How Profit First Broke Unhealthy Financial Habits With Paul Sparks

Episode 175: How Profit First Broke Unhealthy Financial Habits With Paul Sparks

The Profit First REI Podcast

April 24,  2023

David Richter 

Our guest today is Paul Sparks, a real estate investor and the owner & COO of BunnyHill Properties. He founded the Whale Club mastermind and is the host of the Investor Frame podcast.

Paul began his real estate career while working as an engineering salesman before going full-time as an investor. He shares how his lack of formal education in business and proclivity as a salesman made him more focused on making a profit and less on looking at his numbers and data—until he discovered the Profit First method.

Tune in as Paul shares his history, Profit First journey, and the practical steps to unlearn bad money habits and begin putting more focus on financial management.

Key Takeaways:
[00:52] Introducing Paul Sparks

[04:41] On His Difficulty Looking at His Numbers and Other Money Struggles

[08:10] Profit First and How It Helped Him Grow as an Investor

[20:53] On Learning More About Finances and Having Better Money Mentality

[25:30] Advice for Investors Who Want to Apply Profit First

[28:27] Connect With Paul Sparks

Quotes: 

[06:11] “ It’s really tough to run a profitable business if you do not collect and analyze the data because otherwise, you’re just erring on the side of ‘How do I make more money?’ constantly…more revenue doesn’t necessarily equate to more money in your pocket.”

[07:38] “I didn’t know how to focus on how much money that I kept. It sounds so obvious when you say this stuff out loud. But it’s not obvious when you’re in the moment…I think it just took maturing as a business owner to understand: it doesn’t matter how much you make unless you’re keeping it.”

[26:18] “It’s really, really tough to have financial freedom, financial certainty, if you don’t have your finances dialed in.”

Connect with Paul

Instagram: www.instagram.com/paulsparksofficial
Website: www.realestatecertainty.com

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 

Transcription: 

Paul Sparks:

I wasn’t taking any profit because it was just all in one lump thing and I didn’t know what I could take or what I couldn’t take. Yeah, and it just sounds so obvious now, but you can’t operate a business with with that type of system. So all I did is I went up and to just follow what they told me to do, I set up a profit account, I set up an OPEX account, I set up a tax account, and I set up an owner owner’s comp account.

Outro:

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 re e i 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:

This is David Richter of the Pro First REI podcast. We have Paul Sparks on today, which is an awesome guest because he talks about his journey of Prophet First, how he felt before Prophet first and what he was going through and like, uh, we referenced this many times, but beating his head against the wall. He would’ve rather done that than look at his finances, uh, before the prophet first system, which I think that resonates with a lot of people cuz that’s how I was years ago as well too. But please listen to his story, get some hope, encouragement, but then the practical steps as well too of what he did to get on the other side of that. Thank you so much for listening and please enjoy the show. Hey everyone, it is David Richter here again with the Profit First REI podcast. We have Paul Sparks in this studio, which I’m excited about this because he is a fan of profit first because it sounds like it’s helped his business a lot. Uh, we were talking about it before and he described it, he’d rather headbutt a nail

Paul Sparks:

<laugh>,

David Richter:

uh, than talk about and look at his finances. So we definitely have to talk about that sometime today on the show, but just to give you a little bit of a taste there. But Paul, thank you so much for being on.

Paul Sparks:

Thanks for having me, David.

David Richter:

Yeah, for sure. So before we get into that interesting story of headbutting and nail, because I think that’s gonna resonate with a lot of people and how they view the financial side of their business, how did you get started in real estate and like what are you doing today?

Paul Sparks:

Yeah, so I’m actually an engineer by trade. I got, uh, out of engineering school and realized I’m a terrible engineer. Um, <laugh> not only was I bad at it, but I didn’t like it. Um, what I found was a little niche for myself in sales, uh, selling engineering equipment to other engineers that was a much better fit for me. Um, so I spent, uh, about eight years outta school, traveling every single week, um, selling automation and engineering equipment to some of the largest companies in the world. Companies like United Airlines, Amazon, Walmart, and uh, you know, had had done fairly well for myself through that process and had just started buying, you know, they weren’t even rentals. I would buy a primary house, I would move out in a year and turn that into a rental. And I had collected a handful of these. And, uh, when 2020 March of 2020 hit and I was getting ready to close one of the largest deals in my career with United Airlines, they said, oh, we gotta pull the plug on this project, Paul, because there’s a whole virus thing going around and you know, we’re not gonna be able to write you that 7 million check. So that was a bummer. And uh, that was the point when I said, all right, well I think I just need to take, you know, take this opportunity to go full-time in real estate and start building my career in that. Fast forward to now. I run a small investment team here in Denver, Colorado. Um, in fact, we’re actually under contract right now to close on the largest real estate deal of my career. Uh, 18 townhouses we’re gonna be building. It was another, uh, 8 million project that I raised money for. So I found myself getting, um, into a similar situation that I was in sales, which was, uh, selling big deals, raising lots of money. That was my skillset and I found my way, uh, out of more of a volume-based game that I started in and now going after larger deals and know more, uh, more fits my preferences and, um, strengths, I would say.

