Built to Work: Episode 6: Mark Kappelman | REA (RealEstateAccounting)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYtg1Wvpxns

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Welcome to Built To Work the podcast that gets its hands dirty dives into the grid and uncovers the heart of what makes the blue-collar world tick I'm Colin your host and I'm sitting down with the people who keep our world running From those tackling the tough jobs no one else dares to do to the HR professionals working overtime to find the labor force we desperately need Whether you're in the trenches or behind the scenes this podcast is for anyone who values hard work determination and stories that build the backbone of our workforce So grab your gloves your coffee or your clipboard It's time to get to work Welcome to Built To Work I'm Colin Douthitt Today I am here with Mark Kapelman Mark thank you so much for joining me Pleasure to be here Colin So Mark this isn't just a random interview Our history goes back I'd say at least 4 years now probably Yep 

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so for those of you that don't know Mark 

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first off he is a rockstar in the world of real estate accounting 

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so much so that him and his partner named his company that It is Real Estate Accounting 

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so that's how we got to know him based upon our previous experience 

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owning a property management company So 

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Mark 

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great to catch up with you It's been a couple years ever since we sold off Tell us what's been changing in your world What's going on Where are you guys at with your process and your growth Yeah Sure You know 

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when we met you guys and it does seem like 4 or 5 years ago now which is pretty wild 

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we were a whole lot smaller back then 

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a lot scrappier 

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you know my business partner and I founded the company back in 2019 In the early days it was just us He was doing sales I was doing accounting 

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you know fast-forward to today we've got about 165 people now probably just as many clients I don't know exact count 

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still 100% focused on real estate bookkeeping 

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that's our niche Like you said 

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the website realestateaccounting.co we actually bought the URL rea.co to try to simplify things couple years ago 

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but yeah No look business is growing 

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there's a ton of demand I think you know ultimately we got into this business at a pretty good time which was 2019 and kind of right when COVID hit 

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And I think there was this realization of people that you didn't necessarily need accountants in your office sitting right next to you in your local market 

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people fired a bunch of people kind of knee-jerk reaction when the economy contracted but then they quickly realized and you know in property management they still had to get the owner distributions out they've still gotta get the 1099s done There's just a bunch of stuff in accounting that still has to get done whether you fire the people or not Yeah And so quickly we just started getting phone calls And I think 

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maybe it's 

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unfortunate circumstances that that's how some of the industry growth has been but you know it- I- I- it did really get us going No that's great That's great So we came to know you because starting our property management company that was our first real big 

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entrepreneurial venture I'd been buying real estate and then started managing it and I was surviving doing the books on my own 

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but then somewhere along the way I realized we have way outpaced you know what our- our internal team was able to- able to do and we need somebody that's professionals And you know your experience and an experience with another vendor has really made me a big proponent of outsourcing your non-core competencies right So property management So for me 

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similar to you guys I was really good at selling I scaled a company really quickly 

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my partner's really good at operations so I would bring him in and say "Hey here's the deal You go ahead and operate it." 

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but neither one of us were accountants by trade and we started looking and all of a sudden like "We are in a bad spot Our books are a wreck We are not capturing every expense that passed through to the owners." So this was really a- it was a huge learning experience for us took a ton away from it And Mark your team was instrumental in in I'm gonna say saving our company and getting us financially right to where we could operate we could be profitable and then we could have a successful exit down the road So I don't know that I've ever said that to you so thank you so much for your team for coming in And I know we gave you guys a rat's nest of work to- to work through Yeah You know it's funny you- you- you have said- mentioned something like that before I think 

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when you guys were selling the business and we were parting ways and it meant a lot for you to say that I do specifically remember when we brought you guys on as a client you guys were super stressed You and Adam were doing all the work 

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And 

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yeah 

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it was- that- that was just a perfect example of like you say of "Hey this is a non-core thing for us your property management company-" 

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to "Hey Mark," Mark me being "Hey guys this is all we do is property management and accounting Let us help you out." 

