Is Your STR Actually Profitable? Use This Financial Setup

One of the most important things that we all look for investing in real estate is actually making money. David Richter, and he wrote Profit First for Real Estate Investing.

Even though we were doing 25 deals a month at our highest point, we were spending about 26 worth of deals out the door. It really doesn't matter how many deals you do. It matters what you do with the money that determines the financial freedom. If a dollar comes into your business and you have one big black hole bank account where that dollar comes in and it gets sucked out again, never to be seen in that swirling vortex of doom, it helps you to move from a firefighter to a fire preventer, more like the fire marshal versus the frontline firefighter in your own business. The $10, $20 per hour task is like the data entry, right? But like the $1,000 per hour task is taking that data and analyzing it and saying, what can I do with this?

Welcome back to the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast. I'm happy you're here again. One of the most important things that we all look for investing in real estate is actually making money. But I think a lot of us truly understand what our profit margins are and how much is left at the end of the day. So I'm really excited to have our guest on today because he knows a lot about this, David Richter, and he wrote Profit First for Real Estate Investing. So we're going to dig all into that. Welcome to the show, David.

Thanks, Tim. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, great to have you here. And, you know, there's— we focus a lot on this show with short-term rentals, but also traditional real estate. And I think when we get to the short-term rental side, there's even more going on. You know, when you have your traditional real estate, you've got your utilities, your property tax, things like that. But with short-term rentals, there's all these other little expenses. And I think it really makes things fuzzy for a lot of people. And I don't think a lot of our audience and a lot of people that I meet out at the conferences actually really know how much money they're making at the end of the day. That is the most important piece. So why don't you tell us about your journey and your book and let's dig into the details.

So I would say that in the single-family space, if there's an exit strategy, I've probably been a part of it because in my early 20s I got linked up with a real estate company that we grew to about 25 residential deals a month. So we were flipping, wholesaling, we had some turnkeys, we did rentals, we did lease options. So we did lots of stuff in that company in my early 20s. So I got a huge just real estate education there because I was there for 5 years. I got to really learn how they grew and how they scaled. But that's where my eyes were opened to that. Even though we were doing 25 deals a month at our highest point, we were spending about 26 worth of deals out the door and it's like, what are we doing here? So that really opened my eyes even to like, it doesn't matter. That we're doing all these deals if we're not keeping anything at the end of the day. Then I was going to masterminds and events, and once we got people one-on-one and not the people on the stage, but like one-on-one, they tell us the same stories. Like, I don't know where all my money's going. I'm like, yeah, we're doing lots of deals, but where's all the money? Then I worked with another guy after that stint with that company that had about one deal a month and was in the same position. But that guy actually had about 19 short-term rentals at the time as well, too. I'll never forget one of the things he said to me. He said, I really don't know where my money is. He's like, I feel like I should have more in the account. But he didn't have that clarity like you were talking about. And a lot of people just don't understand when the business finances, and especially if you're doing more than one property at a time, like if you've got multiple projects, plus you might have some in service, plus you might have, you know, things just going on six ways from Sunday, especially like you said, in the short-term world. I feel like things there just happen so quickly and it's so active that just really did it. Open my eyes completely that it doesn't matter if you're doing 25 deals a month, 1 deal a month, if you've got a small portfolio, if you've got a large portfolio, that a lot of people just struggle with that clarity. And a lot of people also struggle with financial freedom, which is why we get into real estate or business or entrepreneur, you know, becoming a net entrepreneur, because it really doesn't matter how many deals you do. It matters what you do with the money that determines the financial freedom. So that really, really set me on this path. That I'm on now. I own a fractional CFO company and I wrote, like you said, the book Profit First for Real Estate Investing because I saw this as an epidemic. Like, it doesn't matter where you are on this journey. If you don't know some of the rules of money and like that, you're actually playing the money game and not real estate, then it's like, we got to teach these foundational pieces. That's what drove me to Profit First and starting this business and everything. So that's what we're doing now. We work with about 100 people on a monthly basis in the real estate world. So We've grown quite a bit over the last few years, but because a lot of people have just— they quietly raise their hand like, yes, I need the help. I'm, you know, I have no idea what's going on with the money. So that's just a brief overview from the early real estate days to now.