David Richter:

Okay. So that’s what you’re doing today, going after those larger deals in the real estate space?

Paul Sparks:

Yeah.

David Richter:

Cool. And he’s got the Investor Frame podcast, which I was just a part of, so listen to his podcast. I’m on there. That was, I like his style of interviewing and like the framework that he has around that podcast. So I thought that was very interesting. He’s got the whale club too. I’ll let you talk about that, you know, probably at the end there, but I wanna talk about, let’s get into the juicy stuff. Talk about wanting to headbutt a nail versus looking at the finances. Like what was going on. At what point was that in this cycle of your business life?

Paul Sparks:

Yeah. Um, I think it’s the curse of the salesperson.

David Richter:

Okay.

Paul Sparks:

Um, and I don’t know if there’s, you know, I’m sure you got a lot of people that are, would call themselves a visionary or a salesperson.

David Richter:

Yes.

Paul Sparks:

Um, and a lot of times how I solve problems was just go sell more.

David Richter:

Yeah,

Paul Sparks:

Right. Just go sell another deal and then we won’t have that problem. Um, it’s, we have a framework that we describe in our community called case. So C stands for collect, A for analyze, S for strategize and E for execute. And boy do I want to skip right past collect and analyze and just tell me the strategy so I can go execute on it.

David Richter:

Nice. Right.

Paul Sparks:

This curse, I would say it would go so far as to say of the salesperson is that they don’t want to take the time to compile or collect all of the financial data. You know, pull a list of all their vendors, where are they spending money, what’s the return for all these things? Let’s analyze the data and find opportunities to improve. We don’t want any of that. Just tell me how I can make more money. Just tell me how I can find the next deal so I can go sell more. And it’s, you know, what we talked about on our show is just, it’s a bias that a lot of us have. And so I’ve had to deal with that. It’s really tough to run a profitable business if you do not collect and analyze the data cuz otherwise you’re just airing on the side of how do I make more money constantly.

David Richter:

Yeah.

Paul Sparks:

And it’s the whole premise of your book, more Money doesn’t necessarily, more revenue doesn’t necessarily equate to more money in your pocket.

David Richter:

Yeah, that’s the truth. I, uh, yeah, you’re definitely preaching to the choir here. So then what does your business look like? Like were you wa living deal to deal at that point? Or like what was going on?

Paul Sparks:

So, you know, I started wholesaling, um,

David Richter:

Okay.

Paul Sparks:

And fixing and flipping. And I like to sort of describe my first year or two as like I just needed to press buttons. Like I just needed to see what happened when we did this, when we did that. Like how do I, like flipping? Do I like wholesaling? Do I like retail? Do I like creative finance? Do I like rentals? What do I like? And so a lot of it was just trying things and I did give myself a lot of probably too much leeway to just try things to see what I liked. But I had never been taught how to manage a business, how to manage the profitability of a business. I was an individual contributor, an individual salesperson, had never managed anything other than my own time. And I didn’t have to worry about how much money I was spending, it was just go make money. And that did not serve me very well in my first couple years because, you know, I didn’t know how to focus on how much money that I kept. It sounds so obvious when you say this stuff out loud, but it’s not obvious when you’re in the moment. And it’s not obvious when your brain is telling you, uh, I don’t wanna do that stuff. I don’t wanna clean my room <laugh>, I don’t wanna do these things. Right. That’s how I think of the financial side. Uh, at least that’s how I did think of the finance side. Um, and I think it just took maturing as a business owner to understand it doesn’t matter how much you make unless you’re keeping it.

David Richter:

Yeah, no, like I said, this is good stuff because that’s where a lot of people find themselves, but okay, so where did that you know, maturation take place? Was that over a couple years of pressing the buttons and you’re like, this is ridiculous. Like, I’m just not making, you know, I’m not keeping any of it. Or like, was there a turning point where you had to turn to, you know, profit first or you found it? Or like what?