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and it worked it worked really well and I'm- I'm- I'm- I'm grateful for that Yeah absolutely The favorite thing that I 

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that I learned from that or- or that I enjoyed about the relationship was just saying- "Hey you guys have the scale to handle this And it doesn't stress you guys or burden you guys to handle the scale of what we had." Right We had you know a dozen people in the office and none of us were accountants by trade none of us were bookkeepers We were just trying to figure it out as we went 

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and then we actually tried outsourcing to another guy who said "Oh I know what I'm doing." And we said "Okay well we'll give you a shot," before we'd crossed paths with you guys And he totally fell on his face after like 30 45 days- 

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and we were like "This is not the guy." Yeah We- we 100% knew it then And then we talked to you guys and it was- it was a whole other world So you do it every day It's what you're best at And so you gotta focus on that So I want to take a step back kind of before you got started and what were you doing before you guys started REA?Yeah Yeah It's it's it's a great question and I think I'm gonna tell the story as to why we started it because it's similar but different story to you So 

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I'm a CPA So early in my career I was at Ernst & Young and then I was at PwC It feels like many moons ago now But immediately prior to REA 

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I was working at a tech company But the the second story there is back in 2013 my wife and I ge- got the crazy idea to start flipping houses All there there was all these flipping house shows on TV She's actually an accountant too So we got these 2 accountants We just wanted to do something entrepreneurial and we're like "You know what Let's flip a house." 

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"We can do this." 

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and in 2013 we bought this little single family home fixed it up flipped it and literally got a check for more money than either of us had ever seen And we were like "Oh my gosh We did it." 

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Yeah and so this is important to the story So we kind of got into real estate even though so it's a couple accountants that have just now stumbled themselves into real estate We proceeded to okay we can do this Bought another property then bought another one and we were trying to scale if you will 

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We had like 3 projects going Meanwhile we're both working W2s We're kind of doing this nights and weekends And I was reading all these entrepreneurial books 

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One of which was oh I'm blanking on the book right now Oh The E-Myth And basically- Oh yeah it just talks about like just like you're saying outsource all the admin and focus on sales and driving growth what you're good at- Yeah the high value stuff So even though we were accountants the actual accounting on our properties was getting behind believe it or not because we were getting paid W2 jobs and the fun stuff was finding a new deal and putting the money together And anyways the our accounting got behind and we outsourced our own accounting on our real estate And it came back absolutely terrible We sent the guys a closing statement They said "What is this?" They were asking they had no clue And we quickly realized hey look you know there's a need for specialized real estate accountants This stuff's complicated This stuff's unique All the softwares are different Yeah Everything's different And even though I was a CPA at these big 4 accounting firms it was still even complicated for me And so then we kind of realized hey look there's a need for specialized accountants We kind of looked around couldn't really find that anybody was doing it at least with a big presence online And that was really the genesis for starting REA is that we were accountants then we kind of became real estate people and then identified this need that oh wait by the way our 2 skillsets here real estate and accounting is really a big industry need Or so we thought it was That was the thesis 

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and I think we were right but- Yeah absolutely that was the that was how that was how we got started Yeah No that's a great story It's 

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Yeah No thank you yeah I think one of those entrepreneurial bl- books maybe even E-Myth talks about having an entrepreneurial seizure where you just you start something but 

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sometimes you're swinging a miss and you guys clearly hit it outta the park with that one Well yeah What's the other one They just say like you know sometimes you don't have to get it right with exactly how you're doing the business but you gotta get in the right stream 

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And I feel like you know hopefully we got in the right stream because the industry has just kind of shift real estate accounting specifically to this outsourcing model But I think to your point it applies in all sorts of industries outside of just accounting No it absolutely does 

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for those of you that don't know real estate and property management 

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there's a lot of proprietary software out there for managing your properties and it's got its own specialized accounting and they're all different It's not like you're just jumping on QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop or one of those kind of big ones These are nuanced Not not nearly as many accountants are familiar with it So nobody can just jump in and clean up your books right You can pay a bookkeeper to clean up your QuickBooks and they'll do a pretty good job But the nuance of those 

