
Christina Gutierrez Talks with Tommy Robinson
August 5 2026
Simple CFO — simplecfo.com
Profit First for Real Estate Investors (free copy) — profitrei.com
Profit First for Real Estate Investors (apply for a free financial discovery call) — profitrei.com
In this Simple CFO Case Files episode, Christina Gutierrez sits down with CFO and CFO trainer Tommy Robinson, who brings over 20 years of real estate finance experience as a former financial analyst, controller, and VP of finance. Tommy breaks down two real client turnarounds from inside the business.
He walks through a client who came in with unreliable books, significant debt, and late tax filings, and how the team rebuilt her financials into clean, project-level reporting she can trust. He also shares a flipping and rental operator who discovered their flipping business had quietly lost money for two years while the rentals carried it. If you want to see what a fractional CFO actually does day to day, this one delivers.
Timeline Summary
[0:44] – Christina welcomes Tommy back and introduces the Case Files format built around real client scenarios
[1:46] – Tommy's background across financial analyst, controller, VP of finance, and CFO roles
[2:33] – Why Profit First is about changing how owners think, not just bank accounts
[3:13] – What Tommy loves most about training new CFOs and learning from their varied backgrounds
[5:02] – Why the team model protects clients when a CFO takes vacation or leave
[6:26] – The standardized dashboard and shared notes that let any CFO step in seamlessly
[7:14] – Getting personal: Tommy's family, four children, three grandchildren, and monthly dinners
[7:36] – His volunteering and an upcoming mission trip to Peru to build houses
[9:14] – The client who raved about Tommy to David Richter at a conference
[11:29] – Why client success depends on the client doing the homework and buying in
[12:37] – The starting point: unreliable books, debt, and taxes filed late with penalties
[13:05] – Building debt schedules, implementing Profit First, and transitioning to Simple CFO bookkeeping
[13:53] – Quarterly expense and vendor analysis to check every dollar for profitability
[15:01] – The real transformation: decisions made with confidence instead of anxiety
[17:52] – Why the best time to bring on a CFO was yesterday, and the second best is now
[19:16] – How a trusted CFO catches a bookkeeper who isn't actually doing the work
[22:36] – The big surprise: a flipping business that lost money for two years while rentals carried it
[24:27] – Building deal-level KPIs to vet ARV, budget, timelines, and contractors before buying
[24:52] – How project overruns in cost and time were quietly killing margins through carry costs
[25:34] – The work-in-progress dashboard with flags that trigger proactive action
[26:25] – Turning three years of flip losses into a year-to-date profit for 2026
If Tommy's story about a flipping business quietly losing money for two years made you wonder what your own segment reports would reveal, that's worth a closer look. Share this episode with a real estate investor who's never separated their flips from their rentals on paper, and follow the show and leave a rating and review so more investors can find these Case Files.
1. Your Books Are Your Scorecard — Unreliable books mean inconsistent owner pay, missed tax deadlines, and blind decisions. Clean, timely reporting is the foundation everything else is built on.
2. A CFO Is A Financial Partner, Not A Bookkeeper — Tommy frames the role as advisor to the owner's decision, giving data-backed guidance while the owner still makes the call.
3. Trust But Verify Your Bookkeeper — A client flew blind for months because her bookkeeper claimed work was done that wasn't. A CFO reviewing the numbers is what surfaced the gap.
4. Segment Reporting Reveals Hidden Losses — Running the P&L by class showed a profitable-looking business was actually losing money on flips for two years while rentals carried it.
5. KPIs Catch Overruns Before They Kill Margins — Deal-level flags on work in progress, budget, and timeline let flippers act proactively on carry costs instead of discovering losses after the sale.
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;22;29
Unknown
Welcome to the Profit First for Real Estate Investors podcast. This series is the simple CFO Case Files, where our CFOs break down real client scenarios, financial systems and practical decisions from inside the business. Enjoy the episode.
00;00;23;01 - 00;00;44;23
Unknown
All right. Christina Gutierrez here with simple CFO back here for the CFO. Case files recording another episode. We're getting into recording with all of our CFOs, getting to know them, what they do in the business, what we do for our clients. So if you've been listening, you've uncovered pretty much all the foes that we work with, and you've got some really great stories on what they've been able to accomplish with our clients using our systems.