Paul Sparks:

Profit First was the first place that I started understanding. Oh, right. I need something very, very simple. If there’s one thing I know about myself is that I’m not an excellent operator, I am an excellent salesperson, and those aren’t the same things, right? That’s why you have a, let’s say a CEO, uh, versus a COO and you know, that’s just the general term, but operating a business is not my skillset. So what I needed to do was like, we gotta go back to the basics. And I thought of it when I read Mike Macca’s book, it was, think of it like envelopes that you put money in, right?

David Richter:

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,

Paul Sparks:

This money goes here, this money goes here, this money goes here. And so what I did is I read that book and heard about actually what I heard about it at Collective Genius immediately went and read that book. This was before you had come out with Profit First for real estate, um, which I’ve also read, but the whole idea was, okay, why don’t I just set up some bank accounts that way I’m not putting all, I mean, it sounds terrible to say this, all of my investor money, all of my operating expenses, all the tax money that I’m saving, I wasn’t taking any profit because it was just all in one lump thing and I didn’t know what I could take or what I couldn’t take.

David Richter:

Yeah.

Paul Sparks:

And it just sounds so obvious now, but you can’t operate a business with that type of system. So all I did is I went up and to just follow what they told me to do, I set up a profit account, I set up an OPEX account, I set up a tax account, and I set up an owner owner’s comp account. Um, of course Chase Bank deleted my owner’s comp account cause it always sat at zero. And they’re like, oh, you’re never using this cuz I was never paying myself. So again, this whole why are we in business in the first place? I started losing track of that as I started pressing these buttons and just doing things. I wasn’t keeping any of the money and I wasn’t getting closer to the things that I actually got into business for in the first place.

David Richter:

Okay. So that was, uh, when did that realization was probably taking place, what, right before you heard Mike speak or was it like, was it a long standing thing or obviously this was a symptom of the curse of the salesperson, but then when was it like, oh shoot, what are you saying really resonates? Was it like at that event at a collective genius where kind of

Paul Sparks:

Yeah. This was, I wanna say it was like summer of 2021. I’d been in the business about a full year

David Richter:

Yeah.

Paul Sparks:

And started realizing this just can’t go on like this.

David Richter:

Yeah.

Paul Sparks:

Um, and so what we started doing was really taking a look at, well, where’s the money going? You know, it started getting complicated. Like, how do we deal with earnest money? How do we deal with investor money that goes out? What about the stuff that we put on credit cards? How do we allocate for all those things? So I just had to start educating myself on how to actually be a business owner. Um, in fact, what I love so much about Profit First is, uh, it’s very similar to my business partner now. His name is Dan Nicholson. He wrote a book called Rigging the Game. In this book, they talk a lot about some of the same things that you guys do in, uh, profit First. And the point was, I needed someone to speak to me less about like finance and more about how do you change the, uh, let’s just say the way you think of finance, right? You’ve gotta stop thinking of this as cleaning your room because you don’t want to do that. Right?

David Richter:

Right.

Paul Sparks:

You’ve gotta start thinking about this is how do I use this business and these tools, the investments, the things that I’m doing, stop identifying with the tool and use the tool to actually help you get closer to the things that you want in life. Um, so I think it was just somebody telling it to me in a way that didn’t trigger my like lizard brain to say, Ooh, I don’t want that. That’s something that’s finance stuff. I don’t want that. Right. So it was sometimes you gotta find something, um, outside of your industry.

David Richter:

Right.

Paul Sparks:

He had nothing to do with my industry. I think that’s part of why I was able to hear his message around, uh, you’ve gotta rewire your brain towards thinking about your businesses as tools to help you get success in life. Not as your success lies in how well your business does, or how much revenue or how many deals you do per month. That’s how I was measuring my success for the first year or two in business.

David Richter:

Okay. So it sounds like that, you know, you did mature as that business owner going from the, okay, this is how I’m measuring it to now. Not thinking of it as cleaning my room or doing the laundry or whatever, to actually analyzing the finances of, okay, this is actually helping me get to where I want to be. Did you struggle with where you wanted to be? Was that ever a struggle during those first couple years of like, what did you really want out of it as well too? Or did you have that clearly defined since day one?

Paul Sparks:

Well, no, not really. I think, um, that was probably the biggest mistake that I’ve made in business is, uh, I like to, we like to say, you know, you gotta play your game.

David Richter:

Yeah.