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property management softwares is something that also really trips people up Yeah absolutely I mean- Yeah it's it's a huge it's a huge part of the industry Yeah absolutely I mean that was you know we switched property management softwares and the accounting functionality was a large reason of the the reason we switched so Yeah 

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so what have you guys seen that has helped to you know make your customers successful Obviously you guys provide a great service but but on on you know on whole what do you see that makes your customers successful in real estate or in property management You know I think you know we have 2 kinda different customer types You guys were third party you know your prior company was a third-party management company You guys make management fees 

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managing other people's properties Yeah For those clients it's literally just distributions on time every single month statements on time every time to the owners and clean statements that people can understand that reduces the number of questions Yeah And so it really just kinda comes down to consistency That's probably the name of the game A lot has to go into getting the distribution right But it's just like our clients our third-party clients that run the most efficiently have a great system They distribute on the same time every single month and they really they're they're close to their numbers right So they these these owners they they don't exactly know what we're doing at our job of every button we're pushing but they do log into the system they know their numbers and they're close to their business So I think you know just that consistency I've seen really kind of brings out the best successful of our third-party manager clients Okay And then the other clients that we have are the people that both own and manage the real estate So for those individuals it's about producing great financials that they can give to their investors and their lenders that they aren't getting tons of questions about that they know they can rely on which at the end of the day results in on-time K-1s at the end of the year And so I think you know- Yeah for as I even explain this and now that I explain it to the team all the time I always basically tell them that our customer isn't just the customer that's paying our bill Our customer is actually like their customers 

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And so all the owners of the third-party management clients the those if those people are happy then then our client's never gonna question what we're doing- Yeah because his or her business is gonna be humming along You know how it is If no owners would've ever been asking you questions books are clean distributions you would you have no reason to ever even question your accountant 'cause it's just like "Oh my accountants are doing great." Yeah Owners are happy Money is getting processed And I think you know we kinda think about it the same way which is remember that there's kind of downstream customers that we n- we that we need to be thinking about And if those people are happy we just know that the accounting or our clients could be happy with the accounting Yeah absolutely 

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so talking about that relationship with your clients the the you know third-party managers that have been outsourced to you 

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how do you approach those relationships and what's been really successful at maintaining those long-term partnerships It's a people business It is absolutely a people business And so you know some of our longest term clients 

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they just absolutely love the people on our team that are working on those accounts 

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And I think I I I mean I can't speak to each one specifically right now I can tell you that I'm guessing all of their end clients are happy and they're not getting- tons of questions on their accounting right But ultimately we've got clients that when something comes up they can text our team member or call them or they just know they're gonna get a response 

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yeah I mean I I I I really think it's relationship driven and we're we're doing our job like I said before and the end clients are happy That's th- that that that is how we create long-term success And you know sometimes like your business it i- and this happens to us once in a while which is we could do everything right or at least 90% let's say We're not perfect- Yeah but we can do everything right and the client decides to sell their business 

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Or the client goes out of business because they weren't running a profitable business and then we lose the client We couldn't do anything about that 

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Yeah Can't prevent that So you know I think those things are gonna happen but you know you you you you agree to a scope of work You execute on that scope of work you do it consistently on time you communicate good things generally happen absolutely I know that we were a mess when we brought REA on board and they were excellent at helping us get everything 

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corrected 

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I would love to hear a good you know war story or mess story and maybe that's us I don't know if there's anybody that was worse than us I would like to think we weren't the worst 

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but I would love a good a good a good war story from you or 

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or a real success story Gosh 

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let's see I mean the fu- the funny thing is about this business is that you almost never hire an accountant when things are clean.So- Okay you know w- that's when I have to educate my team all the time when they're talking about "Oh my gosh," like "This new client that we take on is so messy." It's like "That's why they're calling us." 