That's the reality. The more you got going on, the more complicated it gets too. So exactly what would you say? I mean, where's the starting place for someone out there if they're like, hey, I've got, you know, 5, 10 short-term rentals and I'm the exact person David just mentioned. I feel like I should have more money and I have no idea where it's going.

So I would tell one, if you're listening to this, the starting place is the same no matter what, especially if you have nothing in place currently. Like, if a dollar comes into your business and you have one big black hole bank account where that dollar comes in and it gets sucked out again, never to be seen in that swirling vortex of doom out there, I would say Profit First is a cash flow management system. So the book is called Profit First because a lot of businesses end up putting their profit last. They say, let me pay everyone else and their mother, and maybe we'll have something someday, or maybe at the end of the year, or maybe I could take a draw next month. You know, they don't have any consistent money systems in place. But Tim Hubbard, a lot of other books have called that out, like Rich Dad Poor Dad, like Pay Yourself First, The Richest Man in Babylon, and just timeless books about money and the management of money tell the listener or the reader, like, you should be taking a portion of that first to be able to pay yourself and make sure you're healthy, make sure the business is healthy, especially if you're running a for-profit business. So I would tell everyone to start the same. What I like about Profit First is I think it took it a step further any of those other books had before because it gave a system. It didn't just say you should pay yourself first and stop there. It's like, okay, here's how. How do I start this? Where do I start? What do I do in order to get this magical profit into my pocket? You know, when I feel like all the money's going six ways from Sunday. So Profit First is built on the envelope method. So that's been around since the dawn of time, basically, where there's been intentionality. When you get something in, you're intentional with those dollars. In recent years, probably the last, I don't know, 50 years, 60 years, It's been very popular for the envelope method. Dave Ramsey made it popular probably within the last 20, 25 years in the personal finance space to put little envelopes and put all your expenses in there and name all the expenses. So it could be your, you know, your groceries, the gas, utilities, all that stuff. And there's money that goes in there every month and you're very intentional with those dollars versus like it all comes in and it just all goes out and you have no idea what's happening. In business, I would set up some physical business checking accounts. The very first account. Now it's the Profit First system. So there's 5 foundational accounts, but I would have you just start with one. If you're like, what's a good starting point? Because this is something anyone can do from this podcast. Like if you want to learn more, I've got more content. I could go deeper and go through all the entire system. But if you're going to start somewhere, especially if you're feeling like, oh my gosh, where is that money? How do I get a handle on this? How do I put in my pocket? I would set up one account. Since it's a Profit First system, you would think I would say a profit account, but I actually call the very first account you should open up the owner's pay account or the Escape the Rat Race account. It's there to pay yourself consistently from what's coming into your business. Because if you're not doing that, probably a lot of other things in your life are affected. Like if you are feeling constantly stressed that you don't have money or that you don't have some regular consistent income, even in an inconsistent business, then you're probably not going to be making the best decisions for yourself, for your family, for the business. If you don't pay yourself first. So open up literally a pay yourself first account. We call it the owner's comp account because it's the owner's compensation. So for every dollar, take a little bit from it. So if you have 5 to 10, just what you said, Tim, like if that's, if that's who's listening right now, if you have 5 to 10 properties, you might say, well, I can't pay myself what I need from these 5 to 10. Or like, I can't, where do I start? How much do I pay myself? I would start with what can you physically do that won't tank the business? You know, like even whether it's a certain dollar or a certain percentage. In the book, we give target percentages even for buy and hold properties. Like if you're this size of business and you're making this much in income, this is how much you should put in different accounts. But if you're just starting out, I tell people, do what you can, but start with at least 1%. Like if you don't have profit as a habit, it might be forcing yourself to do something you haven't been doing and that you might have some bad habits with your money currently. Like dollars come in and they all go back out. So I tell people, start with what you can do. If it's as little as 1%, great. If it's as great as 50%, and you could take that much from the business because you could start to pay yourself because you're trying to exit a W-2 job. Like, this is where I want you to at least have that guidance. Set up one account. Every dollar that comes in, you put money into that other account and you start to pay yourself consistently. That's how you can start this whole thing.

