Navigating Lending Challenges: 8 Essential Tips for Entrepreneurs

John Harcar (00:01.578)
All right, hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and we’re here today with Chris Karageuzian. Hope I said that right. We’re going to talk about his journey in business and also about some of the struggles he’s finding people are having in really obtaining lending and talk about maybe some more creative type of lending. Remember guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, I mean, all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five extra business.

Chris Karageuzian (00:09.58)
You did?

John Harcar (00:29.632)
by giving them tools and resources to build the business they want, to live the life that they want, right? Chris, welcome to our show.

Chris Karageuzian (00:36.856)
Thank you, very excited to be here. Thank you so much.

John Harcar (00:39.788)
Yeah, and I’m excited to talk about, know, because a lot of folks have expressed the little bit more difficulty maybe sometimes in obtaining lending. But before we talk in and get into all that, why don’t you first start off by telling our audience a little bit about you, kind of your background in business and what got you here today?

Chris Karageuzian (00:59.054)
Absolutely again, thank you for having me on your podcast. Yeah, my name is Chris Karageuzian. I am CEO and co-founder of Help with My Loan. I’m also CEO and co-founder of Chris Alchemy Consulting. I’ve been in the industry 24 years prior to opening my companies. I did commercial real estate at Coal Banker. I’ve done business banking at Wells Fargo, private wealth management and lending at JP Morgan Chase. And then I met my co-founder at US Bank on the commercial division. We both co-founded our company in 2017.

And some great news I want to highlight also in 2024, my help with my loan company got acquired and is now becoming a much bigger company to reach a bigger audience globally and course domestically. And Chris Alchemy Consulting is just a passionate thing I also do in consulting entrepreneurs and real estate investors as well.

John Harcar (01:38.572)
Awesome.

John Harcar (01:46.752)
Okay, perfect. you, so you’ve always been working in lending and whatnot just for other companies before starting your own, correct?

Chris Karageuzian (01:55.721)
yeah, I’ve been doing this now 24 years.

John Harcar (01:57.78)
What got you interested in lending? mean, did you go to school for finance? I mean, what did you do to get into that space?

Chris Karageuzian (02:04.491)
Yeah, there was two reasons. My father came to this country and bought tons of real estate. So even at like 12 years old, I was typing up lease agreements, cost of living, that was my summers as a 12 year old. And no, it really got me excited to see, you know, how I saw my father live in that self-employed independent life. And then I really enjoyed real estate. And then yes, for college, I went to Cal State Northridge. I was a finance major, got my real estate license as well.

John Harcar (02:13.068)
That’s cool.

John Harcar (02:31.765)
Okay.

Chris Karageuzian (02:34.313)
I working in banking industry, I saw how much wealth is being done and still being done and made with all the clients I was helping. I saw the gaps. That’s a big reason I left the banking world and created my own company. To really replace those gaps that I saw because a lot of the times I would look at 40 scenarios a month and only be able to help five. I just said, where do these clients go? Why aren’t we helping them?

Yeah, that’s kind of my whole MO of why I love real estate and the lending space.

John Harcar (03:05.58)
Okay, and I wanna come back, I’ll come back to the gaps. I wanna hear about what gaps you’re kinda referring to. But first off, so you saw your dad doing real estate, you got your license, why did you lean to financing more or the lending more than maybe doing, being a realtor and going that.

Chris Karageuzian (03:22.453)
Absolutely. You know, I think the driving and you know showing properties just wasn’t the part I liked, you know, because that is the part where you’re have to do when I saw the lending part where hey, you know, I especially now it’s everything’s so remote and I can do so much more meetings but back then, you know, I didn’t still have to drive out to clients as much they can come to my office. It’s paperwork getting the paperwork ready. So I did like that and I love numbers. I think that started happening when I was at CSUN. So when I started getting to finance, I just, you know, just

Natural thing of numbers were great putting numbers together showing those numbers as the value, you know And again the drive time part was the part where I was like, I don’t know if this is me long-run But once I saw the number part and the ability I can work in the office clients can come to me now fast forward Obviously now where everything is remote in my world

John Harcar (04:09.59)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Karageuzian (04:10.633)
Automated with the technology we’ve built it’s just moves faster and I love just presenting numbers and the value that numbers does in Savings your goals in your life and what you’re trying to make is cap rates or investments

John Harcar (04:23.126)
Yeah, I completely hate all of that stuff that you just said about numbers. I hate numbers. I am not that type of guy. I look at the overall 30,000 foot view. What does the bank account say? OK, that’s the numbers I need to know. Do you think that getting your real estate license kind of helped a little bit in getting into the lending and doing more of that residentially, et cetera?