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Tha- that is exactly why they're calling us 

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I mean look I I I can't use names but we're working with a client right now that was working with a competitor It wasn't going well They're using 2 different property management softwares 

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we had to go back years to fix all these past bank recs and all these owner statement issues 

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and we've literally caught it all up and we're in a good spot You guys were obviously 

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tha- that was messy And you had lots of money- Yeah that you were owed and then there was money that you owed your owners And you know we had to true all this stuff up 

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and that's just I hate to say it but it's kind of par for the course for us because again it is like th- if somebody comes to us it's like th- once in a while someone will come to us and go "My accountant quit and my books are in great shape but I just need somebody to take over for them They gave me 2 weeks Can you help me out?" Sure 

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Yeah I wish they were all like that but the reality is- is you know they're all kind of quite the opposite that So- Yeah I I don't have some like super detailed story- but they're just all they've all got problems And a lot of times people are switching softwares which is you know a pain in the butt and everybody knows that when you change it to an- Oh yeah other software Yeah That's that's the biggest challenge I remember doing that and that wasn't that wasn't fun at all Yeah 

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just trying to yeah the import files and and nobody wants to help you and 

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it's- Yep it's not good You know we we experience some of the same things when we bring in when people reach out to us right "Hey I'm having a lot of turnover in these in these positions We can't keep our operation fully staffed It's hurting our productivity We're having a lot of overtime." You know fill in the blank "Our employees are burned out." And they'll call us and we'll bring in our crew and we will place them and then they will start operating They'll learn They'll get you know acclimated 

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to wherever they're working and they start to work like that And then we just become integral to their operations in the same way that you guys were integral to ours And really it makes 

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it it it works really well for the customer you know We're to the point with a couple customers where they're like "We can't do this without you guys." Right Yeah And that's that's the best thing you can hear is is I know that we've said that to you guys and you've probably heard that from other people as well It's like "Hey this is this is exactly exactly the way to do it." You know Yeah and and you're right Like you become indif- dispensable to one another It's a really strong position to be in 

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you create that trust 

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yeah I mean kind of just like you know similar to your business There are there are certain people out there that maybe wanna do everything themselves but you get to a point in the business where if you're really trying to scale it you cannot be the accountant and the sales guy or- Yeah you also can't be the scrap metal guy or girl and doing all that work and torching and all the different things that you do Plus going out and closing more business And there's just so many hours in the day and you're only good at so many things Yeah 

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kind of talked to you about that before which is you know stay in your lane Do what you're really good at 

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you'll enjoy yourself even more- and hire people into these things that they're really good at in their kind of zone of expertise Yeah No that's that's true And we got to the point where we had multiple different portions of our business that we outsourced So we outsourced accounting to you guys and then we outsourced recruiting to another firm and we outsourced all of our HR and our payroll to a local PEO here 

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in Kansas City And I'll tell you what having those teams that had scale and again it was their core competency and not ours it just made all those systems flow Everything just went off without a hitch So I I can really say that you know we've experienced the benefits of it and that's one of the reasons that I'm so passionate about it And frankly when we were in property management as well they were outsourcing the management of the properties 'cause nobody wants to do that right You wanted to flip houses You didn't want to do the house accounting I Originally originally But- Yeah flipping houses is really hard to scale too 

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Yes it is and you know you need businesses that are repeatable and scalable 

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Yes I would say as as well Yeah So looking back on your entrepreneurial journey right It's 2025 now you started in 2019 so you're five five and a half years into this Is there anything you wish you would have done differently along the way I mean yeah countless things 

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but at the same time you know there isn't some I think for for anybody else that's kind of like thinking about getting into a business or something like that you know what I've told a lot of people a lot of times is I think it's less risky than you you you than it is Particularly if you're starting a business that isn't super asset-heavy So you know when we started this company I just remember telling my wife saying "Hey look you know if this falls through the great news is is I worked in public accounting for 7 years and these accounting firms have been around for 150 years or whatever they've been around I don't think they're going anywhere." Yeah "And I can promise you that I could go back and get a job And if this one turns me down I'll just go to the next one And if they don't then the next one." So I think you know that's kind of I know that wasn't exactly your question but just like I remember when we started I I I really firmly believe in that today Now if you have to take- 

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on a bunch of debt and buy a bunch of assets to start the business there's a little more risk But for when you're providing a service like we were it was- Yeah an internet connection and that's about it in our time Yeah 