Paul Sparks:

What I found is that I started playing other people’s games. I started looking around, you know, I built my entire sales career. It would drive my boss crazy because everybody else would bring in, you know, a deal a month Right. Or a couple deals a month or whatever it was. And he, it would drive him nuts because I would have one massive deal that would hit in November, December, and I would make my entire year’s goal in one deal. And he would think that was crazy. But like, I got the nickname The Whale Hunter. Um, for whatever reason, that just was my style. It was my style for eight years in business. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, it’s a preference thing. That’s just how I built my business. But then when I started getting into real estate, for whatever reason, I started trying to build a volume-based game. I got sucked into this whole Yeah. But they’re doing five deals a month. They’re doing 10 deals a month. I want to do 10 deals a month.

David Richter:

Yeah.

Paul Sparks:

And not really because that was actually a good fit for me, but it’s because I was trying to play somebody else’s game. And again, part of the evolution as a business owner was saying, wait a second, in order to do five deals a month, even 10 deals a month, you have to be an excellent operator. There’s so many things that have to go right in that business. You know, David, I put the wrong phone number on two months worth of direct mail and I would’ve had better time lighting $30,000 on fire.

David Richter:

Ooh.

Paul Sparks:

And it’s like, you just, you’re doing so many things when you’re first getting into business that

David Richter:

Yeah,

Paul Sparks:

All these things have to go right. Again, it’s a preference thing. Some people are gonna be really good at that type of business, but one, I realized that I need very simple businesses. I need less deals. I need more profitable deals. Not because that’s right or wrong, but just because that fits my strengths better. Uh, and once I started shifting my business out of this volume-based game, it’s amazing. My costs went way down, but my revenue stayed the same.

David Richter:

Yeah.

Paul Sparks:

Because I was still getting bigger deals. And so that’s, you know, it started with Profit First. It started by the realization that, Hey man, you can’t do this. You can’t be a business owner and get financial certainty if you don’t have your finances in order. I don’t know how you could have one without the other. You know, that was the first step in saying, okay, well I need to go actually get some help with this. It’s a good thing. I have, you know, great resources, books, uh, community to be able to find these types of things. Um, and now I’ve started playing my game much better. My overhead went from about $38,000 a month to like five now because I’m not spending all this time and money on all these things that, uh, require my attention and detail to maintain. Again, it’s not a right or wrong way to do business. I know you have clients that do hundreds of deals, uh, per year, and I betcha they’re excellent operators. I betcha they know every single dollar that they spend what the return on that is. Because if you wanna run that type of business, that’s what it takes. I just realize that my game is a very simple business where I can really only keep track of about 10 expenses, <laugh> and know where every dollar is going. Anything more complicated than that, it’s probably not a good fit for me.

David Richter:

So where was that realization? Was that from oh, you know, like just being in the business for a couple years and like, oh shoot, like something’s gotta change your, or was it after you read Profit First or a book? Or like how did you go from, okay, I wanna be compared to everyone, to No, this is, I need to scale this back. I need a simple system for myself. I’m tired of <laugh> of the more mentality.

Paul Sparks:

Yeah. Well, like I said, it started with Profit First. I went through a program called, uh, certainty Certified Advisors with my business partner now. Okay. His name’s Dan Nicholson. And over the course of about six weeks, he taught, so Dan helped Microsoft in the early two thousands and several other Fortune 500 companies build what he calls a business treasury. So it’s this idea where, um, you know, if you look at Microsoft for example, they have 200 billion of investible assets. They’re not just taking that money and putting it in Chase Bank.

David Richter:

Right.

Paul Sparks:

They are taking that money and they’re investing it so that they can create a return ideally to offset the operating expenses of their business. So it was this idea like, Hey Paul, if you could keep more money, we can take that money and use it in what he called a business treasury, and we can get a return off of that so that the operating of your expenses of your businesses is essentially covered. So whether you do a deal or not, you’re operating at net zero. That was the turning point, right? When he was able to show me why it was so important to keep the money. Right. Why, and how you could actually make use of it. So since that was, let’s see, that was January of 2022, when I went through that sort of, uh, I don’t know if I would call it a class, but like a mastermind sort of thing.

David Richter:

Sure.