00;00;44;23 - 00;01;06;08
Unknown
But today we've met Tommy before, so I've invited Tommy Robinson back because we have some specific things with him. Tommy is just a great CFO. Not only did he come in with a great background and able to just jump in and attack any client that's given to him, he's actually actually became a trainer, which we talked about in the first episode, that he's just killed it.
00;01;06;08 - 00;01;23;18
Unknown
So, Tommy, you know, well, I got to hear thank you for being such an amazing CFO. Thank you for being a CFO trainer. There's nothing that I can that I ask you to do, that you just you don't just jump in and take care of right away. So I appreciate you. I am excited to keep working with you, excited that you're here joining us.
00;01;23;18 - 00;01;46;00
Unknown
So welcome to our show today. Thanks, Christina. Well, I'm excited to be here again. I really, really appreciate all that applause that you gave me just now. And and, you know, I just want to continue trying to make sure I work every day to earn it. You're definitely doing that. So I really appreciate you. So as a quick reminder, if people didn't hear the first episode or they're just tuning in.
00;01;46;01 - 00;02;10;10
Unknown
Now give us a quick reminder of who you are and what you do. Sure. All right. So you know, my name is Tommy Robinson, and I've spent my entire career in finance starting off as a financial analyst. We went to comptroller, vice vice president of finance and CFO. I've had over 20 years experience working in the real estate industry, and over the years I realized that most business owners don't need an accountant.
00;02;10;12 - 00;02;33;23
Unknown
They need someone who helps them understand their numbers and use the numbers to make them better and help them make better decisions. So that's really what drew me to simple CFO in the profit first system. You know, profit first isn't really about bank accounts. It's about changing the way owners think about their money. The business owner is still in control, and our role is just to help them see the big picture and advise.
00;02;33;25 - 00;02;53;00
Unknown
At the end of the day, the owner still makes the call. In terms of great movies, I love to quote movies and talk about movies. We are the Tom Hagen to Don Corleone in The Godfather, right? We use our experience to give advice based on data, and then the owner weighs our advice and makes a decision. I like that it's funny.
00;02;53;01 - 00;03;13;28
Unknown
You make me think. My husband does that all the time. Everything's a movie, so we do that all the time in our household, so makes things fun until you come across someone that's never seen any movie, you've never seen that. What? Right. But, yeah, you have a great background. So which is why you grew into training, so I know I didn't.
00;03;13;28 - 00;03;35;13
Unknown
I'm going to throw this on you. What what do you love most about training our CFO? You know, what I love most is, is meeting the new foes and learning about their different backgrounds. Because at the end of the day, they may come from different industries, but the ability to understand or read numbers is the same across industries.
00;03;35;16 - 00;04;03;27
Unknown
A balance sheet is a balance sheet. And they're, you know, within within the penal, your cost of goods sold always, you know, always going to have the same type of things within it. Your gross profit is always going to measure the same things. And so regardless of where someone came from, we can sit down with them and and integrate them into simple CFO and utilize their skills to bring in even more depth to what we can offer a client.
00;04;03;27 - 00;04;26;14
Unknown
And so it's really great to bring in those different skill sets because it makes all of us stronger. You know, we've had we've have training meetings where it's not just myself or Michael, the other trainer. Sometimes we'll bring in one of our regular CFOs who doesn't really do training on a normal basis to speak about something that is that something that they are really an expert on that the rest of us may not know about.
00;04;26;14 - 00;04;44;07
Unknown
And so I just love being able to work with the variety of CFO, learn about them and get something from them. So it's not just them getting this simple, safer way for me. It's also me learning from them as well. So I just love that aspect of it. I love that. I love that you say we all learn from each other.
00;04;44;07 - 00;05;02;02
Unknown
That's one thing that like we that I think is really cool about us because I started in the business, which I'm sure you did as a CFO, like a sole CFO by myself. And it was always, you know, you only had yourself and you could call friends and you could call people to talk to it. But like having a team and having people that you can lean on is great.
00;05;02;02 - 00;05;26;01
Unknown
And just for our clients, like if you're listening now and you're thinking, oh, I just have one CFO, like one CFO is not bad. Like they're intelligent and they can help you, but what they don't know, there's always someone behind simple CFO that knows. And if anything ever happens to a CFO or they they take a vacation for two weeks or, you know, out of commission for that surgery, you know, some people go through it a month.