Chris Karageuzian (04:29.261)
That was so funny. I know, yeah.

Chris Karageuzian (04:36.609)
Yeah.

Chris Karageuzian (04:50.349)
Yeah, absolutely. I first of all, I renewed every four years. It’s inactive, but I’m never gonna not keep that license. You study for it. It’s a great deal. Accolade also. It definitely opened me up to see the world, right? Because I was doing that at Coal Banker while I was at Cal State Northridge. yeah, it let me see the industry. You know, I did some residential deals, but I really did like commercial more. So even though was debating, do I stay in real estate? I definitely wasn’t gonna do residential. You know, I wasn’t into…

John Harcar (05:12.033)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (05:17.554)
Why not? What did you dislike about Residential?

Chris Karageuzian (05:20.897)
What I dislike is this, I love numbers. So commercial real estate, no matter what is numbers, does the investment make sense? They don’t care about the appearance, they don’t care about the paint on the wall. Residential has a lot of empathy and emotions you gotta make. It’s their first time buying it or someone has an opinion because the drapes are wrong or the view and it’s not necessarily always the numbers. The numbers is can you afford it, done. I just didn’t find that too challenging and exciting for me. So commercial real estate got me more excited. So I did pivot doing more commercial real estate when I was doing, you

John Harcar (05:25.899)
Yes.

John Harcar (05:49.654)
Okay.

Chris Karageuzian (05:50.538)
residential and real estate. And then once I saw during the lending, right now my company does commercial, residential and business lending. So I do the whole gambit, but it all ties into, I’m just doing numbers, paperwork, analyzing it, matching it, closing the deal, you know, and getting the win for the customer. So those are kind of like the reasons why I went to the route I did.

John Harcar (06:11.968)
How many commercial deals did you close or to even reach their residential in there? How many of those type of deals as a realtor did you close?

Chris Karageuzian (06:18.221)
Yeah, for me in that era, this was like 2000 to 2007, so prices were cheaper back then too and inflation was different. So typically on any given year, I was doing anywhere between about 12 to 22 million.

John Harcar (06:24.556)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (06:34.604)
Okay, so in 2008 ish time frame, that’s when he kind of got more into the doing the lending stuff, it sounds like, right?

Chris Karageuzian (06:41.877)
Yeah, yeah, so I decided, you know, I was being recruited to the business banking world at Wells Fargo, you know, doing the lending and commercial side. And it just, I think, you as a 24 year old at that time, seeing the opportunity that they were going to give me in salary, benefits, commissions and vacation trips. Very appealing. And it was one of the healthier banks. Obviously, I went through and saw what happened in the 2008 financial crisis. And, you know, at that time, being part of Wells Fargo that was lending, was able to

John Harcar (06:47.884)
Okay. Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (07:03.222)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Karageuzian (07:11.871)
to a lot of clients that were coming in with massive checks because of what they had to pull out their funds with and some of the banks merged with like Wachovia, helping Wachovia clients. And yeah, I really enjoyed that part of it. And I scaled myself to be the number one producer in my market for two years in a row and I represented almost 40 % of the market’s revenue just myself.

John Harcar (07:18.079)
Right.

John Harcar (07:29.886)
Awesome.

John Harcar (07:34.942)
Awesome, awesome. All right, so then you start seeing gaps. Let’s talk about those gaps. What were you finding?

Chris Karageuzian (07:42.158)
Processes for us of all man that they were so archaic in legacy systems of how they’re doing underwriting, know using old-school formulas and Spreadsheets and processes like kids you not even in like 2008 to 17 until I co-founded my company, you know, they were still using processes from the 60s and 70s and You’re just like well, you know as technology was starting to ramp up right after 2009 2010, you know, and I just saw that and then being at so many different banks Wells Fargo

John Harcar (07:59.756)
Hmm.

Chris Karageuzian (08:12.271)
JP Morgan, US Bank, they’re all doing the same processes and I was just like when I met my co-founder in 2015 I was just like I’ve been at because you know so many banks and they’re all doing the same spreadsheets formulas lack of CR lock it lack of technology you’re still using MS-DOS programs to put a loan number in

John Harcar (08:24.342)
Great.

