’re going to crash and you won’t win.

Evil will win in the end. Those expenses will take over your business. So that’s where you set it up. Three main accounts. I call them the golden trio. That’s number one, the profit account. Number two, the owner’s compensation account. Number three, the owners tax account, the owner’s income tax. That first account, that profit account is for you.

The owner, to feel like the reward at the end of a quarter. Take a draw every quarter from that profit account in order to feel like we’re a successful business owner to give yourself that reward of why you started the business, that owner’s compensation account is to make sure you are paying yourself first.

This fulfills paying yourself first that we hear over and over again, like do this would be your salary. Like if you’re on W2 or taking distributions, however you take that. That’s where you would get. That account to make sure you’re paying yourself like on a weekly or bi-weekly monthly. However, you’re paying yourself for the work you do inside the business.

Then owner’s income tax. This has been so incredible working [00:18:00] with real estate investors that have this tax account. Now that pays their taxes when tax time is due, because we’ve had. Clients that we’re working with that have safer taxes throughout the year, instead of just scrambling. Now at the end of the year where they’re now, like this year, I had someone call me and say, I’m giving myself a little refund this year.

It was like a $13,000 refund because I saved too much in the taxes, but now I can go out and use that for whatever I want. So that’s what that tax account is for is to make sure that you’re saving throughout the year instead of scrambling. And when it comes tax time and then having to push it off and get on a payment plan and then Sue, you know, then just everything you’d just give you.

That’s stress. So like, those are what those three accounts are for. I always add the fourth one, the income account, which is just a holding bucket. All it is is a holding bucket that income deposits come in to that account. And then you transfer from that account. I like to call it the control account to where you control now and pushing it.

To your profit, to your owner’s compensation, to your [00:19:00] owner’s tax. So that way you are in control of where your money goes. Instead of having that one big account where everything just gets tossed around in there. So that’s where those four main accounts, then you have your OPEX that you already have set up your operational expense account to pay the expenses out of those are the foundational accounts.

And then. Once you start seeing yourself pour those, the money to those different accounts and transfer that’s when you finally see the formula, the mindset, the Robert Kiyosaki is the richest man in Babylon, all those start to click and it’s like, this is what they meant by paying yourself first. And like, now I feel like a true business owner.

Like I feel in control. I can take the vacations when I want, I can do the things that I’ve always wanted to do. Have more time with my family, my friends, whatever, by taking control of the financial side of your business. Biggest objection we get though, is I five bank accounts? Are you serious? Like, what are you talking about?

Like, that seems like a lot of work. Number one, this system is for you. Like, I want to make sure, you know, those accounts are all for you to manage the business and give yourself the cash profit that you’ve always [00:20:00] wanted. But secondly is if you’re like, I just want to, you know, the, I don’t know if I want to set all those up right now, set up one account.

At least if you go. From this, from this little, you know, section here, this podcast with this one action item, set up one bank account, name it, profit, and transfer 1% of any income into that account and start getting into the habit of being a profitable company. That’s what it is from every single deal you do or rent that you collect or whatever.

You’re just getting into that. Instead of that being some nebulous event at some time that you said, you know, like, hopefully I have profit in the future. So if you can do that, that I would consider this podcast is success. If you could just at least do that one step and get into a habit. So that’s the overview of profit first there’s other things I talk about specifically about the real estate investing version we could get into Mike, if you want me to, but that’s like the core fundamental.

You know of what profit first is. It’s good

Mike: stuff. I think people have a lot of, you know, obviously I’ve advised a lot of businesses. [00:21:00] I’ve seen a lot of businesses. You’ve seen a lot of businesses. I’ve seen. There’s a few things that I see over and over again is people are not setting aside money for certain things.

Taxes is a big one. Um, marketing is another big one because people like, you know, they’re just like, well, I’m not going to market this month because I’m a little low on cash. It’s like, if you want to stay small as a small business, that’s the surest way to do it is to not save some of these expenses.

