00;00;00;02 - 00;00;23;27

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;24;00 - 00;00;55;02

Unknown

Hey everyone. Kristina here, CFO with simple CFO. I'm here with Levo Jacques. He is one of our key CFOs. We are here again pulling back the curtain. Showing how simple CFO helps real estate investors transform their business. And in this podcast and in all of our podcast, we're talking about exactly how we help CEOs and entrepreneurs, owners of businesses, not just the wins, not just the before and after our actual system, our actual tours, and actually what we do every single day with our clients.

00;00;55;03 - 00;01;20;19

Unknown

So today I'm here with Lee Vacek. He's been working with us since April 2025. He is an amazing CFO. He came to us just, you know, as with all his background, with everything that he's been able to do with clients so far, and he just wanted to be a part of a team, want to be a part of a process, something that is going to make a big impact on multiple entrepreneurs.

00;01;20;19 - 00;01;40;06

Unknown

So he comes in with all of his experience. He does whatever it takes to help clients. He runs them through business, runs him through the financial process, and has been able to really pull back the curtain for them as well and turn their financial chaos into clarity. So Lee, thank you for being here with us today. Absolutely, Christina.

00;01;40;08 - 00;02;05;17

Unknown

All right. So real quick, give us a 62nd version of, the type of clients that you work with. We don't need names. Just, what you've seen our systems do for them, and maybe just a few results that you've seen. Yeah. For sure. So, I work with mostly real estate investors. We work with flippers, we work with, some some people that just work on commission only, but a lot of flippers, wholesalers, people like that.

00;02;05;17 - 00;02;34;10

Unknown

But, a lot of growing business owners, people that are looking to transition from their W-2, to full time flipping or real estate investing is one of the the most common thing, my clients have in common. So, yeah, I work with those kind of people, and they a lot of times have a lot going on, a lot of transactions, a lot of revenue, but not a lot of clarity into what, what they actually need to do to be successful and be cash flowing.

00;02;34;12 - 00;02;54;00

Unknown

At the stage they're at with their business. Awesome. And that resonates with you, right? Because your story is kind of the same. Yeah. For sure. I think that, I worked with, I work with a growing construction company, one of my early jobs. So working with them, growing from three employees to 25 employees.

00;02;54;00 - 00;03;17;11

Unknown

So basically going from the startup phase to, being fully, fully established, really has helped me kind of guide these journeys for these people, you know, going from individuals with their first few deals to trying to stabilize their financial systems and really move them forward towards, you know, financial clarity and just making sure that they're kind of ready for the next steps.

00;03;17;13 - 00;03;34;00

Unknown

Awesome. Yeah. I mean, I feel like that's where we go when we're an entrepreneur, right? And that's the best thing about it because we're entrepreneurs too. So we're all trying to run a business. We just understand the numbers. They don't need to. They just need someone to help them do it. Absolutely. Yeah. That's kind of where we step in.

00;03;34;02 - 00;03;52;18

Unknown

Where these people are. Us, are generally great operators. They're really good. A lot of times they're really great at sales. They're good at, you know, those people relations, and they're really good at getting deals, but maybe their, their, their strength is not going to be on the financial side. And that's kind of where we come in where, hey, I've been doing this for a while.

00;03;52;18 - 00;04;10;08

Unknown

I'm really good at these sort of things. I'm good at distilling things down to, our systems with profit first, making sure that they're setting up the right bank accounts where they're actually making sure to pay themselves, a lot of these people are, are just kind of cycling money and not really thinking about where it's going to go next.

00;04;10;10 - 00;04;28;05

Unknown

And that's kind of where we're helping with those sort of things, making sure that's set up, getting all the financial systems in place, showing, you know, our dashboards and KPIs to make sure that they're, you know, tracking the right things that make the real progress with their business. Yeah. Awesome goodness and a better myself. And all right.

00;04;28;05 - 00;04;45;03

Unknown

So perfect transition people coming to sample CFO. You never know what you're going to get sometimes. Right. But, luckily we have a sales call. Right. They tell us stuff in the sales call, and then we go on to the onboarding call. They tell us a little bit more, then we give them a form that says, hey, tell us a little about yourself.

