Struggles and Financial Stress as a Business Owner and Biggest Keys to Success with Casey Smith

Episode 124: Struggles and Financial Stress as a Business Owner and Biggest Keys to Success with Casey Smith

The Profit First REI Podcast

October 27, 2022

David Richter

Summary:

On this episode of Profit First for REI, we’ve got my good friend Casey Smith. She is the owner of Atlas Transaction Coordination Services, a company that handles real estate deals of all forms. She works with a lot of real estate investors, closing over 1,500 transactions as an individual realtor and business owner.  

Casey shares her journey in the real estate investment space, the struggles she has experienced as a business owner, and her perspective on the challenges and the keys to success for real estate investors. Catch the discussion here.

Key Takeaways:
[00:52] Casey Smith

[02:19] On What Excites Her About Real Estate Investment

[03:36] Transaction Coordination

[04:20] Struggles and Financial Stress as a Business Owner

[09:08] The Investor Struggle of Paying Themselves and the Importance of Knowing Your Numbers

[20:29] Her Biggest Keys to Success

[23:07] Tasks That Casey Prefers to Outsource to Experts

[26:01] Connect with Casey Smith

Quotes:

[06:30] “You have to first understand your time and money cost…Unless you’re paying attention and doing time studies…you’re really not going to know how much time you’re spending to make what you make.”

[14:50] “Due diligence happens in the transactional process because you can do your numbers on the house but if it doesn’t close, it doesn’t matter.”

[21:04] “If you’ve got the mentality to adapt, or pivot and find the opportunity, wherever you are, then I think you can be successful in this industry.”

You have to first understand your time and money cost. And I think that that’s it unless you’re paying attention and doing time studies, and going really in depth there, you’re really not going to know how much time you’re spending to make what you make.

Connect with Casey: 

Website: AtlasTCservices.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AtlasTCservices 

Tired of living deal to deal? 

If you are a real estate investor or business owner who is tired of living deal to deal, and want to double your profits, head over here to book your no-obligation discovery call with me. Either myself or someone from my team will hop on a short call with you to get clear on your business goals, remove any obstacles holding you back, and map out a game plan to help you finally start keeping more of the money you work so hard to make. – David 

Transcript:

Casey Smith:

I don’t really understand what failure means. Like to me, I don’t think you fail at anything unless you stop. So even if how you started is not where you’re at now or where you’re heading, if you’ve got the mentality to adapt or pivot and find the opportunity wherever you are, then I think you can be successful in this industry.

Intro:

If you’re a real estate investor who’s sick and tired of living deal to deal, then welcome home. Hear from everyday real estate investors just like you, and discover how they’ve completely transformed their business by taking a profit First approach. This is the Profit first for REI podcast, where we believe revenue is vanity, Profit is sanity. It’s time to start making profit a habit in your business. So here’s your host, David Richter.

David Richter:

It is David Richter with a Profit First REI podcast. Have a special guest, Casey Smith on today. A friend of mine who I have gotten to know very well over some masterminds that we’re a part of. She’s the Real Deal, She’s the owner of Atlas TC Services and Transaction Coordination, which every single real estate investor in the planet does this. But we talk about some awesome stuff like what stresses her out as a business owner. She gets very vulnerable in this one. And she also talks about the two most important things she sees from working with dozens of real estate investors and their companies of what is the biggest keys to their success. Two main points. So you wanna stay on and listen to that. Lots of great info. Hope you have a great time listening. Casey, it is great to have you on the show finally. Thanks for being on here today. Thank

Casey Smith:

You so much. I’m so excited.

David Richter:

Yes. So although we’ve already done the intro, I have to say like now that she’s on here, like I see her at a lot of different events. Everyone loves her, everyone loves her services. If you don’t know about her and her services, we’ll make sure to talk about that. She’ll provide the link and all that good stuff. But this is someone who’s a real deal, cuz she does, she’s not just a service provider. She actually does the real estate investing as well too, and like, and has a realtor’s license, like all the different stuff. So Casey, it’s really cool to have you on here today.