Marketing is one taxes and other ones, but you can’t end be inconsistently advertising or generating leads in your business that that will ensure that you stay small and make that kind of rollercoaster even steeper. Right. Yes. I’ve seen people that I’ll like, uh, we’ll either do to either other two to two common things.

Either they spend everything they’ve got, and they’re not preparing for taxes at all. Only to find out at the end of the year that they’re screwed or they wait. And this is, this is where we were for a lot of years, is we wait until the end of the year to go through the tax plan process, even find out like how much money we even made this year.

Right? Like we’re kind of squirreling it away. Just worst case [00:22:00] scenario. And like you said, Not enjoying the fruits of your labor throughout the year. And sometimes it like emotionally, it brings you down because you’re kind of living in this feast or famine mode, and you’re kind of living through the famine, uh, because you’re worried, you know, that there’s going to be some, uh, somebody’s gonna jump out of the bushes and take your money at the end of the year or whatever.

Right. But that’s because we kept it all in, in one or two big buckets and we didn’t really set it aside for specific things.

David: Yeah, I think what you hit there at the psychological effect of building real reserves in your business. I dedicate a whole chapter of this because sometimes I feel like we as entrepreneurs and especially real estate investors, we hate lazy money.

We hate all that. So we feel bad. We feel bad if there is money sitting anywhere and it’s like, no, that is good. That is to help you grow in the proper way. Like, so that way you’re not, you know, living deal to deal. But then it’s also, I see this over and over again with who we work with and how we see this played out with when people actually implement it.

It [00:23:00] gives them that freedom and that peace of mind of like, I don’t have to go after that next deal. I don’t have to be rushing all the time. It doesn’t have to be the roller coaster. So they’re making better decisions. It’s like not decisions out of fear. Like I have to have this next deal, even though it’s a slim deal.

And hopefully we make some money on it. It’s like, well, no, we can get the deals that we want to get. We can make the best business decisions that we can. So that way we don’t have to put ourselves in this rat race over and over and over again, and then they feel in control of their business. So yeah, it’s the psychological effect is huge.

Mike: Awesome, good stuff. Well, David, one more time. Tell us where folks go to get a copy

David: of the book here. Yeah, simple. C F oh, book.com. Simple C F O book.

Mike: Awesome. And guys, I can tell you if you don’t know David, he’s an amazing guy. So you’re going to get to know him a little bit through the book here. Powerful book, like our are both, both of us that are on here.

Our mission is to help entrepreneurs specifically real estate investors. Cause that’s the, that’s the, uh, that’s the realm that we operate in. And, um, you know, I [00:24:00] think the more financially sound you can make your business. I I’m. Blessed to know many of the most successful real estate investors in the country.

And some of them, I will tell you are not the people that you think they are. There’s some people that have amazing businesses, huge businesses that are crushing it financially. They’re a mess. Right? And then there’s some people that are a little bit low below the radar. Their businesses crushing it.

Maybe they’re not all over social media talking about it, but financially their mindset is so sound that they’re reinvesting their, their business, their money into other things. So you had multiple bigger multi-family deals and they’re just, stair-stepping their business up year after year after year.

And it’s because they have these financially sound principles by following things like what David talks about here. So definitely encourage you guys to grab the book. We’ll add a link down. Uh, below so you can make sure you get a copy here quickly. And David congrats on, on, I know, just congrats first off.

Thanks for sharing this information with everybody. Congrats on finishing the book, because I know it was a huge effort for you over the past, you know, 18 months or so.

David: I appreciate that it is going [00:25:00] into the book. World was a different realm for me. Like I’ve self published before. And that was like, you know, that was pretty simple process.

I, you know, but this one was definitely like a heavy lift. So I appreciate that. It really was a labor of love. Like I feel like this is how I give back to, you know, one of the big ways first way is I want to give back to the real estate investing world. So really appreciate

Mike: that. Awesome. Well, thanks again, everybody.

Thanks for joining us on the show. Make sure you go grab the book. We’ll add the link down below. Appreciate you all. Hope you have a great rest of the year here and we’ll see you again on the next show. Thanks for listening to today’s show. There are three ways I can help you start or grow your real estate investing business.

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