So our industry, short-term rental industry, has gotten pretty tough over the last few years. You know, like millions of new rentals have entered and more supplies pushed prices down. And so I know there's a lot of people out there just saying, David, I can't pay myself, like I'm underwater. You know, or I think I am again, like maybe they don't actually know. But I mean, what would you say to those people that are in that position?

Those people, when they come to me, I think they're trying to battle against themselves. Like, I can't physically do this. I always ask them, if you don't have profit, don't you think you have a system that should now help you to engineer that profit? Like, are you— I usually lead with a question like, are you sick of being where you are? Like, are you sick of being underwater and not having the money that you want? Well, then we have to put good systems and habits in in place so that way we don't end up with the same result. If you keep— what's that, right? The definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And a lot of people don't understand that it's really not the deal flow and it's really not— I mean, obviously you have to have deals and you have to have properties and you have to have income, but it's the amount and more about what you do with it. So that's what I tell people. If you're not comfortable with where you are now, then let's put some systems in place. And if you're saying, well, I can't do the recommended percentages, that's why I say start with 1%. Like, if you're living off 100% now, can you live off of 99%? And if you are upside down, that's where we have to force ourselves to take a look to say, okay, if I'm living on above 100% and you're shoveling money into your business, do you really have a business? Number one. And number two, is there— do we have to stop the bleeding somehow? One way is to set up a system like this that it's no more guesswork. Like, either you are living off 100% or you're living off 150% or whatever, and you're shoveling your own money in constantly. And this just helps you get that clarity of how much can I put into this other account and take out. If I can't do anything, well, then I've got to re— I've got to reconfigure things, whether it's taking the short-term to long-term or a midterm or selling. Maybe you have a stinker property that you thought was great on paper, but then now you're actually in the business and you have the competition. Maybe you're a couple of years into it. It's like maybe it's not doing so well for you, or maybe you do refinance it if you have any equity so that way you don't get the tax hit and you do a different exit strategy at that point. But this is where it needs to give you that clarity. And a lot of people just don't have that, Tim. So that's where I would tell people, this is that system that will help you make better decisions in your business. I don't know if you've ever heard this one, but I was at a mastermind one time and the guy stood up there and he said, if you're constantly fighting fires in your business, you're the arsonist. And he said that. I was like, oh my gosh, that hits home. Because if you're constantly running out of money or you're constantly upside down, we need to do fire prevention versus, you know, like where we're actively fighting the fire. And that's what this system does. It helps you to move from a firefighter to a fire preventer, more like the fire marshal versus the frontline firefighter in your own business, because you put one out usually, and then another one springs up and you put one out over there and it springs up. Well, if the root cause is you have a leak at the foundation and like there's gas lines and they just keep, you know, the flames keep popping up, well, then we got to take care of that. And that's what I believe, Tim, this system helps to solve is a lot of those root issues, because you always follow the money, follow the money. Like, okay, if we're not making enough, we got to do something different. But like you had mentioned before too, a lot of people just don't have that clarity to know if they're upside down or not.

Yeah, great points.

I love it.

Starting with profit. The good news with our industry, you know, on one side it is complex because there's much more types of expenses, but there's also much more types of income.

Yeah.

And so there usually is a lot of opportunity for basically everyone out there to really find some of those leaks and move some things around to create more profit. You know, whether it's reconsidering how they're managing the property, maybe they bring it in-house.

You know, maybe they're—

they make some changes with their, their housekeeping or their supplies or, you know, they work on their, their revenue management strategies. So, okay, so starting with Profit First, I love that. What would be like the next step? Someone's like, okay, I took a look, I've got this account set up and I'm putting 5% in each month. Where do I go from here?

