Michael Glaspie
Michael Glaspie has been a guest on Collecting Keys, the real estate investing podcast hosted by Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin and Dylan Koch.
Optimizing Profits in Real Estate: How To Strategically Scale Your Business w/ CFO Michael Glaspie
Fractional CFO and real estate investor Michael Glaspie explains the difference between tax accounting and managerial accounting, and what a CFO actually does that a bookkeeper or CPA does not. He walks through the gross and net profit margins investors should track, why a client doing $20M in revenue was only netting 1%, and how the Profit First method helps owners pay themselves while reinvesting. The conversation also covers when a business is big enough to need CFO help and what an engagement looks like.
Key takeaways
- Tax accounting reports what already happened; managerial accounting sets strategy for future profit. Most investors only pay for the first and then expect strategic advice from it.
- One of Glaspie's clients did $20M in annual revenue with a 1% net margin and a 10% gross margin, largely because entities were split by state and asset class with no one managing the structure a CPA set up.
- Gross profit margin shows how efficiently you create the product: wholesaling should run high (above 80%), while flipping is much lower because of purchase price, renovation and holding costs.
- Everyone needs a bookkeeper, and they need one who understands real estate: whether repairs go on the balance sheet or income statement, and whether to report sales price or HUD proceeds, affects taxes and loan approvals.