00;04;45;03 - 00;05;05;02

Unknown

So we can help hit the ground running. That gives us more information too. So you get three different stories sometimes because each person has a way of pulling things out of them or talking in a different way that they're like, oh yeah, oh yeah, I forgot this. And then the CFO comes on board and you guys like we're like looking at it from, you know, way up here.

00;05;05;02 - 00;05;21;11

Unknown

We're looking at full picture. We're looking at everything. So then we're going to pull some other questions like, oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that. So what do you see when they come on board. Like what's their financial pay. What are you able like to pull out of them. And what happens on your first call with the client.

00;05;21;13 - 00;05;41;06

Unknown

Yeah, that's, that's a really fun call. Like you said, there's there's a lot, a lot of background that goes into it. So we, you know, our the team talks to them beforehand. And a lot of times we're distilling a lot of different perspectives. They kind of once they get to us, it's when we really get our, our closer view, look at what the business is actually doing.

00;05;41;06 - 00;06;07;28

Unknown

So, the calls are fun. There's sometimes a little, fanatic, fanatic. They're they're fast. Right. The people are trying to give us all that information in a, in a, you know, in an hour long meeting. And a lot of times they have a lot of things going on with the business they're trying to do make all these big moves and, you know, try to a lot of times they're trying to move too fast where the systems aren't really established yet.

00;06;07;28 - 00;06;24;09

Unknown

So they think they're making money, but they never have any cash. A lot I hear that a lot. Like they don't know how to make big decisions in their business. They're like, hey, maybe I should go do this. Maybe I should go do that. And they're they're not really sure about why or how they're making these decisions.

00;06;24;09 - 00;06;43;03

Unknown

It's it's more of just doing things on a feeling and trying to get to their next payday, their next cash check, so that they can make sure that, you know, they don't run out of cash. So those calls are great for, kind of just diagnosing, hey, do you guys know where your cash is, what your capital needs are?

00;06;43;03 - 00;07;02;20

Unknown

How are you lending? How are you getting this money that's going into your your business? And then how are you getting it out? Trying to figure that out, trying to figure out if they, each of the individuals, the investors, the entrepreneurs know, about their investments, the risks that they're, they're kind of going into right now.

00;07;02;23 - 00;07;22;18

Unknown

But we're just trying to diagnose those things, on that first call so we can start making the decisions for the next 60 to 90 days, to set everyone else up for success, because usually they come in a lot of things going on. And it's our job, my job to kind of take that and be like, all right, so that's that's awesome.

00;07;22;21 - 00;07;43;02

Unknown

I'm glad you guys have all this activity, but how can we actually make this from this kind of frenetic activity into a profitable business? That's awesome. Yeah. And that's that's what I always say, right? We meet you where you are, and it doesn't matter where you are, right? Because we know how scatterbrained an entrepreneur can be and how, I mean, we're in real estate and you know, ourselves.

00;07;43;02 - 00;08;03;04

Unknown

So I know my husband always says, like, I don't feel like I'm doing anything if I'm not doing a deal, you know? So it's like they feel like they're stuck. You could make a ton of money, but if you're not doing an active deal and you don't have a win, it's just like, yeah, okay. So it's kind of how do you have that partner and what am I doing?

00;08;03;04 - 00;08;22;05

Unknown

What can I do next? And you know, kind of giving them some, some guidelines on what they should be working on too. Right. They don't want to work on, analyzing a spreadsheet. That's not their job. No, it's not their job. And it's it's probably not their best, the best use of their time to write. So I'm also, short term rental owner myself.

00;08;22;07 - 00;08;43;07

Unknown

It's something that, you know, it's it's a great it's a great tool for cash flow. And it's a great tool for just kind of, taxes as well for depreciation and all that sort of things. And that sort of thing is something that I love to do. And I'm able to kind of distill into, the clients that I work with, hey, this is this is what I do.

00;08;43;07 - 00;09;00;12

Unknown

But, like you said, if there's not a lot of activity going on, I think that's the thing that, you know, sometimes people think activity equals success. Like, did I change this? Did I, you know, did I, did I do that to this, this week, this day? And sometimes they're just not the highest leverage things that they can be doing.

00;09;00;15 - 00;09;21;23

Unknown

And that's where we get operators that love to do things are really motivated, but don't really understand what are the highest ROI decisions that they can be making. And that's where we come in and we say, hey, we've kind of been through a lot of this stuff. We've done similar projects. We've worked with, people like just like you, and this is what actually works for them.