Paul Sparks:

Through that process, I had completely, reoriented my business. This was the same time when Steve Trang, uh, myself, the author of the book, Dan Nicholson and another gentleman named Nick Peterson, we partnered to bring the concepts and the principles that are written about in this book, rigging the Game, how to achieve financial certainty on your terms, bring that to the real estate world. Again, that’s why I was like, oh, David, what he’s doing with Profit First is so similar to what we’re doing. It’s just a slightly different language. It’s a slightly different approach, but the fundamentals and the concepts are almost identical. Right. You have to know what you’re keeping because we’re doing business for a reason. We call it the solvable problem, to solve some problem in your life, whether that’s financial or to make an impact on certain people. But again, you have to keep profit in your business in order to achieve these things. And so that’s why I resonate so well with your message, just because Profit First was the book that first hit me over the head and was like, Hey dummy, you’ve gotta start paying attention to this. Otherwise you’re gonna just continue to spend every dollar that you’re making. And in fact, we were probably losing money. I just had, I didn’t even know at the time, right?

David Richter:

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

Paul Sparks:

So yeah, I feel a massive amount of gratitude and indebtedness for the work that you’ve done and the message that you’re spreading because it was the catalyst for me sort of getting the help that I needed to start running the business that I wanted to own, that didn’t own me. Right.

David Richter:

Yeah. So talk about that. Talk about where you’ve come from, you know, we’ve always got the story there to where you are now. Like how has that been using it for, sounds like at least a couple years at this point and running off of it. Has it given you more clarity? Do you actually have more money to be able to keep to, to towards those, you know, like the treasury and stuff? Like has it helped you along that route?

Paul Sparks:

Yes, it has. Um, I have also learned a challenging, well, I would say I learned the difference between liquidity and solvency very recently. Right. I thought that a lot. So for those who aren’t familiar with that, I’ll try to make it very simple. Liquidity is anything less than a year. So the ability to pay for things in, in the next year is your liquidity. Anything beyond a year is your solvency. And what I realized was that I was allocating a lot of my money into long term assets, things that I was going to hold long term. Um, but now that, uh, well, and so I have a liquidity problem essentially in my business right now. I was downshifting into a lot of long term investments. And so now what I’m doing is trying to, um, bring more liquidity back in my business, keep it in cash or cash equivalent type places because I was allocating it to, like I said, a bunch of long-term investments that aren’t exactly liquid. So right now, the first thing that happened was I was able to, like I said, to reduce my overhead from about, I think it was like 38, $40,000 a month down to about five. And the real reason that I was able to do that is because I started leaning into my unique strengths, which is not paid marketing, it’s doing podcasts, it’s relationships. That’s how I built every business, uh, relationship up to this point was flying typically to another city and meeting with them for lunch and getting to know them.

David Richter:

Yeah.

Paul Sparks:

And so when I started doing that in real estate, I started realizing actually the leads continued to flow in, the opportunities continued to flow in, but my overhead just went way down. So first thing, the impact that it’s made on me is this noose has loosened around my neck, right? It’s really tough when you’ve got a $40,000 a month overhead and you’re not even sure where it’s all going. You’re not sure whether it’s coming back. Um, so getting clarity on my buckets, right? I’ve got my operating expense, there’s rules associated for that. This bank account needs to stay above a certain amount, otherwise we have a problem, right? Then you’ve got your tax account. Okay. Every single bit of, uh, money that comes into the profit account, there’s, what do you call that? The taps, the target versus the cap. Yeah. And so I have all these things laid out and these rules that I’ve defined in advanced so that I don’t have any questions around where does the investor money go? Where does the profit go? How do, when am I gonna get paid? How much money do I need in my operating expenses? So I’ve got, uh, what I call an investment thesis. So a lot of this just took me writing it down, doing the headbutted, you know, I say headbutting the nail. That’s, that’s a little exaggerated right now. I, now I actually look forward to these things cuz I know how it impacts my life. I was able to connect the chore to like the result, here’s why you need to do this. So I, like I said, I have a couple things. I have my, I call it a business thesis and I have an investment thesis. So here’s the rules of what I’m gonna do before it even a dollar even comes into my account, I know exactly where it’s going and that’s exactly what Profits first does. And I allocate a significant chunk of that to my treasury that continues to grow and build as an investment vehicle for my business. Hopefully that’s specific enough. If you want to dive in more, I’m happy to, but yeah, that’s what it looks like for me.

David Richter:

No, that’s awesome. I just wanna make sure on the other side, you know, that it’s giving that clarity and that it’s helping you. And it sounds like one of the big things too was just the mentality of being able to not think of it as the head button in the nail or like, you know, the chore or whatever and being able to think of it like, this is the result that I really want. This is what I have to do, the rules, you know, the rules of the game in order to get to that other, to the goal that I want. Now this has been great. I think you’re giving a lot of people hope here that, you know, going from where you were to where you are, but then also just the mindset too of being able to shift from, okay, this is something that I don’t enjoy at all to this helps me get to what I do enjoy. You know, like, this is where I get to be fulfilled. Let’s ask this then. What advice would you give to a real estate investor looking to implement Profit First and get it started?