John Harcar (08:29.74)
Ha ha.

Chris Karageuzian (08:29.933)
I was like, there’s gotta be a better way. And there wasn’t. Like we researched for two years before we set off and opened the company. We saw, oh my goodness, like there isn’t a full automated one-stop shop platform that can handle commercial residential business while using some automation. Our first iteration didn’t have AI. We rolled out AI in 2022. And we just saw like, while we were doing this on the side,

John Harcar (08:48.031)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Karageuzian (08:54.475)
Brokers started working with us, investors started working with us, and they were all coming to us with the same problem. My bank said, I’ve been looking for three to six months, my broker can’t do it. So we also figured, well, let’s scale our database of 12 lenders, and we scaled it to over 300 lenders in that eight year span.

John Harcar (09:10.536)
Awesome. Why do you think these old banks and other banks were doing using such old archaic systems and calculations? I mean, why don’t they? Why haven’t they changed and rolled with the tide?

Chris Karageuzian (09:22.899)
of factors I personally saw, you provide feedback, they just don’t really listen. think there’s sometimes like they just lack innovation. When’s the last time you heard a band create a great technology piece? You know, they adopt.

Technology they don’t necessarily innovate Technology whether they’re using Apple pay Zell, know Venmo. These are outsource companies that they adopt right, you know and even Just different technology that they use for their software right CRMs that they’re now rolling into or different automations They’re using it’s not necessarily them innovating It’s also because they are hindered because a lot of banks from 2008, you know got you know, many penalties They’re still paying penalties still being audited for those penalties

John Harcar (10:02.55)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Karageuzian (10:05.007)
and they’re just being scrutinized. So a lot of their technology budget gets eaten up and very small. We attain like, okay, let’s make our online presence, our online bill pay presence, our apps pretty good, but they’re not innovating. So I think it takes companies like I’ve seen besides ours that are being adopted by banks and helping that broker, consumer and banking world to just interface and connect much better than the broken process that we saw in 2017 and 15.

John Harcar (10:10.441)
Right.

John Harcar (10:32.48)
Got it. Okay. So you go out and you start your own thing. What are some of the early struggles you had when you got into started your own company?

Chris Karageuzian (10:39.585)
Like with any tech company, bugs and glitches, think that’s something, know, our CTO prepared us, but you know, there’s like great ideas we had, they didn’t work the way they should have, you know, they would break, wouldn’t, you know.

function the way they’re supposed to. It takes time. think we learned lessons in the beginning and then if we, every time we rolled out new products, we tightened up that process where minimal bugs or glitches happened. I think also is the branding, right? In the beginning, a lot of banks are like, well, what’s helped with my loan? Who are you? I think what we use is as co-founders, know, 24 experience from my end, Jack had over 15 plus years, our reputation, you know, because banks are a small world. They would call some of the banks and they oh yeah,

John Harcar (11:11.722)
Right.

Chris Karageuzian (11:22.735)
Chris is who he is. is a top producer at those banks. Jack was who he was at US Bank. And then they would try us out and they would see like, you are getting us matched at the guidelines that we provide you. It is on a silver platter. We’re not wasting our time on deals that don’t fit our credit box. You know what? We are going to work with you. We will give you some of that guidelines. know, and we are showing them all our security parameters of how we keep their data from breaches, know, losing confidential internal guidelines and how we had an airtight security process and follow

a lot of the compliance in technology space as well. So those are kind of like two obstacles we had in the beginning and how we punched our way through it to validate it and word of mouth of entry just spread for us.

John Harcar (12:04.278)
Sure, okay, definitely. you’re growing this business, right? You’re getting things rolling. What does your team look like now? mean, are you guys fully grown out? Or you still got a big growth path ahead of you? What does it all look like? You just sold it, I guess, right?

Chris Karageuzian (12:16.653)
Really.

Yeah, we closed it in 2024. basically we scaled it from Jack and myself, two people. We scaled it to about a seven person team that covered us in some processing, sales, technology and compliance. So that are seven person team. And then with this acquisition, we added another 14. So right now we’re about a 21 person team. Long-term goal, you know, the new owners strategy and everything they’re working on is to get this company in the next three to five years to be almost a 1000 employee company in different parts of the U.S.

us.

John Harcar (12:49.674)
Why did you sell it?

