Switching From Appreciation To Cash Flow

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How can you retire five to ten years earlier JoeDiSanto is a semi-retired business consultant who has figured out how to live the life you want even if you are still in your pre-retirement age He believes that building and managing a business is actually easy What is difficult is managing what he calls the business of you a concept that he happily breaks down in this episode Joe has built multi-million dollar businesses produced critically acclaimed documentaries and an Emmy-winning TV show invested millions in real estate and was semi-retired at age 43 Now he s sharing a lifetime of know-how via Play Louder an invaluable resource that helps individuals and business owners increase their net worth and plan better for their future 00 01 – 03 40 Opening Segment Joe DiSanto is enjoying a semi-retired life right now Here s how he got there The reality about building a business according to Joe 03 41 – 08 49 Balancing Family and Business Joe talks about the adjustments that he and his wife did when they had a child People usually have a three-act life structure but Joe has four acts How does this relate to his life and business The challenges that Joe had to face in living the life he wants 08 50 – 13 57 The Life of a Semi-Retired Individual This is the daily life of a semi-retired individual like Joe He does not feel the need to save money today He tells us why Joe explains the fractional CFO model and 13 58 – 18 44 Why Bookkeeping is Important in a Business Joe gives us a sneak peek about his role as a business consultant Business owners should learn what Joe calls the business of you How is it related to building a business The importance of knowing your finances 18 45 – 22 11 The Business of Your Business Here s how you can retire 5-10 years earlier The difference between the business of you from the business of your business These are the ways that Joe tried before to learn business 22 12 – 23 05 Closing Segment Reach out to Joe See links below Final words Tweetable Quotes every time you save more dollars you take off more months or days or years of work off the backend of your life – Joe DiSanto By knowing your finances and knowing what you spend money on you ll also then know where you can save and you ll very likely save more than you spend on the bookkeeping just by being knowledgeable about your financial situation – Joe DiSanto If you hit a certain income threshold and you are a business owner it really can pay off to engage someone to manage your finances or at least even just coach you – Joe DiSanto —————————————————————————– About Joe Joe DiSanto is a fractional CFO and consultant to small businesses and high-income individuals He also founded the blog Play Louder which serves as an invaluable resource to help individuals and business owners increase their net worth and plan better for their future https www linkedin com in josephdisanto https www facebook com playlouderblog https www youtube com c PlayLouder Check out some of Play Louder s most popular content The Financial Planning Process Your Route to Financial Independence How to Incorporate Yourself to Save Money and Protect Your Assets How to Make Your Money Work for You 7 Modern Methods for Investing in The Market Top 5 Personal Bookkeeping Software Options Personal Capital vs Mint vs Quicken vs Money Dance vs Countabout Fundrise vs DiversyFund vs CrowdStreet The Best Sites for Crowdfunded Real Estate Investing Acorns vs Robinhood vs Webull vs M1 Finance Which One is the Best Play Louder s free courses Get a grip on your finances with Personal Budgeting Basics Learn how to Incorporate Your Business to protect your assets and save money Analyze your Real Estate Investments like a pro Connect with me I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns Facebook LinkedIn Like subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts or whatever platform you listen on Thank you for tuning in Email me sam brickeninvestmentgroup com Want to read the full show notes of the episode Check it out below Joe DiSanto 00 00 I succeeded you know some people out-earn their need to do this kind of work you know and if that s the case that s great I say to those people you re doing well on so congratulations But I can say with almost 100 of surety if you put time to this you would actually be saving more of that money that you re making And every time you save more dollars you take off more you know months or days or years of work off the backend of your life Intro 00 27 Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show Whether you are an active or passive investor we will teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big Sam Wilson 00 39 Joe DiSanto has built multi-million dollar businesses produced critically acclaimed documentaries and an Emmy-winning TV show He s invested millions in real estate and semi-retired at age 43 Now he s sharing a lifetime of fiscal know how via Play Louder which is an invaluable resource that helps individuals and business owners increase their net worth for a better life and a better future Joe welcome to the show Joe DiSanto 01 03 Hey what s happening Sam thanks for having me on Sam Wilson 01 06 Hey man the pleasure is mine There s three questions I asked every guest to come to the show In 90 seconds on me Ooh I m second to last Here we go All right Where are you now How did you get there Joe DiSanto 01 15 Okay well started in Providence Rhode Island That s where I was born ended up in Los Angeles and started a post-production company which achieved those accomplishments You mentioned in a great intro thank you And now I live in Tampa Florida area we did our kind of