00;09;21;23 - 00;09;42;09

Unknown

And we give them those tools to succeed. Yep, I like that. And you think like, you know, we are people, you know, for business owners, we hire people to help us. And there's a difference between hiring someone to do tasks and hourly and hiring someone to add value. So a lot of the things is like, oh, well, how much is it per hour?

00;09;42;10 - 00;09;59;06

Unknown

How much is this? And you can't break down the value that someone's actually going to give you as opposed to a task of inputting. So that's the difference, right? So they ask, oh, I have a bookkeeper. Right. Why did my bookkeeper never tell me this? Or why am I paying them so much or the CPA? So what makes us different?

00;09;59;06 - 00;10;19;28

Unknown

What separates us from their bookkeeper is our accountants. That they work with before. Yeah, it's it's very different. And like you said, I mean, those those sort of people have to have roles, right? They they are absolutely valuable people. And they're able to provide some level of information, but they're not, they're not able to help with decision making the way we are.

00;10;19;28 - 00;10;44;19

Unknown

They don't have the same system that we have. They are they're not connecting, your everyday decisions to, to those financials that they're hopefully providing or to the compliance in terms of like a CPA. So we create that forward looking, infrastructure. So we'll help with forecasting models, capital allocation structure and then our dashboards that help show, performance drivers, KPIs.

00;10;44;21 - 00;11;10;24

Unknown

We have a really cool, stoplight, dashboard that kind of shows like, hey, these are where you're doing well, just on really basic stuff that hits with people, red, yellow, green. You know, if things are going well, not so well or. Great. So there's a lot of things that we can kind of implement that we can, like you said, get, talk to people on their level versus just kind of backwards looking like a bookkeeper is going to say, hey, this is what you did financially last month.

00;11;10;24 - 00;11;36;08

Unknown

These are the numbers. But what can we do with those numbers? How do we actually take those numbers and turn them into action? How do we say, like you mentioned, how do how do we know if we can afford to hire someone else within the business? How do we know if it's the right time? How do we know if the, you know, the next investment is the right move, if it's the highest ROI for our money, and a bookkeeper and a CPA are not there to answer that questions.

00;11;36;08 - 00;12;01;00

Unknown

But, a CFO is. Yeah, that that is really well said. I like that. That's that's a that is such a great answer. And you talked a little bit about the dashboards. I'm a skip a little bit ahead just because we're on that. We're on that. Good path. Talk about like some of the dashboard sheets that are most impactful for you as a CFO, but also most impactful to the owner.

00;12;01;00 - 00;12;20;23

Unknown

Like they you've seen them be very responsive and it really helps them with their business. Yeah, I think, we have some specific CEO dashboards. The CEO dashboard itself, I think is probably the one that feels highest leverage to me. Like you said, they eyes light up when they see it, when they see their numbers in a way that they can understand it.

00;12;20;23 - 00;12;41;22

Unknown

Right? So a lot of times, you see people look at, you know, think about QuickBooks online, which is is one of the most, standard accounting platforms. And they see all these numbers and they don't really mean very much to them. It's very hard to understand what's going on. The simple CFO, dashboard, especially the CEO dashboard, I think, kind of takes everything and breaks it down in meaningful ways.

00;12;41;22 - 00;13;07;09

Unknown

So where we can look at, cash flow, where we can look at, you know, profitability by month, where we can look at, you know, how you did this year versus last year. There's just a lot of things that this will show. Our CEOs that makes it simpler for them and really makes it, more valuable to them because they can see it in a way that really distills it down to what what they're looking for and what they're understanding.

00;13;07;11 - 00;13;32;07

Unknown

Yeah. And seeing a graph. Right. Everybody likes to say for sure, visuals make a huge difference. Yeah. There's some people that are just not numbers. People. Right. When you look at the, the, the page that's, you know, the cash flow graph, that's a really, really awesome dashboard because a lot of CEOs are just like, okay, if I can see it visually versus with numbers, that's just how my brain connects these things.

00;13;32;09 - 00;13;49;13

Unknown

And there's going to be some people that are going to be really attracted to looking at numbers. And a lot of our, our, the people we work with, a lot of our operators are going to need to see it more visually. And that's where the, simple CFO dashboards really come in, where it's it's a way more visual way to look at your financial health of your business.