Well, first of all, you're building great habits. So I would just commend you because a lot of people, you know, just— they have never taken that step before. I would also say another key thing you could do immediately that might put money in your pocket that you're constantly shoveling out the door and you don't even know it is doing a very simple exercise to go over everything that's going out the door. I call it the PR&U exercise from Profit First. I think it's in my book as well too, where you mark— you just print out your expenses for like the last 2 or 3 months in Airbnb or like short-term rentals or everything that's going on there. That might be a lot. So like it might only be 1 to 2 months that you print out, but you mark every single thing that's going out the door. Is it PR or U? Is it profitable? Like, is this something that's actually either making me money or saving me time. R would be replaceable. Like you had said, Tim Hubbard, this might be in-house management versus external management. Like, what if I replace that? What would that replacement cost be? And what would the savings be? And what would the time investment be? So it'd be like, okay, if I have these things that I'm purchasing, what if I replace them? How much could I either save or save my trouble? And then U is unnecessary. So U would be like, why am I paying for this? Or the subscriptions that you never really use or those types of things. Or this is if you start to get a bigger team that, you know, you might have someone that is a good culture fit or something like that, but then they don't— they're not producing. And that's really hard because usually the two biggest expenses in a business is marketing and payroll. And that's where looking at your returns on ad and spend, or however you're getting, you know, the leads in the door, is a big one. And the other one is, okay, what are the people that are on the team? Is everyone pulling their weight? Especially in lean times, you got to make sure you're as lean and mean as possible. So that's where going through this exercise and having an actual step-by-step process go through, print it off. PR and UP is obviously the things you're going to keep. It's profitable to you. R is what you can look at to try and replace or remove or, you know, like to move to something else. And then you would just be, I got to cut this. Why do I still have this? We've done this exercise so many times with the people that we work with, Tim Hubbard, and like on average it's at least $1,000 a month that people are cutting. They just have $1,000 of waste laying around. We've got some crazy stories with some bigger investors where they cut like $50,000 a month. And I'm like, this is nuts. Nuts, you know. And a lot of times they just never had a system to go through this. So number one, I'd set yourself up for profitability by making sure that every dollar that comes in goes to at least another account that gives you some profit and gives you a system. Then from there, I'd be like, okay, now that's kind of like offense, where a dollar comes in and I want to make sure that we're offensively taking this and making sure that we have dry powder. On the flip side, it's like, let's also make sure that we have as much coming in and going to our pocket and going to the bottom line as possible. And having an exercise like that would be another great step to take.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Okay. So basically we start paying ourselves. We look at all of our transactions. We identify if they fit in that PRU system. One of the challenges with our industry is that there just are a lot of transactions and they come in from a whole bunch of different places. You know, fortunately, like with AI today, like you can grab a whole bunch of transactions and give it to Claude or ChatGPT and it can help out. But do you have any recommendations just on the structure, like setting these up? With, you know, maybe a fintech bank or something like that that makes some of these, these structural pieces easier?

Yeah, there's actually banks out there that are like profit-first friendly. There's a couple ones like RelayFi.com. They're profit-first based where they'll let you set up, I think, 20 accounts for free. So you can name those accounts. You can also do automatic transfers. So like when you get income in, you could set it on certain days of the week or certain days of the month and it'll transfer into the accounts that you want to either by percentage or by an actual dollar amount. So that's one of them. Another one's Baselane.com, which is more more built for, I believe, the rental industry. So if you're a buy and hold investor, then that's another one to look into, Baselane.com. So yes, there's a couple of them out there, Tim. There's a couple others that we use internally as well. So those are just a couple of ones that are, they go out there and they are actual Profit First type banks that help you set up multiple accounts and don't have a bunch of fees attached to them. And you can do all the transfers that necessary and they even help you with some of that automation too. Yeah.

And some of them even pay you Yes. You know, much more than like a brick-and-mortar bank like Wells Fargo. So I would check those out. I think we've recommended Baselane on the show before. We use Mercury for our business, which is also another fintech bank. I mean, we can literally create a new account in like 1 second. We can issue digital credit cards with limits. And so they have some really good options as well. So, okay, well, what's left after the PRU stage, David? Where does someone go from there?