Casey Smith:

Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I feel like I have a unique perspective to bring. So whatever side of we need to talk about, Right? I can give you some insight.

David Richter:

Well, let’s talk about real estate investing. First off, just, you know, give you an easy one here. What excites you about real estate investing, either when you first started or right now?

Casey Smith:

What excites me the most about it is the variety and the freedom to kind of go in any niche or way that you want. I think you, I, I say this to everyone I meet, you learn more about people, politics and money in real estate than you do in any other industry. I know everyone’s got their battles, but you’re dealing with everyday people with everyday financial issues and then you’re building a business off of that and then dealing with your own issues, <laugh>. But it’s a really cool process to just just see how I, what I really love the most about it, and particularly after my experience building Atlas TC Services in the last few years, is how cool it is that we could carve a little financial niche out of a deal. Like we take a small fee out of a deal and you can create hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue just by taking a small little piece of what’s already in process. So I love the creativity of figuring out what people need and building the business around it, but then at the same time, you’re also helping people. And I just think it’s a really cool learning experience every single day.

David Richter:

So for the listeners, what does TC stand for?

Casey Smith:

I know all the jargon that we have. Transaction coordinating, which is basically very simply the process and the skill set needed to get a contract from signed to actually closed.

David Richter:

And

Casey Smith:

Her and by bill parties closed.

David Richter:

She, her and her team are incredible. Like they do a ban up job. She’s got, if you’ve ever, I’ve seen Casey throughout the years and it just keeps getting better and better and better. She’s not just like this random little mouse in the corner now, just like speedily typing away on all the, you know, like on her keyboard. So she’s building out this great team, but we’ll get to that. We’ll get to that. But let’s, let’s talk about some of the struggles you might have faced in her business. First, let’s go deep here. I, I don’t like just all the surfacey stuff, so let’s talk about it. Have you ever struggled, you know, like in the cash flow of your business or have you ever faced any money struggles in your business? And let’s talk about that

Casey Smith:

A hundred percent. And if, if you aren’t, then you aren’t paying attention. I feel like <laugh>, right? You either, you either have a financial background and know like all the ins and outs of setting it up or you’re learning as you go. And so I’m a learn as you go. I definitely wouldn’t say that finances are my favorite thing nor a seat that I love to be in. It stresses me out tremendously to be quite fair. So I’m either a psycho looking at those numbers every day or I need to be completely away and letting someone else handle them. So I would say my biggest battle at the beginning when I was investing was really learning how much you’re making out of a deal. It is so easy to see that big chunk of change at the end. And if you aren’t tracking it right, that money can be gone so quickly when it comes to marketing.

So learning that process and how to really figure out what you’re making was hard when I was investing. And then I would say I realized very quickly how much time and energy you, like, how much you really need to do to make it worthwhile on the service side of things. I learned something completely new because you’re, you’re now a service more than you are kind of like acquiring assets and, and reselling them. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So you have to deal with more people and different profit margins and costs that I wasn’t as familiar with. So trying to switch my mindset from that to people was a completely different learning curve.

David Richter:

Yeah, I’m sure <laugh>, I totally understand. Well Casey and I kind of have the same background. We’re both real estate investors and also provide services as well too for real estate investors. So that’s definitely something we have in common. But I think you have something very much in common with every listener that’s listening right now. You said that str finances stress you out a lot. Let’s park there a little bit. Why, Tell me about that. Like explain that to me like I, like I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why do the finance just stress you out as the business owner?

Casey Smith:

It stresses me out because I think there’s a lot of components to it. Number one, you have to first understand your time and money cost. And I think that that’s, unless you’re paying attention and doing time studies and going really in depth there, you’re really not gonna know how much time you’re spending to make what you make. So you might make $20,000 on a deal, but how many hours did it actually take you to do? And then the other side of it is like what money do you need to spend, you know, and then breaking it down at the end. So there’s so many different components there. And a bookkeeper can definitely help you stay organized, but you’re usually directing them, right? You are doing this really delicate balance as an investor with not wanting to pay a lot of taxes and you know, kind of figuring out what that sweet spot is of what bracket you wanna be in.