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you know what but I think 0 of what I'd do differently again wha- what I love about the business is that as you grow and as it goes over time you can start to hire really really good people And in the early days you have no budget for anybody so you gotta drive- Yeah revenue 

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but now we're at the point where you know I'm sometimes shocked at the quality of people that are on our team now and how lucky we are to have some of these people l- 

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you know heading up You know we've gotten to the point where now we've got a residential team and a commercial team and we've got- Nice VPs over these businesses and these are fantastic high high IQ accountants that are leading this 

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and so you know I think it's Invest in good people as soon as you possibly can It took a long time to get here I guess Yeah But you know 

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you know the the other thing I would just say is a lot of people ask about what you can do differently and I think it's just If you're gonna do something with a partner just really segregating the tasks Early on my co-founder and I I was telling you before we kept it really simple and it was He was pre-sale and I was post-sale 

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Pre-sale post-sale You close the deals I'll do the accounting And it was just We didn't step on each other's toes at all right There was obviously communication but it was he'd land a sales lead I'd do the work and we both knew exactly what we were doing I would know what the pipeline is And of course those roles have morphed over time but you know just just having a really solid business partnership if you're gonna do it with somebody My co-founder and I rarely disagree Of course we do a little bit but it's just you know it's always respectful and trying to find good solutions Yes Well- Yeah some people say that the the only ship that doesn't sail is a partnership 

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we bo- we both have partners and I think that we've both been lucky to have good business partners 

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I've had some forays into some other areas with some other partners and those definitely 

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went south so- Yeah yeah I took I took a risk again here and 

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we both did A- and I'm really happy with the way it turned out So the the partner selection is a big part of making sure you have a successful business Oh it's it's it's critical I probably take- 

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it for granted all the time You know my co-founder actually is a friend of mine from grade school I didn't even tell that part of the story but we knew each other a long time ago Okay And so 

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And we went to college together so we just had a lot of history So it was just a lot of We knew exactly what we were getting into 

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And I can remember the flip side of doing a real estate deal and partnering with somebody that I didn't really know on a a JV and it went really not well And he thought very different about money than I did right Yes And I didn't realize what his core values were ver- versus my co-founder Adam I know everything about him like a brother And so probably similar to you guys you just There's there's a lot of value to that Yeah absolutely A- Adam and I now are going on knowing each other for 20 

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20 years So we started- Oh wow okay in college together We went to college together we played football together So we kind of Similar to you guys we we grew up together- Yeah and so yeah that that history I know everything about him We know how to push each other's buttons 

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and but also have a really good time But we also are very aware of this is your strength this is my strength Let's let them complement each other instead of fighting each other Yeah yeah Yeah and that's huge That's huge Yeah So business growth is something I'm also passionate about I you know I've enjoyed building the first business I'm enjoying this business that we're in right now hoping to continue to grow it build it Who knows what the future holds are you gonna look to continue to grow REA What are what are your what's your long-term goal for REA We just continue to grow and I think you know we didn't even talk about this with the business but what we found is you get better as you grow 

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At least in the case of our business because as we grow like I was saying before we can hire higher-quality people Now yes you need to ensure the quality and those are different types of challenges But it's just like our bookkeeping service product is getting better because of our years of experience getting better- Yeah seeing problems et cetera Really kind of the 

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So we're gonna continue to grow that We feel like we're in the early stages of that even though- Oh great we're five and a half years in In terms of services though you know the really big thing for us is tax And so you know that part of the business So when I was talking about before about the 2 different client types we have we've got third-party management clients and we've got clients that both own and manage 

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The own-and-manage people have a lot of tax needs Yes Because they've got partnership returns to do In real estate you have cost segregations You have investors that you need to get K-1s to And so there's a lot of tax needs within because every deal is usually a different LLC and it needs a tax return So you know we really want to launch a tax business because we think it'd be very complementary 

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similar to you guys we're actually debating acquiring you know- 

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a tax business versus starting from scratch We've we've we've been trying t- But again it's almost like it's almost like finding another business partner because launching a new line- Yeah of business is a little different than just adding on And and I always use the example I know that you have kids 