Or if you had 5 to 10 rentals No, I— well, there's— I mean, I could tell you all the steps to the end of time here. But another great thing, if you don't have it in place currently, is getting someone on your team that understands real estate, like a good bookkeeper or a good accountant or a good— you know, if you need higher-level help, like a part-time CFO or something, making sure that the people on your team understand your industry, because that's one of the biggest mistakes I see people make, is that they link up with someone that's cheap or overseas and they don't understand real estate investing, especially if you've got got a short-term rental with about 1,000 transactions coming in and out and they're not sure, okay, where do I classify this? What do I do? Or if you ever purchase a long-term or short-term rental, or if you're just doing even a flip or a project, or if like you've bought one and it needs work and you're doing that, it's like, where do all those transactions go? You do not want to go to at tax time or like down the road and say, all this is wrong. You didn't really have the clarity because that's part of being a a good business owner as well too, is not only knowing where your cash is going, but knowing what your numbers are telling you so you can grow the business like you want to. And a lot of people just don't have the right people in place that are really helping them because either number one, they don't know real estate, or number two, they might do the transaction, but they're not meeting with you on a regular basis to be like, okay, what's going on? Here's something that I see, here's something that you could do, that type of thing as well too. So you need to make sure you have some good people in your corner. That actually understand your industry and that will at least give you the time of day, that will have some type of meeting schedule to go over the numbers. Because the $10, $20 per hour task is like the data entry, right? But like the $1,000 per hour task is taking that data and analyzing it and saying, what can I do with this? So that way you could have better PRU conversations. That way you could have better cash conversations. That way you can say, okay, where do I need to put the money to grow this thing? If I'm— if I have 5 to 10 now, Now, how do I double to 20, you know, doors and make sure that I don't go crazy and don't have too much things going this way, that way? So this is where a lot of people forget that the financial side, as you grow, should grow with you. So if you've got a bookkeeper, make sure they're real estate investing. If you've got a good real estate investing, then the next step is like, okay, do you have a leader helping you get to that next stage and make sure you're still profitable? It's like making sure your finances grow with the rest of the business. A lot of people, usually that's the last area that they worry about. It's like, well, let me get the deals, the marketing, the operations, which is great. You gotta get all that front-end stuff, but just don't forget the back-end because at the end of the day, we all want financial freedom. And if you don't have the financial systems to grow while you grow, you're going to say, oh shoot, where did all that money go? What is going on here? So that would just be the next thing, making sure you have the right people in your corner, Tim.

Yeah, no, great point. I've recommended a book a lot of times called Who Not How. Oh yeah, I think it's, I think it's by Dan Sullivan. And yep, you know, one of the things they talk about is if you're procrastinating in something and maybe that is organizing your finances, it's probably because you either don't like it or you're not good at it. But there's someone out there that is good at it and that does like it. And so yeah, who, not how, you know, if you're in that position, you got a bunch of deals coming in and you have no idea what the numbers actually look like, probably time to get some help. Do you have any tips, David, though? I, you know, we've got a big range of listeners on this show. Some people that are just getting started, some people that have really large portfolios. And I know some of the people that are just getting started are thinking, oh gosh, you know, I can't afford to bring someone in and I want to do this myself. And I could imagine a lot of people get in and, and they maybe get this set up, but then it falls apart like 2 months later. You know, one of the nice things with the automatic transfers is that it just happens automatically, right? Do you have any other tips or suggestions for someone out there that's like going to try this on their own? They're just getting started and how to keep consistent with it.