00;13;49;15 - 00;14;08;08

Unknown

And I think it connects a lot stronger with that. Like that. Yeah. I agree, you know, like the staff report that I, I love because you know, red yellow green I mean you can't get more simple than that. Like what's the biggest thing that you need to work on. And you don't want to no one wants to look at it and see like eight things in red.

00;14;08;08 - 00;14;26;02

Unknown

Right. Because an A bookkeeper might do that or an accountant might do that, like turn everything red because they don't know. They just see that it could be negative. That's not the most important thing to work at. How do you know like what's what's most important. What. A because you might just want to turn it yellow and say, yeah, let's just turn it yellow.

00;14;26;02 - 00;14;48;07

Unknown

We'll put that to the side right now. How do you decipher between it for them? I think that's one of the huge values of our experience, honestly. That's where hey, I've worked with I've worked with tons of these people. I've worked with people that are very similar to you. And I know what's highest leverage. Right? This isn't about trying to find, little things to pick at.

00;14;48;07 - 00;15;09;01

Unknown

It's about finding the highest value for you. So I think that's when you come to the stoplight report. That's where it's great. As you said, it's a very simple thing. Okay. If there's red things on there, let's address them. Let's fix those. Sometimes the yellow things can be a little bit lower leverage. But if it's red, if there's something that hey, we really think we need to fix, let's, let's handle it.

00;15;09;01 - 00;15;31;14

Unknown

And I think that it really does come from experience, both personally, because a lot of our CFOs, as you said, are investors themselves, work in real estate. So we have that personal experience about what's worked for us. But also we've seen this work for for tens, 20s, some, some people probably have seen hundreds of these, clients and, work with hundreds of clients.

00;15;31;14 - 00;15;52;21

Unknown

And so they have the, the wealth of knowledge to know, hey, this is the most important thing for you. Specifically, it may not be the most important thing for someone else. It's not just, it's not just, every single client's not going to be exactly the same. So we have to kind of use our knowledge to choose, pick and choose what's going to be most important.

00;15;52;24 - 00;16;12;26

Unknown

Yeah, that's a good point because, you know, it can be very chaotic. So again, that's how we turn it into clarity. So you know, a lot of people say to like, oh, I can implement profit first myself. I can do that. So what's different between, you know, hey, profit first DIY, right. I can do and I can do all this stuff myself.

00;16;12;26 - 00;16;35;11

Unknown

So what's different about, like, our first 60 days doing an assessment versus then just DIY and trying to, you know, untangle it themselves? Yeah, I've, I've seen so a lot of people come to us and they at least have some baseline knowledge of profit first. And I think that's, that's really good. And I applaud I applaud people for at least getting to know the system, at least on some level.

00;16;35;13 - 00;17;02;00

Unknown

But DIY buying it generally doesn't turn out very well. And that's, that's not a knock on the people that that work with us and, and operators and entrepreneurs in general. A lot of that, it just comes down to not fully understanding the system or not understanding how it works for you particularly. A lot of times we need to do, that diagnostic to figure out, hey, where are you actually at in terms of the profit first model?

00;17;02;01 - 00;17;25;05

Unknown

Because a lot of people think they just kind of want to plug in those profit first numbers before they really know where their business is at and trying to do the percentage allocations. When your business really isn't at that point, it ends up just kind of transferring money between accounts without any real strategic value. And I see that more than you would expect.

00;17;25;07 - 00;17;57;02

Unknown

But that's something you see a lot. So once we actually diagnose where your business is, that we can kind of create the correct allocations for your business, and then we'll continually evaluate where you need to be when you need to be there. So I think the allocations come along. And then one of the other things that I love to do, which makes a huge, huge value add for the people I work with, is just making sure you pay yourself, because a lot of people have been kind of on this journey for a while, or it feels a while, even if they've only been at it for six months or a year or however

00;17;57;02 - 00;18;16;09

Unknown

long. But they never really paid themselves. So this is just kind of a business where money's going in, money's going out, there's there's churn. They're just trying to figure things out. But once you get through the profit first model and you're actually implementing it correctly and you're seeing that money come back to you, it's a it's a very powerful thing to see.