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I think launching a second product is kind of like having a second kid Which is you know you know how much work it's gonna be 

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But you've done it before so it's re- it's not as scary It's like "Look look I know what it is but I know that we can do it and we've already got the one kid." And you know and so that's how I've always thought about tax of growing it organically But at the same time I think that if we could acquire a tax business and there's a lot of tax CPAs that don't have a smooth-running operation or might have a big book of clients but they're just looking to exit maybe they're looking to retire Yeah And so that's kind of our thinking as of late with tax But yeah in terms of growth I just Not competitive with our bookkeeping business It's very complementary to our client set And I know again it would add value They all need this done So it's not really It's not even us selling them something It's just we know that you're already doing taxes Chances are we can do it better than whoever's doing it today And if we can't that's fine You know just stick with what you got and that's great But we do know that there's just like you guys were looking for a bookkeeping solution 

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and couldn't necessarily find it and found us I just know that there's a lot of people in the same spot with taxes that have a not a great service provider they don't respond on time they probably don't have a real business and they're probably one man or woman shop just trying to crank out a bunch of tax returns Versus kind of a structure that could scale with somebody Yeah absolutely Well as as a real estate investor and I've divested of everything at this point though thank goodness 

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but the definitely having that help on the tax front having somebody that you can rely on to handle it now with our current company we have outsourced all of our accounting It's not real estate otherwise we would have called you guys again happily Yeah Appreciate that Uh-huh But it's it's a firm and they've got a division called Entrepreneurial Services right And they just they service businesses They handle everything You know they're on top of 1099s They're on top of taxes They're on top of quarterly payments Whatever we need to do they are right there They're great with invoicing They you know And they have a team right So as we grow we can grow with them and we don't have to worry about outpacing them right You got the one-person mom-and-pop shop you may blow past them and then you're having- having to look again 

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as opposed to with this company or with you guys it's like "Hey we can take care of all your needs." Yeah Right Do they do your taxes also Yeah they also handle our taxes Yeah So it's a full-service accounting firm 

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they're they're pretty big 

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here in just the Kansas City metro area 

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and yeah so funny enough my mother-in-law actually used to work there and was like a junior partner And- Oh really Yeah Then we brought in a a a fractional CFO for our company Again going the outsource route because- Yeah we don't need a full CFO What we need is somebody for a couple hours a week Yup And we need his guidance and his introductions And he said "Hey let's interview this firm This is a firm I think could really handle you with the service They've got taxes in-house." And my mother-in-law just retired a year before so there wasn't really a conflict Not that there would have been a conflict She would have been happy to help us out but yeah they offer quite a few services Yeah that's awesome And I think I think you kinda touched on that before before you hired us You said you outsourced to some guy or gal- Yeah that claimed they could do the work but the reality is is you guys were a pretty big property management company and you had ambitions to grow I can't remember but I think it was you know "We're gonna grow 10X," or you were growing fast Yeah we were And you just one-man band unless you have no other clients it's just really hard to scale with that So I think when you are deciding to outsource just make sure you're going to somebody that has kind of a team I think when when clients ask me if I'm gonna be the one doing all the work I think they're happy when I say "No absolutely not We have a 165 people that work here." 

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"And you're gonna get put into this team and as you grow we'll add more people to your account We're growing just as fast as you guys." Yeah So I mean I think that is a really important part of outsourcing in general just making sure you're working with a group that actually has infrastructure Yeah No that's that's huge and being able to scale and that's why we've got PEO partner with HR- payroll We can scale with them We've got accounting We can scale with them you know wherever else we need to bolt something on that we can scale with so it's great 

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But 

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Well Mark I just wanna say it was great catching up with you again It's been a couple It's been a year a year and a half since we've talked probably I really appreciate your time today I appreciate your guys' work You guys are definitely the best shop when it comes to real estate accounting You guys do a great job and if- Yeah I ever got back into the property management game which I'm not saying no but I'm not saying yes- Yeah I would just start with you guys from day one I wouldn't even mess with it Then there's nothing to unscrew Well we we appreciate that and we loved working with you guys and appreciate you having me on Yeah Thank you so much Mark