So automated as much as possible. First, that's the nice thing about starting there is you don't need to be a financial wizard. You don't even have to use spreadsheets like you don't even need to know that stuff. All you need is to set up the bank accounts, and especially if you set it up at a bank that does the automatic transfers, a lot of that can happen automatically. Okay, you get your first deal under your belt and you've got all the money, you got to start to get rental income, you know, or the short-term income coming in. Okay, it hits your account and then by a certain day, whether it's Friday or the 15th of the month or whatever it might be, it then transfers by how much you want to into those accounts. And I would start with with what the most you can do. What's the most you can do to keep you afloat and to keep the business afloat? Is it 50/50? Is it, you know, split percentages? That's why I would also recommend picking up the book. You know, if just a shameless plug there, if you want more guidance, 'cause in there I just give you like a 1, 2, 3, here's how you do this, here's how you get where you want to with Profit First. But the best thing, Tim, is for them to be consistent. So make it as foolproof as possible by setting it up at a bank that allows the automatic transfers and you could just have it done automatically. And then from there, if you need help with the numbers and stuff, bookkeepers really, even, even in the real estate industry, are still pretty cost effective. So if you need someone like that, that would be one of the best first hires is either an assistant that can also do the books or an actual bookkeeper. But as long as they have to have real estate investing knowledge. So getting someone to help with that side because you don't want to go to tax time and be like, oh shoot, you know, here we go again. Now I've got to get all the receipts and all the things for the last year. And I don't remember what this was, you know, a year ago, you know, that type of thing. You just want your future self will thank you if you set some of these up, right? At the beginning. And even if you're at the beginning, Profit First can be put on automatic. The other parts, the parts that are the financial end, unless you are just inclined to the numbers and the spreadsheets and that type of thing, you're either going to need to get someone to help you or just run a very simple spreadsheet or something. Can you just do all your transactions in and out for the month or at least download your bank statements, you know, once a month so that way you can put it, you know, like for your accountant to do when you first file your taxes. But that's what I would say first, Tim, is Profit First can be almost automated as much as possible. Possible if you put some of these key pieces in place and just start with what you can do. Then you just put it on autopilot. So when money gets deposited, you know it's going to transfer on those specific days.

Good points. And we want to make sure everyone knows how to get in touch with you, find your book. But just one other question as we kind of wrap up. We've already identified, we know, I mean, I know talking with managers and owners, investors basically every day, like this is one of the areas in the short-term rental industry where people just leave it in the back, you know, and they don't really look at it. And part of the reason is because it's complicated. And so there are some, some accounting programs that have popped up specifically for short-term rentals. So we kind of have several pieces here, right? Like we need to get some structure in place to make it easier, you know, to facilitate automatic transfers, things like that. We need to get a system like your system in place. But then there is the backend piece too, you know, like the actual accounting. And a lot of people use QuickBooks. So I'm curious, is that what you find most people are using still is QuickBooks?

Oh, it's still the— yeah, even small operators, it's still the elephant in the room at this point. No one's come to dethrone them. We've got a couple people using other softwares like Xero or FreshBooks or that type of thing. But yeah, I would say out of our clients, it's like 98%, and there's not many people on other things. But if you have a system like that, the nice thing about a system like that, or any of the ones that I just mentioned there, a lot of them have automatic functionality where you can literally set up your bank accounts to sync with QuickBooks. So at least even if you don't know where to put them because you're not an accountant, you don't know how categorize all the transactions, you can at least pull all the transactions in for the month. So that way, even if you had a thousand, like you were doing a lot of transactions, you could still have everything there. So nothing gets missed. That's the biggest thing, Tim, is like you just don't want anything missed. So a system like that really helps you catch everything versus the manual entries or ledgers or spreadsheets, things like that.

There's another one that I started using, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago called Monarch. I don't know if you've heard of this.

I've heard of Monarch.

Yeah, Monarch's great for anyone out there that is unorganized still and you got a bunch of accounts in a bunch places that can help you centralize. They have a really low, you know, annual fee, and it's a place where you could organize all those expenses so you could export them and go through the process of making sure that you're profitable and identifying your transactions.

Awesome, David.

Well, you have a podcast. Tell us about your podcast and your book and how people can get in touch with you.

Well, there's one site you could go to for all that, simplecfo.com. Simple CFO, like chief financial officer, dot com. That's where we have a podcast page. That's where we have the link to the book. The book is on Amazon. So If you want the physical book, you could get it there. I think we even give a downloadable version of the book on the site as well too. Like you could get the free book at our website. You could also book a call with our team there if you're like, hey, I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off and I need some help getting this under control. We have different services like the bookkeeping or the fractional CFO or the CPA things for real estate investors specifically. We work in the short-term, long-term space. So if you need that, that's at simplecfo.com, kind of your one-stop shop for all things profit first for real estate investing.

Appreciate you coming on, David. What you do is super important. I mean, if, if people aren't staying above water, then it's not a good ending, right? So really important. Appreciate you coming on and, and thanks for all the advice.