exit our life as we know it And I m in sort of a semi-retired state now which I can explain if you like Sam Wilson 01 37 Yeah that would be interesting And maybe we ll get into that as part of you know the topic you know of today is the logistics of living your best life Mm And you know we kind of talked about that a little bit before we kicked off the show but maybe you can just break down a little bit of your story And tell us what that means to you and how you got there Joe DiSanto 01 55 Yeah sure Well you know we re trying to live our best life And it s a daily effort But you know the logistics part is that it does take some effort to kind of be able to engineer what I think is you know your best life And that can be you know variety of things to everybody or different things to everybody I should say But in our case I was always into business amongst other things real estate as well And investing and personal finance which we ll probably talk a little bit about but long story short after college kind of get started in post-production biz in New York moved to Los Angeles but always wanted to own my own business and just had that on my radar you know as a very definitive goal And luckily was able to achieve that in post-production which I got into I was actually oddly a photography major in college photography digital imaging and really just had a passion for sort of finance investing and personal finance that I you know always was pursuing But post-production just happen to be a kind of business that was achievable I think you know for me in terms of opening a business it s not you know it s a kind of a niche industry a boutique industry And you can have a business that has anywhere from you know a few to a couple 100 employees if you like but it s not like trying to start you know some multinational company so it fit in well to my plans And I was able to do with my partners I had three partners who really are my closest friends and we re still friends And we set out on it and we accomplished it but it took a lot of work You know running a business is hard You know it s like if you re owning the business it s like you re doing your quote unquote job but then you re doing a whole bunch of things on top of that So it s time-consuming it s demanding it s can be stressful can also be super fun and super rewarding which it was for me but we eventually had a child and we didn t have kids too late I was 40 my wife was 36 And because we really enjoyed our work we enjoyed our career and we kind of lived our work but it was really fun you know and we did a lot of socializing our business it s a social business we hung out with our employees all the time we were all honestly just friends And you know we worked a lot and we went out a lot and it was a good time But once we had a kid we were like wow you know this is kind of really stressful Now you know they used to be like we can just do whatever we wanted work as long as we wanted if we needed to whatever And now it s like wow we re rushing to get home You know it s like we re trying to balance it all the work demands didn t really decrease So it became kind of stressful And we started to think well you know what can we do you know if we can you know how could we change this if we wanted to and we came up with the cockamamie idea of literally kind of abandoning our life as we know it and when I have to say is retreated to cheaper ground we moved from Los Angeles to Florida my partner s very graciously cashed me out of the business they re still doing it and they re still doing well And we just kind of re-engineered a life so our overhead was way less so that I could work way less and my wife didn t have to work at all and we could you know devote more time to Our family you know because that s what we decided we really wanted to focus on in this kind of you know next chapter of life And we started to kind of define a little bit about like you know what we think about life and you know how it kind of works and how it worked for us And a lot of times in life you know not a lot of times I think pretty much all the time we re kind of pitched what we call it a three-act life structure if I may use the filmmaking you know analogy which is basically you re born to get educated you know roughly ages one to 20 then you work for 40 years hopefully 20 to 60 then act three you retire and start a start your slowest end to death basically And we re like Well I don t know that s okay But I d rather be a little bit more vital while not having to work so much you know So we kind of invented this system of the four-act life where you know you do the one to 20 education you work super hard 20 to 40 but save a lot be strategic you know really put your mind to the fact that you have to prepare for your own retirement in your own future and no one s going to really do it for you And you can just stick your head in the sand And hopefully that goes well And then you actually have enough money where you can win I call downshift into more of a part-time work situation where you re not particularly old yet you know you re older you re in your 40s and 50s But you can enjoy a little bit more like Well like I guess you know kind of say you re more vital you know or was eloquently put I feel like in a blog post before you have sausage legs have to wear compression hosiery And then you know 60 to 80 After you ve had your act three now you move on to act four and hit the rocking chair and just cross your fingers Sam Wilson 06 53 That s really really intriguing Tell me some of the things that you guys strategic decisions that were difficult in that process for you Joe DiSanto 07 01 Yeah well I mean for us I mean when I say again back to the logistics thing