00;05;26;02 - 00;05;44;03
Unknown
You have someone that can jump in and just meet you where you are. Take over. We have our notes. We have everything, and they can just seamlessly jump in and meet with you so your work doesn't have to stop. I mean, understanding those financial financials and getting your deliverables doesn't stop just because something happens to your CFO. There's always someone there to jump in.
00;05;44;03 - 00;06;06;03
Unknown
And they've been trained by Tommy, which is even better. That is even better, right? No, the systems that we have in place are amazing and great because, as you mentioned, the CFOs can go back and they can reference every meeting that another CFO had done with the client. So if they're, you know, taking over because of CFO leaves or because the CFO is on vacation or does maternity leave or whatever the case is, they can review all the notes.
00;06;06;03 - 00;06;26;07
Unknown
They can they can watch all of the meetings and see what what really happening and listen to the discussions and get a feel for that particular client. And so that is really key. And then we have, you know, a standardized dashboard that each CFO uses. So, you know, it's not like we're all going out there and creating something different and shooting from the hip.
00;06;26;07 - 00;06;53;08
Unknown
We actually have a tool that is that is standard that all of us use, all of us have been trained on, and that has proven to be very beneficial to all the clients. Absolutely. I agree. All right. Let's let's get a little personal. Not not to personal. But before we jump into some of the the situations that you've seen this year and last year, tell us what what do we need to know about Tommy?
00;06;53;09 - 00;07;14;04
Unknown
What do you do outside of CFO work? What's so cool about Tommy Robinson? All right. Well, no, if it's cool or not, but I am really I, my wife and I are very family oriented. We have four children in three grandchildren now, and so for us, it's all about the time that we can spend together and the memories we can make together.
00;07;14;08 - 00;07;36;02
Unknown
So for my my family, my children, we we all live within 30 minutes of each other. And so we try we try to get together about once a month, every every, you know, like the last Sunday, every month and have a big family dinner trying to bring everybody together and hopefully everybody can go ahead and make it and gives us a great opportunity to spend time together.
00;07;36;05 - 00;08;01;23
Unknown
Outside that I'm very involved in, in my church as well. When I went to college, I went to a Jesuit university in Denver, Colorado, and our motto was in Service of Others. And I like taking that to heart. And I do a lot of volunteering, a lot of volunteering through, through my church. And as a matter of fact, in about a week, I'm going to be leaving to Peru on the mission trip to go and build houses for those who are less, who are less fortunate than us.
00;08;01;27 - 00;08;25;24
Unknown
So that's going to be really interesting to go and see that, because here in America, where we're we're used to our first world problems. Right. And so I'm going to be exposed to, you know, what you see in the developing country, a lot of times that us Americans don't really get exposed to and, and to to us or to them, our problems are so minor in detail.
00;08;25;26 - 00;08;40;10
Unknown
Like, do you know, like, do we really? Is it really important that that we have a certain phone plan right now? You know, for these people, they're worrying about where they're going to sleep at night or get their next meal. And so I think it's going to be really great learning experience for me to be exposed to that.
00;08;40;10 - 00;08;57;09
Unknown
And again, it's one way for me to give back, which I've always been into ever since I was in college and I went to Regis University, I love that. Well, I would that definitely get keep tabs on that and get an update and let everybody else know as well. All right. So let's switch over a little bit. Thank you for that information.
00;08;57;09 - 00;09;14;21
Unknown
That's really cool. And that's cool that your family lives so close to you. I love that my mom and I are really close and she's close to me too. So. All right. So let's get into a review that I want to talk about a little bit. So David, as everyone knows, people are listening. They know David travels David Richter, he wrote the book Profit First Real Estate Investors.
00;09;14;21 - 00;09;32;21
Unknown
He travels at a lot of different conferences. You've probably seen him speak at places. He went to a conference specifically and had a client come up to him, which is is a normal occasion. They do come up a lot and speak, speak to him. So we had a client that came up that was just raving about Tommy. She's been working with Tommy and she was super excited.
00;09;32;21 - 00;09;52;00
Unknown
She wanted to tell David how excited she was to work with Tommy. Went into some more details that I won't go into because I'm going to let Tommy do that. So we're at the risk of sharing names. We're not going to share her name, but she pretty big client coming in. So Tommy, tell tell her story. Tell said client.