00;18;16;09 - 00;18;42;27

Unknown

Like, hey, I'm actually getting paid. This is something that's working for me instead of me just kind of working on this business without any real direction. Yeah, and I'm paying everybody else, right? Yeah, exactly. And you're not getting behind on your payments. Yeah. The again, that goes back to the profit first DIY model where it's like if you're just trying to go buy some, the book a 100% without kind of evaluating where your percentages should be.

00;18;43;00 - 00;19;01;08

Unknown

Sure, you could be paying yourself, but then you run out of buybacks and suddenly you can't pay your vendors, and it becomes a situation where you're then borrowing back from your own money, sending money back. Like I said, it's a very messy thing. If you don't have someone that is an expert in profit first kind of helping you walk through that process.

00;19;01;10 - 00;19;29;00

Unknown

Yeah, that's a good point. I know it's a private versus not one size fits all. Some people come to us and they don't really want profit for. So like I don't want to open all those bank accounts. I don't need that headache. But it's really not a headache. It's really is. You know, if you just open up a profit account or you open up an owner's pay account, like I'll open up, an owner's benefit account, or you can blend profit owners pay and taxes because those really are to the benefit of the owner.

00;19;29;03 - 00;19;47;04

Unknown

So I'll just say, okay, let's start easy. Let's just open one bank account and put everything there so you can least see it. You know your for yourself that you can actually start putting money aside for those things. Absolutely. And a lot of times, like you said, it's not about opening 7 or 8 bank accounts on day one.

00;19;47;07 - 00;20;08;17

Unknown

It's about making sure that we're making the right moves for each individual client. Right. So sometimes that's opening up just one additional bank account, sometimes 2 or 3. And then over time, as we can fully implement profit first as they're being more successful, their cash flow is a little bit more manageable and more predictable. Then we can kind of really fully get into the profit first model.

00;20;08;19 - 00;20;29;25

Unknown

As we get as we get into it a little further. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's crazy, but it's cool. Like when it clicks, you know? So it's really nice to see like, wow, I actually paid. You know, we have so many stories of people that have been able to, you know, take their wife on a trip, donate, you know, $10,000 to a charity of their choice.

00;20;29;25 - 00;20;47;02

Unknown

And it's so rewarding to be able to put that money aside and like, actually have that. I mean, I know I've paid a lot of money in taxes and that it's something I've used the system and it doesn't faze me as much. But, you know, paying $10,000 in taxes is not. Yeah, that's not a little bit of money.

00;20;47;02 - 00;21;15;16

Unknown

So knowing you have the comfort of putting it aside makes you feel good. Not that you feel good to pay the IRS, but no. Yeah, I don't think paying the IRS is fun, but I think, scrambling to pay the IRS is a lot less fun. Right. And so that's that's actually one of my biggest priorities with clients is at least having the tax account setting 15% aside for taxes on, on every dollar that comes in, because that's the thing that's probably the most painful.

00;21;15;18 - 00;21;37;01

Unknown

It's it's really fun to pay yourself $10,000 and really unfun to try to find $10,000 to pay for taxes at the end of the year, when there's a time crunch. So, again, unfortunately, death and taxes, those things are going to happen. And I, I really want to make sure that the clients we're working with, hey, you're going to make some money, you're going to make some profit.

00;21;37;01 - 00;21;55;22

Unknown

Well, when you work with us and you got to have money to pay the IRS, unfortunately, in that situation. Yeah. Can't take that up. Well, we can have strategy and we can help you with ways to not pay taxes because I can do everything under the sun to not want to pay taxes, not, you know, and run it by a CPA.

00;21;55;22 - 00;22;17;21

Unknown

So, you know, that's a cool thing which I actually haven't discussed is and then what do we we won't discuss it, but just that we can make accounting language that a CPA would talk to you about and make and break it down a little bit naked, become English, make it become understandable to where we can actually step in and talk to the CPA for them as they need.

00;22;17;23 - 00;22;43;08

Unknown

Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's actually one of the biggest values that we provide. Right. So both in terms of what we do just internally, we're breaking down the the language of, of finances and breaking down the accounting language, all that kind of stuff, tax language, breaking that down for our clients, bring it down for our CEOs. That's really important when you said it before, and maybe we'll just keep repeating it.