like I m not above putting you know any concept into the logistics aspect of this and we decided to have kids late because we wanted to accumulate more money and be able to devote more time to work careers in those vital working years of 20s and 30s Right I think what I know about kids now if we had had kids in our 20s that would have derailed a lot of the time you know we spent building our career building the business in all those things allowing us to make more money and save more money by having a kid earlier Now a lot of people think that s weird and you probably shouldn t commingle those things but like I do because I guess I m a little bit weird You know I mean I think like engineering your best life like it s some big decisions It s not like you know little minor things It s like significant stuff Like another thing that we were talking about before we got on the air here was I think you should marry a bookkeeper If like your parents were right you know like you need to actually think about your financial future in your mate selection process Now that s not to say you should you know forego love and all that But you know it s like I say to you know because I coach a lot of people now if like you and your spouse both know that neither of you want to do the finances well you need to pay someone to do like it s so important that you are in the know about your personal financial situation you should be paying someone but you know again if that each married you know someone that was interested in doing your family books then you know you would have saved that money But you did So there you go Sam Wilson 08 42 Yeah that s really really intriguing Let s get on the topic of money and tell us what semi-retired means for you now because I know you spend a lot of time like you said coaching people on financial matters Joe DiSanto 08 53 Yeah so semi-retired for me means kind of two things One I am able to cover my monthly expenses you know working part-time right And the way I m able to do that is I have some passive income sources that I m putting towards my monthly expenses And then you know what is not covered through that I m covering through my consulting work you know so I kind of switched my career from owning a business And you know I do a lot of things by business but one of the things was I was the CFO and I managed the money because we just again always something that I was interested in And I really believed it was critical for the success of our business that I as an owner manage the money look at it weekly and you know make it a very you know religious part of my weekly practices but I m quite good at that So it turned out you know after I left LA and kind of was you know figuring out well what can I do to do this part-time work that s going to fill in my income requirement gap A lot of friends actually well actually what happened was my partner s originally was like Hey okay you re gonna leave and we re gonna miss you but maybe you could just like stay on and do the finances from afar We ll just like pay you you know consulting thing or something And I was like Yeah sounds great Well once I told other folks that I know that I m businesses as I m doing that they were like oh man we need that like We need someone that can do that like that s really good But we can t afford to pay them full time right But we could afford to like pay you like part-time you know and so they re in line you know that the fractional CFO work that I ve done but it s pretty good paying work And I don t have to do even with all my clients I got them to work full time So that s part of the part the semi-retired The other part is is that we re able to mass enough you know in our you know Act Two are working and accumulation phase where I don t feel the need to save more money for the future Like I feel like my pot is good enough And if I don t you know burn any principle off that and that just keeps growing through my investments that really I just need to pay my kind of overhead right now And I don t need to worry about saving Now that s not to say I won t save more if I can I certainly will But I don t feel like I m under the gun to have to do that Oddly the consulting thing is actually working out pretty well And I was able to save more money last year unexpectedly But when I fit into this like I didn t feel like that was a requirement And there you go So that s my semi-retired state just basically a downshift into working less hours less stress less pressure in terms of insane deadlines and all this sort of stuff right So I don t have to basically constantly call them be like I can t make it home again you know because I got to do this I got to do that to clients Or in my case you know I can basically you know call the truly call the shots even when I own a business you call the shots but you still got a boss you got your clients your boss now like I m just in a scenario where my work it s not mission-critical like on a timeline doesn t have I get what I need to get done in the week But no one s even calling me I m usually calling and be like Dude we got to sit down and like look at your finances You hired me like come on I can t help but I m so busy I m so busy They ll just tell me it s good It s a good pretty good it s pretty good Sam Wilson 12 10 Well Joe talk to us about the fractional CFO model I know you kind of wandered into this you know unintentionally but what are some things especially as companies are scaling I mean what is how does someone budget for that What should they be doing Or where do they be I guess size-wise just start bringing on a fractional CFO I mean a lot of the projects we re dealing with especially as you re starting out scaling and commercial real