Chris Karageuzian (12:51.809)
Yeah, I love that question. think as again, entrepreneurs where we know the funding we were able to secure in traditional debt financing investment money, when we saw the opportunity that a seven person team can only do so much with the resources I had, Jack had, and that we can do, right? If I had a billion dollar uncle, probably wouldn’t sell, right?

John Harcar (13:14.208)
Right

Chris Karageuzian (13:15.389)
I think we were being smart and strategic of the right buyers with the right capital connections and resources will help finally accomplish the goals that we know, historically every company eventually sells or gets investment money, dilutes shares to get to their vision, right? You sometimes need to hire people that are smarter than you. You need to work with people that have the connections or can finally open that door that you’ve been banging on for years that they’re not going to open to you. But this person has that connection that they’ll do it. know, the industry saying,

John Harcar (13:42.475)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Karageuzian (13:45.193)
It’s not what you know, it’s who you know sometimes.

John Harcar (13:47.02)
who you know. So how long are you gonna be working and continue to work with the company? I mean, do you have like a set time of when you kind of want to be completely out?

Chris Karageuzian (13:57.39)
Right now, I know I agreed to a two year term with them. I know they wanted five, I think with Mike.

Chris Alchemy Consulting, that’s something that’s near and dear and passionate for me that I’ve wanted to do as this exit was coming to the closing in December of 2024. So I am still doing that and bringing that complete to the market on a bigger level actually on the 13th of May, 2025. And yeah, really excited to do that. And then as we’ll see, because no matter what, I have my equity shares, I have my investing period. So I’m gonna still always be involved in it because it’s like, know, at the end the day, I look at it as like it’s my kid.

John Harcar (14:13.856)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (14:18.188)
Okay.

Chris Karageuzian (14:34.404)
that went to college, I’m still a parent.

John Harcar (14:35.338)
It’s your baby, man, yeah.

Chris Karageuzian (14:36.887)
letting it grow and become its own man and I’m going to be there as an advisor. think like a good parent does, they let their person and kid grow up, become the man or the woman they want to be and then you give them counsel. Do they always listen? No, but you know, I think that’s the part where I love is like maybe in a year and a half from now, I might just be on the advisory board out of the operations and I’m fine with that because it gets me still to help this company become the what it is capable of and helping the new owners and team get to that vision because I

believe in their vision that they’re working towards.

John Harcar (15:10.22)
Got it. Cool. Is this consulting business, it just a startup right now? mean, do you have things in place to where you’re already actively, you’re functioning? What does that vision look like for that company?

Chris Karageuzian (15:20.277)
yeah.

Yeah, I actually have been always doing that on the side while I was growing my company. So now that I have the ability and bandwidth to actually do it on a bigger level, I did hire a marketing team. I’ve hired some salespeople as well. And it’s really catering to real estate investors that need consulting, entrepreneurs, startups that need consulting and scaling mindset, just different strategies and my playbook, right? I’m not sounding overcommon and egotistical. I did create a company that

that got acquired, it’s over a billion dollars in lending as well that it has accomplished, and there’s so many strategies that work and didn’t. So it’s also like where it gets you that playbook, airtight, error free for you to learn from me, be coached by me, and then consult as needed to make sure you’re following the processes the right way to avoid all the pitfalls that happen in real estate investing, entrepreneurship, and consulting.

John Harcar (16:00.918)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (16:18.528)
call it the power of proximity, right? It’s kind of like, it’s like our mastermind, right? It’s, know, you be with someone who has been where you’ve been can lead you to where they are without falling in the holes. So what do you think in growing this business, this business to where you are now, what have been your keys to success?

Chris Karageuzian (16:27.725)
Exactly.

Chris Karageuzian (16:37.965)
Sorry, just pleasing my charger.

Yeah, my keys to success, the first thing is just mindset. No matter what happens in your day, if you have your mind that is being trained mentally, physically, just keeping that positive mindset that you’re gonna get to your goals and not really worry too much about the why and the how. Just focus on that solution. So mindset is always top of mind for me. Number two is surrounding yourself with the right people. Just always making sure I have a network of be it from my friends,

my family and my business associates that I’m working with share similar goals, maybe they’re doing different things in entrepreneurship investment and I learned from them they learn from me, you know, and you know and the third and final one is really again going back to health, you know, I make sure I eat right I make sure I work out six days a week I take the right supplements because you know, you know if you’re not taking care of yourself You’re not gonna be able to work with the resources you have you’re not gonna have them So I think those are my three things is mindset your network and then healthy

John Harcar (17:35.648)
Yeah

Chris Karageuzian (17:40.335)
habits.