And then you also wanna show profit because you also wanna show credibility when it comes to your private lenders and things like that. So finding that balance, unless you’ve got a really in-depth knowledge of like tax codes and construction costs and what you have to literally have your pulse on so many different things that it stresses me out. And I’ve seen some people do it in their head <laugh>, that just blows me away. Cause what if something happens to you and it’s not on paper and you can’t refer to something or go back. So now I deal with a higher volume of invoicing because it’s a service base, right? So you’re dealing with more clients and more deals and invoicing per deals and tracking that and categorizing it and making sure you’re counting for it. It just becomes a full-time job,

David Richter:

Right? It

Casey Smith:

Does. On top of everything else that you’re doing.

David Richter:

It’s crazy. All the hats you have to wear, right? As a real, as a real estate investor or a business owner,

Casey Smith:

Even just in finances, right? You’ve got your cpa, you’ve got your bookkeeper, then you’ve usually got an admin putting in the numbers for them or tracking it in a certain way. So you, you, you can look at numbers in so many different aspects depending on what position that you’re in that you’ve gotta know what they mean. So again, it’s the part about documenting ’em and organizing ’em and then it’s being able to see them and understand what it’s telling you. I can understand what it tells me <laugh>, but I don’t know how, how to organize it some way sometimes. And that’s why I I go to the professionals and have them do

David Richter:

It right. Yeah, I I understand that for sure. And I understand that a lot of people are in that exact same boat because it’s like money, just please someone else handle this, please, someone else just do this for me and let me do deals. Let me go out there and cuz I see you posting all the time, you’re like, you got another deal. Well how can I help you? You know, it’s like I get it. It’s just that, that mindset that we have. So let me, let’s get, let’s get a little deeper there. Have you ever struggled to pay yourself before in your business on this journey? Either as a real estate investor or in the service based

Casey Smith:

Business? Yeah. I would say I struggled to do it in the investing side. Okay. And what’s hard wait, the hard balance is sometimes you have your, your entity set up to where, let’s say you’re an S corp or something and you have to have, you have to give yourself a reasonable salary. So if you’re classified that way, you know, you can put yourself on some payroll and get a few thousand, but most people aren’t gonna live off what that is cuz that’s literally just a tax purpose thing. So I struggled with consistency or taking out a profit at a quarter because you wanna reinvest it or do something. And so you know, there’s some weeks where you get a lot of deals and some weeks where you don’t get that many. And so that, that fear or that hesitation on your pipeline kept me from anything consistent.

I would say on the service side I’ve been a lot better about it cause I kinda learned my lessons and so when I started Atlas I had a better foundation and understanding. So I right out of the gate had set up similar to profit first the tax accounts and taking X amount out and talking with my CPA and my bookkeeper to pay me a salary. One thing I still struggle with though is paying that profit quarterly or you know, like I I, there is something inside of me that struggles with that. And so I’ve always kind of had issues with the balance between when you’re growing or what stage of business you’re in, right? Cuz you’ve got your startup, you’ve got your perseverance, I like to call it the struggle phase, <laugh>, perseverance. Then you’ve got your, you know, viability, stability and then growth et cetera, succession possibly if you carry it through there. So knowing what stage you’re at and how many years you’re reinvesting your money versus from day one, I think is a really hard mindset shift for me to break.

David Richter:

Okay. If I’m

Casey Smith:

Fully honest,

David Richter:

<Laugh> Oh yeah. Be fully honest because it’s not just you, it’s not just you as the entrepreneur. Yeah. There’s so many other people that we’ve seen, you know, come through and they have that like, oh man, you know, like I don’t want to do this. You know, like I’m scared to do it or I don’t know if I can or what. So is that what it is for you? You just, you want have that extra money there just in case or what not that extra profit line around or what you

Casey Smith:

Do all? Well truthfully, I had started Atlas the TC service side in 2020. Well I had started in 2019, but a few months later 2020 happened and the shutdowns. And so there was a obvious fear of not knowing what was coming and wanting to keep cash heavy just in case because I didn’t wanna have to cut my team. I mean, not that I had a big team at the time, there were only a couple of us, but I also wanted to, to maintain that growth. So I think it’s stemmed from that and hasn’t ever really shifted. But at the same time I know that I need to reinvest in my team and whatnot. So when you’ve got a heavy personnel, you know, we’re a team of 12 now, maybe 13 that’s like payroll. Like now that the stress of payroll for everybody is on top of that.