estate can be you know five to 10 million projects is that all it takes we start on that Joe DiSanto 12 39 Well I ll start by saying that I ve kind of found that this is a good little niche And part of the reason is and I m dealing with kind of smaller businesses so anywhere from five to about 40 employees are mind companies And what I ve kind of learned is and it kind of intermingled with personal finances business finance but if from the business sense if the partners that start the firm if none of them are financially oriented people and there isn t like that financial partner you know that one of the partnerships that is really focused on the finances and takes that responsibility there s often a big just kind of gap there right And it s hard for a smaller business that can t commit to you know a pretty sizable salary to get an experienced CFO kind of character to come in and fill that role So what I found and the reason why people kept saying oh we need that we need that is like a lot of my clients don t have that financially oriented partner that s an owner of the company And they can afford to like have some good they can afford generally a bookkeeper you know if that So there s a big gap there because they re not financially oriented people they re not really deciphering the numbers They re not using all the data that s there to help them make better decisions But you know their bookkeeper can t do that either And really they re just kind of flying by the seat of pants a lot of some of them aren t even don t even have a bookkeeper Like they re not even doing books you know and you re like Wow that s pretty rare But even that s happening out there So what I ve kind of do is like I charge I take on the bookkeeping role as well because then like people are willing to spend some money on that So and oftentimes consulting you know kind of makes people nervous They feel like I don t know what I m gonna get and is it gonna be worth it Am I just gonna like regret that I gave you money So for me the entry kind of is like well you re gonna pay for bookkeeping So you know I can do that And now I have an employee that helps me kind of do the books but you re gonna pay more for me to be the CFO character on top of that but I very likely can actually pay for myself through the knowledge I have about running a business and I come at it from like I m not like a CPA I m not that person that s worried about your tax return I do help everyone get their taxes done and all that I m more the business owner that you know kind of has been through the wringer for 20 years and just educated myself on you know taking advantage of all the tax benefits you know businesses offer looking at financials and seeing what s coming figuring out how to like look into the future and not just only worry about the past of your numbers and do all these things you know that a CFO could do and I m like but you re just going to pay me you know a fraction of what you would pay some full time and I end up kind of being like like a part-time employee So you know me and my small team I would employ we get all the books done and we do you know the reports but then I get on the phone with everyone and I explain you know what we re looking at and why the information is valuable Then of course you know towards the end of the year I prep everything for the CPA I work with the CPA I shepherd the returns I get all the taxes and basically you know and then they can call me you know anytime you know like in business hours my phone s on and anytime you have a random question like hey you know we re gonna buy this piece of gear should like should we finance it What should we do If we want to finance it How do we get that done you know whatever So that s the CFO part But one thing I kind of like to really impart on my clients and I said we re gonna miss that well you re a business owner but you re doing this to ultimately make money for yourself right So you need to do your business books Of course I think everybody roughly agrees on that like who would invest in a company that didn t actually do bookkeeping for their business Nobody that would be weird But the money is really not that meaningful until it s in your savings account you know until it s like officially like taxes are paid taxes like you have actually improved your financial situation this year And you can t really know that unless you re doing books for your personal life as well you know I call it the business of you it s just as important and really even from a tax perspective as a business owner like the money comes in your business but you really settle it all up in large part on your personal tax return And that s when you know like how much money you ve actually you know saved this year I mean a lot of people do these systems like oh well I got this thing where I put 5 of every dollar that comes into this account and that account and I got whatever and I m again but none of that matters That s all just games people played in ultimately I think basically gives them a false sense of reality the only thing that matters in your life is I made this I spent this was the difference right That s either what you saved or you lost it doesn t matter if you put 10 000 in your quote unquote long-term savings account But if you put 15 on a credit card in order to do that really you just lost 5 000 you know so I try to strip people away of all these gimmicks and explain to them that like money is not that hard You don t need gimmicks you just need to count it You know what I mean And like know the end result it s like it s not a mystery And they re like Yeah but I hate counting it It s so boring you know and I m like well therein lies marrying the bookkeeper Or