00;09;52;01 - 00;10;16;09
Unknown
Well, you can give her a name, but you're the name that you prefer. And just tell us her her story, what you did for her, how she came to us. Just give us a full, full picture. Quick pause from the episode. I have exciting news that's expanding the world of profit first real estate investors. You may know that years ago I wrote the book Profit First Real Estate Investing, endorsed by Mike McCourt, that has been read now by thousands of real estate investors.
00;10;16;09 - 00;10;43;28
Unknown
And now we're launching three workbooks, one for wholesalers, one for fixing flippers, and one for rentals. These aren't just deal calculators. They're full implementation guides. They're dialed in for each type of business. Wholesalers you're getting assignment fee math, marketing, budgeting, planning, and how to beat the feast or famine cycle. If you're a flipper, you get ARV accuracy, rehab, budgeting and profit forecasting, and running multiple projects at once without going broke rentals.
00;10;43;28 - 00;11;09;01
Unknown
You get your freedom number, cash flow per door, and a five year portfolio plan, plus the full profit first bank account set up an allocation system tuned to your business with formula specific for your business type everything you need to go from operator to CEO. And right now they're free. You just need to cover shipping. You go to free workbook com that's p e I workbook.
00;11;09;03 - 00;11;29;22
Unknown
Just like profit first for real estate investing free workbook. Grab whichever matches your business or you can grab all three free workbook. Go get them. Make more profit. All right, back to the episode I will. And this client is a client success. And I'm going to start off by saying one thing. This is something I tell all the clients when they start off.
00;11;29;22 - 00;11;54;21
Unknown
Is that how successful we are is actually 100% on the client themselves. If the client puts in their work and they schedule their meetings, they do the homework that we assign to them and they buy into the process, then we are going to be successful because I'm going to do my homework before the meetings. I'm going to go ahead and make sure that that we have our processes in place and that we're following those.
00;11;54;21 - 00;12;15;17
Unknown
And I'm going to be there for the for the meetings. And so if the client is it buys in and does what they're supposed to do, what what they've signed up to do, then they're going to be successful. And this particular client has done all of that. She's always there for for every meeting when we ask her for information, she jumps right on it and provides that to us.
00;12;15;20 - 00;12;37;17
Unknown
And so, you know, she understands the value of working together as a team. So I'll just preface it with that. And for her, her story starts off with the books, right. Your books are your scorecard. Okay. And when she came to us, the books were unreliable. They couldn't accurately predict their cash flow, which meant, you know, inconsistent owner compensation.
00;12;37;18 - 00;13;05;10
Unknown
They had significant debt. Taxes were not consistently being filed on time, which meant that if they owed taxes, they were paying a penalty on that. Year after year. So during the first few months of the engagement, we built out debt schedules. We implemented profit first and established regular owner compensation for them. And then after working alongside their existing bookkeeper for several months, we worked with their bookkeeper to try to clean things up for about six months.
00;13;05;17 - 00;13;28;12
Unknown
We have a good heart to heart, and it was decided that their bookkeeper just wasn't up to par for doing what we needed to get done. So we actually transitioned them to simple CFO bookkeeping and that simple CFO. We cleaned up their financials and began producing rival month reports. So today they have clean books. They have project level cash flow accounting.
00;13;28;15 - 00;13;53;07
Unknown
We make annual budgets. We have KPIs for each of their properties. We do rolling cash flow forecast. There's a structured debt reduction plan. And they filed their taxes on time. And they have the cash to cover what is needed. So that that is amazing for them. And most importantly, they know where every dollar goes because we conduct quarterly expense analysis and vendor analysis.
00;13;53;07 - 00;14;16;27
Unknown
So we truly look at every dollar they spent. And we'll go through each line on the on the panel and each vendor they spent money with to determine if that line item or that vendor is profitable for them, meaning that it saves them headache, time and effort or makes money for them if they're replaceable, meaning that it's a service or that they still need.
00;14;16;27 - 00;14;36;08
Unknown
It's important to them, but they can be done for less headache or at a better ROI, or if it's just not needed at all, if it's not needed at all, like maybe it's a duplicate service, then maybe it's something that that that they pay for something else, other software that they don't need. And so we, we, we can determine what needs to be eliminated or reduced.