00;22;43;08 - 00;23;03;11

Unknown

But getting on the level of of the operator and some people come in with really, really high knowledge and some people come in with less knowledge, especially on these kind of topics. And that's totally fine. But we meet them where they need to be and we help them internally and then externally with their other vendors like that with their CPA.

00;23;03;14 - 00;23;22;01

Unknown

A lot of times you talk to a CPA and it feels like they're talking a different language to you, right? But when we we're on your team, we're able to we're able to be part of that relationship or be able to be, you know, the translator between the CPA and between in between you so that you're not kind of stuck in trying to figure all that stuff out.

00;23;22;03 - 00;23;43;13

Unknown

The whole process goes a lot smoother when you have someone that that knows that language. Definitely. I agree, and I think anyone would agree with that. Right, definitely. All right. So if you had to pick one client success story, that just demonstrates how the simple CFO system like fully worked, worked for them, how to make decisions like full transformation.

00;23;43;19 - 00;24;01;10

Unknown

And I don't know if I would say for transformation, but at least on its way right. Just kind of like, you know, what was their problem? What did you do with them? How did you walk them through the system? Just walk us through, you know, an example of that? Absolutely. I, I think the best one for me is I had a client out of new Jersey.

00;24;01;10 - 00;24;22;06

Unknown

They were awesome, awesome people. It was him. And he had a he had another, another guy working with them as well. It was just these two guys. But they had they had over hired they had basically hired a lot of friends and family and it was, flips, wholesale lending. They were doing commissions assignments. So they were doing everything.

00;24;22;08 - 00;24;45;20

Unknown

And, the problem wasn't lack of deals. It wasn't lack of revenue. It was there was constant, lack of capital. Right. So their capital was being deployed opportunistically instead of strategically. So they were just like, oh, here's the deal. Let's just go do this, which compress their margins. It created a ton of cash pressure for them.

00;24;45;27 - 00;25;09;02

Unknown

So right away I was I was like, hey, we need to implement profit first so we can kind of figure out where your money is. What's and what's the best way to kind of utilize that. So, also, what are we making on all these, these other deals, like what is actually kind of, making the business go and what should these are just kind of deals for deals sake.

00;25;09;05 - 00;25;31;09

Unknown

So really help them with their KPIs in terms of timelines, what their return thresholds should be, how much should we actually making on each of these deals? Are we hitting, you know, the industry standards? Are we falling behind on these. And then what kind of capital requirements do we need to have to feel safe? Are we borrowing back money from ourselves that we've paid ourselves because they were doing that a lot.

00;25;31;10 - 00;26;04;11

Unknown

And it was it was really, really hard and really ugly to see this kind of cycle of deal, deal, deal, deal. We ran out of money. Let's go borrow from profits that we already took for ourselves and then try to restart this, this, time line again. So under this, under this circumstance, we we basically eliminated underperforming deal types like they were lending money, which completely destroyed their capital, and some of their lowest returning, types of deals.

00;26;04;11 - 00;26;26;17

Unknown

We were able to kind of cut out, this was a 60 day client. So this was this happened quick, and they got rid of their lowest performing deals. Their margins started improving because they kept they kept the type of deals that were actually working for them. Margins were improved in in three months, like 60 days, maybe the 90 days I think was the total time I worked with them.

00;26;26;24 - 00;27;06;03

Unknown

The margins were up 20 to 30%. Operating reserves got to three months instead of basically zero. So they actually had capital to find the next deal when it was there. But the biggest shift for them wasn't just financial, it was the leadership moving from chasing deals to kind of constructing a business that was, leadership first instead of employee first, because they had they had hired a lot of friends and family that were falling behind industry metrics, and I was able to kind of show them through just pure numbers and kind of talking to them on their level like, hey, this is not a personal thing.

00;27;06;03 - 00;27;28;26

Unknown

This is business. You guys want to be successful. And not only do you need to flip your the types of deals you're doing and how you're kind of operating, you also need to think strategically about who's high performers, who's low performers, and how to move forward with with those kind of those people on your team or potentially finding other people that are going to be, you know, better fits for you.