if both of you hate counting then you should hire a bookkeeper for your personal life as well And you can actually do it relatively inexpensively I would say to people by knowing your finances and knowing what you spend money on you ll also then know what where you can save and you ll very likely save more than you spend on the bookkeeping just by being knowledgeable about your financial situation That s what businesses do you know Sam Wilson 18 17 You re convicting me here because that s a been a consistent thought of mine is why don t I have a bookkeeper On the personal side Because you re absolutely right I m guilty as charged It s like yeah we ll take everything on the business side make sure everything s T s crossed eyes dotted man it s it s by the book no personal side it s like money we re saving a little bit we have enough to invest moving on And that s just dumb I feel dumb Before this conversation I felt dumb And now I feel even more dumb having this conversation Joe DiSanto 18 45 All right well I succeeded and succeeded You know some people outearn their need to do this kind of work you know and if that s the case that s great I say to those people you re doing well So congratulations But I can say with almost 100 of surety if you put time to this you would actually be saving more of that money that you re making And every time you save more dollars you take off more you know months or days or years of work off the back into your life that s how I kind of look at it So if you could save an extra 2 000 to 5 000 or 10 000 a year just by making simple changes that actually wouldn t even affect your life in any meaningful way Maybe you could end up retiring five to 10 years earlier especially when you put that in you know invest that in something it s compounding blah blah blah blah blah You know and then of course the other thing that people need to do and are in the business of you you know it s like especially if your actual business owner is understanding your tax bill understanding how you pay taxes and making sure that you re using your business or your real estate or whatever to be as efficient as you can in taxes And then also when you start to understand taxes you might actually make decisions about certain investments that you know will benefit you tax-wise in the future and ultimately save you more money So the business of you is actually almost more complicated than the business of your business your business business kind of simple relate but there s more angles to be played sometimes you know on the personal side which real estate and with other things and so on So yeah I mean it s not that I you know was born and set up for this I literally started using Quicken when I was like get out of college because I didn t have any money And I was like wow I just feel like it s getting worse and worse you know I least need to know what s going on And then I knew and I was like wow I wish I had it No it s pretty bad But that process of like tracking things and sort of getting my head into it that actually educated me to run a business you know but I just started kind of with my own stuff and then you get I was always into it you know I read books I read books about real estate and investing in taxes and things and you know kind of it s a fun game to me but I realized that it s not for everybody like it s a hobby of mine you know so I m lucky in that some people s hobby you know is scuba diving And that s super fun It s also kind of expensive but you know you can be honest with yourself it s like I m gonna just spend the next 20 years talking about doing this and then lose all that time maybe I should figure out a way to like take it seriously So a lot of my clients end up you know they re just like alright just do my whole life you know just do everything you know And it s almost like if you re a high-income earner like I lived in Hollywood and all that and actors and actresses you know they have business managers they have people that manage their personal money So I think you know if you hit a certain you know income threshold and you are a business owner whatever like it really can pay off to engage someone to do that or at least even just coach you like you know like a personal trainer you know what I mean Like sort of keep you on task and sort of in that sort of thing So yeah Sam Wilson 21 50 Fantastic Joe I ve enjoyed this man you ve given us a lot of compelling things to think about Yeah lots to consider on that front especially as a business of you thanks for making it come on the show and chat And learned a lot love hearing your backstory and how you got to where you are Now if our listeners want to get in touch with you and learn more about you what is the best way to do that Joe DiSanto 22 12 Now you just go to my website playlouder com It s a site where you can kind of see my consultant services but it s also a blog So I have lots of free information there things I write things other people write on these topics Also have some free courses to kind of get you going on some of these topics And then also some paid courses if you want to like you know go to the next level and sort of get into this Take the business of you more seriously Sam Wilson 22 36 Joe thank you for your time today Joe DiSanto 22 37 I do appreciate it Absolutely man It s good to meet you Sam Sam Wilson 22 40 Hey thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts whatever platform it is you use to listen if you can do that for us that would be a fantastic help to the show It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories So I appreciate you listening Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode 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