00;14;36;09 - 00;15;00;28
Unknown
That all drives the margins for them so that they can continue to improve and move money into owner compensation and that pay down plan. So really for them it's the biggest transformation isn't just the isn't really the reports, it's that the owner now can make decisions with confidence instead of anxiety.
00;15;01;00 - 00;15;23;01
Unknown
Yeah. Because I mean, what does it look like when a business owner makes decisions with anxiety behind it? You know, when they're, well, first, when they make those decisions with behind them, they make them uncertainly. Right. So a lot of times it's kind of knee jerk and they're just making a decision that's focused on that particular moment or that particular issue.
00;15;23;01 - 00;15;43;28
Unknown
And it's not big picture for them. And so it may have consequences that are unforeseen for them. And so what we really want to do is make sure that they have a big picture, that they are understanding why a decision is going to be made and how it's going to affect them. And that gives them a calm, a sense of calmness and a peace of mind when they do make a decision.
00;15;44;00 - 00;16;03;02
Unknown
That's. Yeah, definitely. Because, you know, and that that goes with anything. Right. Personal and business. Anytime you make a decision quickly with anxiety behind it, you're not thinking clear. And you don't have someone that's helping you think through it. Either you're just making a decision and usually not. You know, a lot of the times you come back and you're like, oh no, what did I do?
00;16;03;06 - 00;16;26;23
Unknown
Right, right. But with the CFO, you can come in and say, and that's that's what I love about being a CFO. Like, I personally love being a CFO because of the trust that I can build with people that I work with. I know that they are going to come to me with trust and confidence before they make a huge decision about their business, or they're going to look at their financials or their dashboard.
00;16;26;23 - 00;16;43;20
Unknown
I wouldn't want them to look at their financials, but look at their dashboard and say, oh, this is going to take me away over budget or this is going to put me way over. They can easily see the number that they want to spend, and I love when they give me a call and say, hey, I really want to do this, but I know that it could take me over budget or it could do this.
00;16;43;20 - 00;17;03;06
Unknown
And sometimes they don't think about, like you said, the big picture. Like where what is this going to do long term? Is this really going to make a difference, or is this going to do what I think it's going to do? Because a lot of times it's just solving a problem right now. Right. But it's not going to it's not going to lead you to your main goal that you're trying to get to.
00;17;03;08 - 00;17;26;04
Unknown
So I think that's a good thing. And I know for this client when she came in, was she what was her personality when she came in. Was she kind of nervous coming in. Was she nervous working with us? Was she not sure what she was looking for, where her business was? What was her mind frame when she came in?
00;17;26;07 - 00;17;52;04
Unknown
You know, a little bit of all the above. So when she came in, she, she came in with a little bit of anxiety and wondering, you know, if it was if this was the right time for her because she wasn't a large company. Right. And a lot of times, especially when it's time to bring on a CFO, you know, it's like so many times in life people say, what's the best time to do something?
00;17;52;04 - 00;18;12;07
Unknown
And a lot of times the answer is, well, the best time was yesterday. But the second best time is now, right? And so for her, she was realizing that the best time to to bring us on was now because she was already making blind decisions. Right? Without having good numbers and good books, it was like driving down a highway with her lights off, right?
00;18;12;08 - 00;18;38;23
Unknown
She could, she she could go down that highway and she could, you know, make decisions. But she wasn't really able to see where that was leading her. And so for us, for us to work with her, it helped. It helped her calm that anxiety. And it helped her to feel that she could make decisions with confidence. Awesome. And I love that because how amazing is that?
00;18;38;23 - 00;18;58;09
Unknown
To wake up every day and feel more calm. And they know that what you're paying down debt, she's able to pay herself. She's able to follow her taxes and pay your taxes on time. So you have to have some type of relief or books. I mean, she had no idea this is how much a business owner does to focus on building their business.
00;18;58;10 - 00;19;16;07
Unknown
Right? You have a bookkeeper. And this is so, so, so important for anyone that's listening. You hire someone based on what you think you know about them, right? So you're like, okay, this bookkeeper says that they have all this experience and they can do this and they can clean out my bookkeeper. You have no idea if they're actually cleaning your books up because you're out there running your business.
00;19;16;08 - 00;19;39;21
Unknown
You don't know what you're looking at. So having a CFO is that main financial partner and person that comes in to review everything. How long would it have been? How much longer would it have been that they were doing her bookkeeping incorrectly, or not going on the right path to where she still can't file accurate reports? If you hadn't come in and truly gotten a good idea of what that bookkeeper was doing.