And I always take care of my team first because I wanna make sure that they’re the ones doing the work and handling it. So yeah, I would say it’s just a fear, a mindset thing. But I also have come to realize that if I don’t then I’m not comfortable and I can’t sustain myself and I can’t run my business. So I would, I’ve learned in the last six months to go ahead and cut the checks and let the growth be where it is. Knowing that that’s happening because it’s important. I’m part of the team. I put in the same amount of hours and so that’s been healthy for me. It’s not a ton, but I have a lot of different revenue streams so it works for me, but I know that I’m paying for the role that I have in my company and that gives me peace of mind knowing that I actually have a viable operation. And if that means hiring one less person or diving back in for efficiency before I hire again, then at least I know either I replace myself or I’m paying myself for the job that I’m doing.

David Richter:

There you go. I like that. It’s like you gotta make sure you’re healthy inside of the business. Small

Casey Smith:

Progress <laugh>.

David Richter:

Right? Small progress. That’s what we’re all looking for. It’s, it is, it’s so funny. People get on these and we talk and it’s like, oh you know, we should be doing better or should you know sure to learn this. And it’s like, this is a journey, you know, like where are you at right now and how can we get 1% better? I like that. Yeah. That concept getting 1% better. No, I absolutely love that. I totally understand where you’re coming from cuz I see it all the time. Something I struggled with too. I mean, it, it doesn’t matter if you wrote the book on it <laugh>, you know, it’s like you can still struggle, right? You can still struggle with

Casey Smith:

You. I believe that for me more than anything

David Richter:

<Laugh>. Yeah, exactly. It was to break through my mindset barriers. But let’s talk about then since you, in your specific scenario, you’ve been able to break through some of that, but how about in the real estate investing world? You see a lot from the service side now and see a lot of deals done. Why do you think a lot of real estate investors live deal to deal or they’re stuck in their own rat race?

Casey Smith:

Man, I have so much perspective on this because I see it all the time. And just for context, for people who don’t know my operation, I probably worked with 75 investment companies at various sizes. So guys doing one deal a month doing 30 plus deals a month mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, we’ve worked with them. And to see the ones that continue to grow or stay that way or grow exponentially within a year, there’s a really common thing. And it’s ha it’s it, I was really involved in KPI meetings for some of these clients and I was actually responsible for filling out some of their scorecards for the transactions we were doing. Right? What’s expected to close, what is closing? Because to them that’s their real revenue. I I say this all the time, time due diligence happens in the transactional process because you can do your numbers on a house, but if it doesn’t close, it doesn’t matter.

So you need that extra piece in there. And what I find is the most successful were the ones that had KPIs for every aspect, for acquisitions, dispo, and the transactional piece to all looking at the big picture of their cash flow conversion cycles. So they knew when they signed a contract, what their average day is to close and when they could see that profit, but they also knew a really healthy termination rate or fall through rate or push what I call a sandbag rate, right? That gets pushed a week or two or, or into the following month. So a lot of these guys look at it from deal to deal and they’re averaging their deals, but they’re not really knowing what their cash flow conversion cycle is. They’re just saying, we wanna close in two weeks. Well, covid shifted that <laugh>, our average days to close across multiple markets is 40 days.