00;27;28;29 - 00;27;48;08

Unknown

That's smart. And you would definitely, you know, unwound a lot of things within. And that touches on so much like it's not just financial help because we can't just financially help because everything wraps around the numbers in a business. So we talk about payroll, we talk about marketing, we talk about everything that actually goes into numbers, which is the whole business.

00;27;48;08 - 00;28;10;17

Unknown

And so I think what we do different a lot is all of our CFOs have such, diverse background and like, I know you have the employee management background too. So, I mean, we all know real estate. We all have a background in business. We all have great financial, experience, you know, with years and years and years of experience.

00;28;10;17 - 00;28;30;06

Unknown

So just coming in and, like, being able to break all that stuff down and give them the tools and it's just that's just a great story. And I think you said you worked for them with a 60 day client. Yeah, they're a 60 day client. So sometimes the 60 days goes a little bit longer than 60 days, especially when we're following up and making sure that they're able to implement these things.

00;28;30;06 - 00;28;50;02

Unknown

But yeah, most of this happened really within 60 days. They're getting their margins improved and getting operating reserve. So they're not worrying about cash. Like that was like that was the biggest thing. Like that's the number one thing. And when we this goes back to the stoplight, right. The stoplight dashboard where it's where we're talking about what is the number one thing for these guys.

00;28;50;02 - 00;29;04;24

Unknown

And it was, hey, you guys aren't going to survive if you keep, taking all these deals because you're going to keep running out of cash. And so these were the highest level things that I was able to diagnose and get done in those first 60 days. And then it shifted to how are we going to be successful long term?

00;29;04;24 - 00;29;26;20

Unknown

So not only is it going to be doing these things, but it's also going to be, hey, we're probably overspending on our payroll. And that's something that we evaluate to evaluate the expenses of every business that we work with. These expenses are probably too high. Your marketing costs a little bit too high. What's actually returning ROI, and then also what's returning ROI with this payroll?

00;29;26;20 - 00;29;46;26

Unknown

It's too high. Can we shift some of these people to commission? And so those those are the things quick, quick, quick wins in terms of changing structure so that we can build capital and then long term shifts even in just a 60 day engagement. Yeah. And it's it's cool how we've been organized I mean 60 days. Right.

00;29;46;28 - 00;30;06;07

Unknown

What I mean, it's crazy the things in 60 days and they do last longer. Right. Because some issues that you have in your business have accumulated over years. So to expect like to turn the whole world around in 60 days, it's just not feasible, which is why we have to focus on exactly what we need to focus on and let them hit the ground running.

00;30;06;14 - 00;30;24;21

Unknown

You know, that 60 day package is important to some people because they're like, that's all I need right now. And, you know, 90% of them come back because or they stay after that because they want to do a reoccurring some just need a moment. They need, you know, a couple months to like, group it together or think that they have someone in their corner already that can take over.

00;30;24;23 - 00;30;46;16

Unknown

And then, you know, sometimes they'll come back. So the 60 days for a full transformation, that's what we do for everyone. Some stay, some leave. So I love that as an example because it just shows what we've been able to do. Like implementing methodology. It's just I mean, I appreciate you, Lee. Like you've given us like that insight of the types of clients that you work with.

00;30;46;16 - 00;31;06;04

Unknown

And just you said it better than I can say it myself. So I appreciate you being here, walking us through what you do with all of your clients, what we do here, simple CFO with every single client. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here, I appreciate it. Absolutely. I'm glad to be on serve you if you're listening right now and thinking, this sounds like me.

00;31;06;04 - 00;31;27;25

Unknown

You're. Yeah, it sounds like he could really help me. Or a simple CFO could really help me. You're not alone. What you're going through is fixable. We are here to help you. Whether it's just, you know, fixing your bookkeeping. Some people come in for 60 days and they think their books are good. And our bookkeeping department steps in, and, you know, we need to revise that, and we'll jump in and we'll do that.

00;31;27;28 - 00;31;44;09

Unknown

As Lee and I both have said, we meet you where you are, we unwind everything, and then we just get you, get you on the next task. So if you feel like that's what you need right now, head over to simple cfo.com Book of Discovery call. And let's just get you the financial help and guidance that you need.

00;31;44;11 - 00;32;00;14

Unknown

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 RBI.

00;32;00;22 - 00;32;03;08

Unknown

Go to simplecfo.com to apply for a free financial clarity call with our team.