00;19;39;23 - 00;20;07;11
Unknown
Yeah, you were correct. And so, you know, this this is why she was flying blind is because, you know, she had trusted that bookkeeper and that that bookkeeper would was telling her that stuff was being done. But at the end of the day, when we were going through and we were looking to have a timely close at the end of the month, you know, we want to close by the 10th and have finance reports out before the 15th so we can do a financial review on a timely basis.
00;20;07;13 - 00;20;32;25
Unknown
The data just wasn't there. When approached and asked when the data would be there, you know, she would give give a reason why it was late and say, you know, it'll be there shortly. It'll be there shortly after six months. And we go back there. We're still six months worth of incorrect data. This is where, you know, we said, hey, we need to change and find a bookkeeper that we trust.
00;20;32;27 - 00;21;00;05
Unknown
You know, I trust the bookkeepers here at simple CFO, so I had no problem recommending them to her. And that has made all the difference, because now we have that reporting that is consistent. It is done. She receives every on the 14th of every month. So before the 15th, she'll receive a draft of a financial statements that she'll go through, and I'll go through and we'll, we'll make any changes to work with bookkeeper to make any changes so that so that those get finalized.
00;21;00;06 - 00;21;22;18
Unknown
Then we drill down upon those financial statements and we look to see where, where, where they're making money, whether or not we look at the KPIs for each of the properties. And so, you know, the the ability to do that is based upon the fact that we trust the numbers and we trust the people that prepare those numbers.
00;21;22;21 - 00;21;40;12
Unknown
Keyword trust I love that. Well, I'm super excited that she was able to get the results. And you guys still working together to have a success story already. And I'm sure there'll be plenty more success stories to come, so maybe we'll have to add that on to our next podcast together. But thank you for doing such great work for her.
00;21;40;13 - 00;21;57;04
Unknown
It's it's exciting. I know David feels that relief when people come up to him at conferences, because it's not easy to get up in front of a bunch of people and speak, even though he's done it a ton of times, but just getting in front of people and speaking and then having to speak to a bunch of other people, and you always have to be on.
00;21;57;05 - 00;22;12;24
Unknown
We know that you always have to be on. So getting good news while he's out of conference is and I know that that makes him feel really good that he gets all those success stories while he's there. And I think that gives him energy to keep going. So thank you for having the ability to get that good review.
00;22;12;26 - 00;22;36;08
Unknown
Oh no problem. Appreciate it. All right. So for me for we log off, we kind of talked to Dave and I were talking to, like, some surprises and, like, some really cool things that we go through. So I wanted to ask you a question. What's something that you uncovered when you were working with the client? That was a big surprise to them that they just had no idea, because some people come to us and they're like, yeah, I really need a CFO.
00;22;36;08 - 00;22;54;14
Unknown
I just want to understand where I am financially. And it turns into something a lot bigger where they're like, oh, that's what's happening. So do you have a story of something that was a big surprise to a client? I sure do. So I have a client and they do flipping, and they also have a very large rental portfolio.
00;22;54;15 - 00;23;16;12
Unknown
They've been in business for for many years, and they've always made a profit. And so they felt that business was going was going strong. What we did is when we started working with them, we really started to drill down and look at the business, not just as a whole, but starting to look each segment within a business. Right, because our reporting separates the segments.
00;23;16;12 - 00;23;36;28
Unknown
And so we can separate out their income and their profit and loss by, by their class. And so, you know, we tend to put rentals in one class and pull sales and flips into another class. And if they do consulting that's in a different class. Right. So that we can run that PNL or that balance sheet by that class and see how that revenue stream is.
00;23;36;29 - 00;24;02;03
Unknown
And when we did that, we found out something very surprising that they had found that the last two years, their flipping business didn't make any money. It's a matter of fact, it lost money and that they were being carried in a hole by their rental properties. Right. And so we started drilling down on the data. We went and pulled data for the last five years to determine when was the last time they were actually making money.
00;24;02;04 - 00;24;27;27
Unknown
Right? And they were making really good money prior to Covid and during Covid, post-Covid, they stopped making money as well. And when we drill down to find out why, it's because their margins had changed. The deals were no longer as profitable on the flipping side. So what we decided to do was implement key KPIs that would help determine what were the best deals to bring on.