If you are doing listings, it’s 35. And that hasn’t really changed a lot. So I would say the most successful guys knew those numbers and they knew their pipeline. The second would be they started outsourcing certain pieces of the business so that they weren’t wearing all the hats. They, because so many things dropped when they tried to that they were, and you can see it in the numbers, you know, you start to see your average days to close, get higher or your fall through rate get higher. It could be because you’re out marketing a ton, but you’re not pay, you’re not nurturing the deal and, and the financial expectation of it so much can shift during a transactional piece because there’s liens that show up and things like that. And so if you aren’t paying attention to those things after you contract them, which a lot of them don’t, they spend a lot of time trying to save deals like that rather than move on to the next because it’s like all that they have mm-hmm.

<Affirmative>. so I would say if you have a healthy pulse on what that looks like, you can start to make rules for yourself when you’re acquiring properties. So for example, we’re not gonna do a wholesale deal that profits us less than 5,000. That was something one of our clients implemented while working with us because we had such a pipeline and it was so much work, but we were chasing those thousand dollars deals and leaving these $50,000 deals that required more work on the back end, on the back burner. So I would say just having somebody that can pay attention to those KPIs is gonna make those a little bit more successful than others. But they were always really heavy on the numbers in all of our meetings.

David Richter:

That’s a good lesson right there. I love, I love that because obviously know your numbers, I’m all about that. But you, what you saw was the people who knew those numbers and across the board, their whole organization, not just how many deals do we have in the pipeline, but like all the KPIs from beginning to end, those were the ones that were most successful that you saw.

Casey Smith:

Absolutely. And, and they had healthy understandings of ratios. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> like, you know, number one, this baffles a lot of investors, when I ask this, I say, how many deals on average are you closing? What is your average minimum for the last three months? And they’ll say, five deals. And I said, Okay, how many active contracts are you typically holding out of time? They are so baffled by that question. They said, I just told you. And I said, No, no, no <laugh>, you never have, you never close what you’re contracting and you’re constantly contracting. Well, right. If you have a smooth operation, right, that means you’ve got rolling average. That means that you’re closing a percentage of what you hold active every week or a month. It’s never the same number. And so, and then you all have to factor in, well how many of those are gonna terminate?

How many of those are gonna go through and how many of those are gonna get delayed? No one’s really looking at those numbers deep down on, on the transactional side. And so I think it’s screwing up their expectations and then they go ahead and they scale or they hire somebody or they put more into marketing and then they’re stressed out at the end of the month calling my team, Why isn’t this closing? And we’re like, because your buyer fell through <laugh>, you know, you tell us or something else happened or hey, you know, the payoff came in much larger. You gotta make a decision if you’re gonna renegotiate this or not. So those types of things, I’m always intrigued by the investors or who are surprised about that. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, but that’s a reality that you face. And so our most successful guys know that, understand it. And when we reach out to them and say, your termination rates are getting in the 50% range, they ask me if that’s normal. I said, no it’s not. So some that allows them to start looking at what they can shift in their process to make it better.

David Richter:

Yeah, no, that’s really good. I think they’ve, you just take that away if you’re listening right now and you take that away, just knowing those numbers and knowing what really matters inside your business and that you’re not going to close everything that’s under contract and knowing what that percentage is. And that was something we tracked a long time ago that the owner was very thorough about. And that’s something that I always know. Like he said, a hundred percent was too much. You’re not taking enough risk. 50% was to, you know, like too little like you’re too much is falling out. 75 to 80% was usually a good ratio for him at that time, way back when. And so that’s

Casey Smith:

Impressive,

David Richter:

You know? So yeah, he was like that. He had it down to the T because there was one sales guy who always like closed a hundred percent. He is like, you’re not taking enough risk. And the other guys are like, That’s a fair point. Yeah. So definitely interesting. So yeah, but you don’t know that if you don’t know your numbers. So I love that you brought that up because of course, I mean we’re on the profit for Star I podcast, so it’s kinda like all about knowing those numbers and from the beginnings end here, so,

Casey Smith:

But we have to know them exactly. Suck it up and get it right.

David Richter:

<Laugh>. Oh man, love that. Casey, I’ve seen you be successful as a realtor, real estate investor, as a service provider. What would you say is one of your biggest keys to the success over the years for yourself?