Paul Sparks:

Well, first is you gotta have a good reason. If you don’t have a good reason, you’re just gonna probably avoid it. Now I’m probably, I’m gonna speak to the people that are these salespeople that have this bias and this tendency towards I’ll just go sell more. Like, we’ll just do more deals and then that’ll cover it all up. Um, that might work for a time, but if you’re trying to build a reliable source of income, ideally that’s, oh, I shouldn’t say ideally, but likely that’s probably why you got into business in the first place, is so that you could work for yourself and have a reliable source of income. Well, it’s really, really tough to have financial freedom, financial certainty if you don’t have your finances dialed in.

David Richter:

Yeah.

Paul Sparks:

So it just, you have to find a way to make it worth your time. And you have to, it’s kind of like saying you gotta eat your vegetables. You’re not gonna like it if you’re a salesperson and you’re biased towards sales and the way that I was, it’s a habit that’s going to be tough to build, but if you don’t have a reason to do it, if you haven’t clearly defined what success means and then define how much money is it gonna take for me to have that life, and then you have a plan to start working towards it, then the finances is gonna be this forever endless just chasing more and more and more deals. So yeah, I would encourage you, if you’re thinking to yourself, I don’t really wanna deal with the finances, or maybe there’s a, I think there’s oftentimes there was a lot of guilt and shame associated with it. I had all this guilt and it’s like, boy, it’s been like a year and a half before I’ve, and I really haven’t done anything inside of my business to get my finances in order. Well call me, seek a community of people who have gone through this guilt and shame and have come out the other side because I can tell you it is worth it. Only if you have something to get closer to. If your answer to businesses like, let me just see how many deals I can do per month to compete with everybody else, you probably won’t take the time to dial in your finances. If you don’t have clarity on what you’re doing, you’re probably not going to spend the time to make sure you keep more money. You’ll just err on the side of making more money. Which as we know, it’s very different. So yeah, just recognize that a lot of us deal with that guilt and shame. A lot of us deal with avoiding the scorecard and avoiding the, uh, the necessary things to become a business owner. It’s totally normal, but if you want to go to the next level, you have to make that jump one way or another. So,

David Richter:

No, that’s good. That’s good stuff. And then you said even in there to reach out to you. So I want to ask as the final question here, since you know lots of good value here around the Prop first system and just a lot of good stuff in general, how do people get ahold of you? How do they reach out to you? What websites or, you know, social media or whatever?

Paul Sparks:

Yeah, so I’m putting out a ton of stuff about what we, again, you and I have very similar, uh, messages, just slightly different language. We call it the solvable problem. We call it financial certainty. And I put a lot of content, let’s just say on my Instagram, uh, Paul Sparks official, so you can find out more about that. We’ve got a community as well for real estate investors who are looking to get financial certainty. We’ve got a framework and an operating system that we teach people how to do. A lot of it has, um, it’s very similar to Profit First, but it’s also how to deal with these biases, how to deal with these, uh, you know, the guilt and the shame associated with all this stuff. Right? We have a whole bunch of information at realestatecertainty.com. That’s a business that’s Steve Trang, myself, uh, the my mentor Dan Nicholson who just wrote the book Rigging The Game, which I highly suggest you picked that up. It was a Wall Street Journal bestseller, rigging the Game. And uh, you know, those are some of the best places you can find out more about what we’re doing and and more about me.

David Richter:

Awesome. No, that’s good stuff. So this has been another episode of the Pro first REI podcast. If you’re also wondering like, okay, I want the same exact stuff that Paul, you know, like that he has now that financial certainty and I wanna make sure that I know where every dollar’s going in my business. You can head over to simplecfo.com with our fractional CFO service to make sure that we can help you as well too. Implement the Profit First System. Uh, we’ll love to help you there and make sure that you have financial peace at the end of the day. Don’t be running around like a chicken with your head cut off. Don’t have that if you’re wanting to, uh, hit a nail with your head, uh, head over and get that, uh, get that book and then also book a call. It’s simplecfo.com. Remember, make profit a Habit inside of your business. Paul, thank you so much for being on today.

Paul Sparks:

Thanks David for having me. It was a pleasure.

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 at simplecfo.com right now. We’ll see you next time on the Profit First for r e I podcast with David Richter.