00;24;27;27 - 00;24;51;29
Unknown
So we would make sure that before our deal was brought down, that there was a thorough analysis done on that particular deal. So we would check to make sure that we that we felt that we could get a good ARV after renovation value on the property when it when it sold, and that we had a budget we felt comfortable with, as well as timelines we felt comfortable with and contractors that we thought we knew would complete those deals in time.
00;24;52;06 - 00;25;14;23
Unknown
Because one of the biggest things that was a surprise to them was they had a lot of project overruns in both cost and time. And every time that happened, they they were being killed by their carry cost. So they budgeted for projects to go for 90 days. And instead of 90 days, they're going for 120 days, 150 days.
00;25;14;23 - 00;25;34;13
Unknown
And that carry cost was driving down their margins. So now we have those KPIs that are set up. We actually have a key that looks at the balance sheet and it says, okay, this is what your whip is, your work in progress, how much you put into that project up until this point. And we compare that to the project budget.
00;25;34;13 - 00;26;06;15
Unknown
We compare that to the intended ARV value of the property. And and we and we have different flags that come up once, once those values reach a certain point so that they know, hey, I need to be proactive. I need to approach the, the, the crew to find out if we if they're behind schedule and why, or they need to say, wow, you know what, I need to change the scope of this project because it's costing too much to, to to to do.
00;26;06;15 - 00;26;25;20
Unknown
And so they'll scope it. And that might mean a small change in the RV value when they go to resell. It might be less if they didn't do the project up to a certain part that they thought they were going to do it to. But it means that profit comes in profitable. So this year, this year, this year to date, we are showing a profit.
00;26;25;20 - 00;26;55;06
Unknown
On the flip side, for the first time in three years. So 2025, 2024, no profits. They lost money 2026. Where we are turning that, we've turned that around. So now we're just focusing on making sure we can sustain that change and then improve upon it so that they can start having more and more money drip down to owner's compensation and to the other things that are important to them in business.
00;26;55;09 - 00;27;27;19
Unknown
That's awesome. I would never think that it's so much work to do a flip. So it's to put all that time and all that effort into it, and not to know that you're making money and to do it year after year. That's crazy. So if you're if you're a flipper, I know there's a lot of flippers that listen to different things, but if you're if you flip houses and you're out there listening to this and you don't know if you're making profit or how much money you're making on your flips, or you need someone just to look at it, call, call simple CFO, get a CFO, get a financial partner on your team, and get
00;27;27;19 - 00;27;43;26
Unknown
someone that can actually sit and analyze these numbers with you. There is you don't have to go at it alone. I know people say, oh, I know contractors. They give me this rate, they do this. I got it all together. But it's not, you know, it's not always cut and dry and it's not always easy. And there's always things that you can do to make money.
00;27;43;26 - 00;28;13;03
Unknown
So if this story resonates with you or the story, the success story that Tommy gave earlier resonates with you. Ten over to our website, simple CFO. Reach out, book a discovery call. Just look at have someone look into a financial assessment. We'll do a free financial assessment for you. We'll go through your books, we can uncover things. And you know, if you work with the CFO going through that, that's a big undertaking going through the last 3 or 4 years of financials to figure out what happened and to turn it around.
00;28;13;06 - 00;28;30;16
Unknown
That's amazing. That's amazing work. It's I think that's a it's a big and beyond its what CFO work. But that's a lot of that's a lot of effort to go in and piece all that together. So for you to be able to do that and get those answers for for that client, amazing. So appreciate it for anyone listening.
00;28;30;16 - 00;28;49;21
Unknown
And you want to book a call again simple CFO. Com. Thank you Tommy for being here. Great stories great success. I'm excited to talk to you again because I know there's going to be plenty more success stories to come. I appreciate you being here. Thank you for sharing yourself and your clients with us. Thanks, Christina. I appreciate the time to sit there with you.
00;28;49;21 - 00;29;11;07
Unknown
It was a pleasure. Awesome. Thank you. Until our next episode. Thanks for listening to the simple CFO Case Files on the Profit First for Real Estate Investors podcast. If you found this helpful, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss our guest interviews featuring other real estate investors and our Profit first chats with David Richter. If you're ready to bring clarity and structure to the finances in your business, visit profit.
00;29;11;09 - 00;29;13;27
Unknown
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