Casey Smith:

Oh, that’s a good question. I ask myself that all the time. Some days you’re like, man, I feel really beat up stuff. I would say what makes me personally successful is I don’t really understand what failure means. Like to me, I don’t think you fail at anything unless you stop. So even if how you started is not where you’re at now or where you’re heading, if you’ve got the mentality to adapt or pivot and find the opportunity wherever you are, then I think you can be successful in this industry. And I would mine, I always love to let people know there, there’s a lot of blueprint out there for how to do this, but you are the only one that can answer that question and nobody else’s blueprint is gonna match yours. So I would say like, start somewhere and don’t be afraid at like being new.

I was never afraid to be new. I asked questions. I didn’t ever feel stupid. I, and I’m sure I did <laugh>, let’s be honest, but it didn’t bother me or stop me. And so I would say that’s probably my biggest key. And I realized a lot of people asked me why I would go into a service like transaction coordinating because they, I’m more of a sales person and you know, a different personality. And I said, well, because I get to be exposed to more types of contracts and deals in different markets and more investors and more title companies and more vendors than anywhere else, they, I get them before even title gets them. So to me it was like a learning curve and I thought, I know how to do this, I might as well see how it goes. And that’s how I started it. I don’t think I had a huge vision or plan for how it would turn out. I think I left my mind open to how it would evolve and I was just able to pivot with that mindset rather than getting frustrated when something didn’t work the first time around. Yeah. And so it’s allowed me to do different revenues and different types of things in real estate without feeling overwhelmed. But really enjoying it all without feeling like it’s a stressful thing. Awesome.

David Richter:

I like what you said there that you don’t understand what failure means, you know, cuz failure to you is just mean, you know, giving up, you know, like when every and shutting down everything that was, that’s really good stuff. So if you don’t give up, you’re not a failure. You know? I love, I absolutely, that’s true. So that’s true. Yeah. Very, very true. I wanna touch on one other thing before we wrap up here in a couple minutes. The outsourcing aspect, you know, you had mentioned that’s one of the key, one of the key things of the successful real estate investors that you see out there. I want to ask you, what do you outsource in your business right now? You know, like what is the, what are some of the things that you don’t like doing or that you say that, you know, like, get this off my plate, whether it’s up to a personal assistant or whether it’s two and a virtual assistant or you know, just team members. What do you like to get off your plate personally?

Casey Smith:

One really great skill set of mine, which people probably wouldn’t believe me, is I’m a really good delegator <laugh>. So if I can train someone to do it, I will delegate it. So I currently have outsourced bookkeeping. I do have a financial consultant that I meet with quarterly. I have outsourced my listings. I actually don’t put them into anything. I don’t even prep listing agreements or paperwork. I can’t remember the last time I did paperwork. So Awesome. All paperwork is outsourced. Even signatures I give what we call areas of approval, which we learned from, you know, our, our circle to yeah. Everyone I work with so they know exactly what they can do without my permission and what needs permission and they follow that. So a combination of VAs and, and just experts in certain areas.

But yeah, finance, finances are outsourced. I would, yeah, just the admin work on the real estate side. For my own deals, I actually use my own company, so I have a TC and I pay them just like everyone else. So I’ve outsourced the TC and I truthfully have out, the only thing that I do in my company is the CEO right now. So I actually am not in the day to day operations. I do the usual CEO owner box things and then I kind of step in when requested. But other than that, I feel like I’ve outsourced most of my life at this point. And the only thing I, I even have outsourced house cleaning and you know, groceries get outsourced from time to time as well. So pretty much all of it I feel like, Right, that’s bad. Isn’t it

David Richter:

Bad? Say No, no, I, I want, I want people to listen to that and say it’s good. Like, this is good what you’re doing because it is good. You’re doing, you’re doing the highest and best things so you can impact the most people. If you’re going out there and buying groceries, that’s one less personnel you could be influencing somewhere else by just giving a talk of like what you could do to outsource your tc. So it’s like, I love that. And that’s one, one of the things you even said, right? You said outsourcing is one of the best things you see in the real estate world, so it’s like applauding yourself for that. And I love that you outsource your own tc, you know, like I do for your deals, you know, like that’s the best thing. It’s like you don’t have to just be the pie maker making that pie. You are now the one that has said no, even that, like there’s better pie makers, like let them make that pie for me and I’ll just make sure that closes.

Casey Smith:

Yeah. My t So I knew that I would be able to train an army better than me with a different skill set. So yeah, it’s been a fun journey for sure. Awesome.

David Richter:

That’s so awesome. So last question here. You’ve provided a ton of value, loved it. There’s so much good stuff here. How can people provide value back to you that are listening right now? Like, what are you working on or what’s the company or how do they get ahold of you?

Casey Smith:

Yeah. Awesome. A couple of things really. First of all, I love talking to real estate, so you know, if anyone ever needs anything, please reach out to me. I just love connecting people as well and we’ve got quite a network to do so. But currently first of all, if you need TC services, you can obviously go to atlas tc services.com and there’s an application link on the top right corner that just tells us who you are, what you’re like, where you are in your operation, and that will trigger us to schedule a call with you. So that’s one thing. Second, I am buying properties in dfw. If I could throw that in there. No,

Anything. I stopped wholesaling and assigning myself, I’m purely just doing building a portfolio and, and managing some short term rentals over here. So if you do need or if you need any connections to people, like reach out to me in the Dallas Fort Worth area. I do listings for investors here if you’re experienced, I do it at a discounted rate, so it’s a pretty easy job. And I love negotiating so it like keeps that in my blood by doing those deals. But yeah, I would say all those just, I’d love if y’all just speak our name, if you know of anybody who might be looking for something, just direct ’em our way and we can take it from there. We’d love just to get more people involved. I would say finally we are working on a product to train tcs.

So if you do find that you’re in operation where you want someone in house or you’re getting bigger to where you might need multiple people in house or they put different roles, we’re working on a product to train your TCS in the knowledge that we think investment TCS need and kind of help develop their expertise in title resolving issues and things like that. So connect with me on Facebook or connect to our Facebook page as well for Atlas and you’ll get the announcements when that stuff starts rolling out because we’ll be doing some beta testing with some individuals. So I know that’s a lot <laugh>. Awesome.

David Richter:

So do you wanna give the website one more time just for people to be

Casey Smith:

Yes, it is www.atlastcservices.com. That’s like Atlas as in like Atlas shrunk. There you go. CC services.com. Good

David Richter:

Stuff. Good stuff. So this has been incredible, Casey. We got to learn about, you know, like what you, what excites you about real estate from the, you know, to variety. I love that you were very vulnerable too and said the finances stress you out and like we went deep into there what that means and just the lots of different components in that you’re outsourcing the ones that really give you that headache. I love too the growth theme of like, what are the successful entrepreneurs doing? And it was the KPIs for all areas and then outsourcing. So then I love that you outsource also your own stuff for your internal, like your buying the properties and whatnot too. So you practice what you preach, which is what I love as well too. And that you’re a great delegator. Lots of great info here. So Casey, thank you so much for being on and for coming on today and sharing that wisdom.

Casey Smith:

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Yeah,

David Richter:

So if you’re a real estate investor, just like Casey or like other people that are lissy right now, I wanna make sure that if you are struggling with the finances or it stresses you out like it does Casey, and if you’re just like her, go to simple cfo solutions.com. You can get a call with us. Just click the schedule call button. We’ve got a CFO that’s ready waiting for you to help you walk through the Profit First methodology and take a lot of that stress off of your plate. So if we can help you just go there and if not, we’ll pin you to someone in our network that can, We’ve got a lot of good people and I wanna leave you with this thought again. Remember, make profit a habit, not an event in your business.

Outro:

This episode of the Profit First for REI podcast is over, but there are plenty more where that came from. Are you ready to learn how David and his team can help implement the Profit First system in your business? Schedule a discovery call@simplecfo.com right now. We’ll see you next time on The Profit First for REI podcast with David Richter.