John Harcar (17:41.644)
Okay, and what advice do you think would you give besides those couple things? Or let me just, guess any other advice you would give for someone that’s maybe wanting to start getting into real estate investing or starting up a business.

Chris Karageuzian (17:54.348)
Yeah, I think for real estate is it starts with having the right, you know

lending resources or brokers. I think that’s what I always tell any client that’s their first time is, you know, we’ve built a K factor of 4.1. That means every client that started with help with my loan is on average coming back for four more loan products. You know, and that you know that, hey, you can go out in that field, look at the different scenarios and you have a lending resource. Too many times people don’t have that in the beginning. They believe in just using all their cash. You know, cash is king, but you know, lending is also leverage.

And then for an entrepreneur, same thing. think making sure you have your goals and plan and understanding the timeline it’s going to take to get things done. Making sure that runway is realistic. You’re not going to be over nice success. I started my company with every dollar of revenue that was made in the beginning and investment money I put in to ensure I had over nine months of runway. So even though I could have taken salaries and started taking the money I wanted, I didn’t. So I think for an entrepreneur, just making sure your business plan

John Harcar (18:53.982)
That’s smart.

Chris Karageuzian (18:55.635)
makes sense with realistic goals and expectations and given enough runway.

John Harcar (19:01.1)
And what makes this loan company and what you guys offer different than everything else that’s out there? What makes you guys stand out?

Chris Karageuzian (19:08.417)
Yeah.

I’m actually here at one of my clients and I was training the company about some of our you know value statements So you know our three competitive advantages is number one we use AI technology that cuts down the Lending process by 80 % in time so that is something where you get your yes, and no pretty quickly Number two is because of that AI technology we have a 97 % match rate Which is double the competition of any brokerage out there? You know and the third and final one is our lending Capability that we are a one-stop shop so that

That means you’re not going to have to go to different resources. We’re going to take care of your commercial real estate needs, owner, user, investor. We’re going to take care of your residential, owner, user, investor, and business. They work hand in hand. There are business owners as well that will need equipment loans, term loans, lines of credit, SP products. And for us, we’ve realized being in the industry 24 years, there are clients that fit and need all three categories in their lifetime of lending. So I think that’s how we also

John Harcar (19:58.155)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (20:07.072)
right?

Chris Karageuzian (20:10.272)
care of that.

John Harcar (20:11.488)
That’s so awesome. Well, that, know, I’m definitely in need for other alternative lending outside of what some of the normal stuff is. Why do you think people have struggled obtaining lending?

Chris Karageuzian (20:21.933)
Yeah, I think because, you know, there’s first of all, 18,000 banks in the US.

That’s like, you sometimes your deal might be that needle in the haystack. And I think for us, even though we have only 300, these are vetted lenders that deliver. They’ve taken care of over a billion dollars in lending, you know, and it’s over a 97 % match rate. So I think that is the problem is sometimes even though it’s 18,000 banks, some of them are all doing the same thing. So if you go to 100 banks that have the same guidelines, you’re going to get declined 100 times because you don’t fit that one. So for us, we made sure we took those 300 that cover A paper, B paper, C paper.

D-Paper type of lending from full documentation lenders to DSCR, bridge loans, hard money, private money, insurance lenders, know online, correspondent lenders. We covered that whole gambit in that 300 to make sure why we have a 97 percent match rate.

John Harcar (21:04.427)
Okay.

John Harcar (21:13.65)
Awesome. Man, I love it. I love the information you share. I love all we talked about. If folks want to get in touch with you, maybe to talk about some of your lending products or maybe talk about your consulting business, how do they get in touch?

Chris Karageuzian (21:25.301)
Yeah I think the best way right now is I’d love to provide my cell phone 626-419-0123. I think text is going to be the best way to get a hold of me. I don’t want your emails to go to spam. I can provide my email on a more call but I have a spam filter so I don’t want that to be lost but at least with my text I look at my text on a…

24 7 pretty much if I could but I text would be the best way, know phone calling it might mark you as spam There’s so many filters now guys. So our cell phone text that’s gonna be the best way

John Harcar (21:55.424)
Yeah.

John Harcar (21:59.372)
Got it. And then we’ll put your number in the show notes. And I think I have your email address here. We’ll put it in there. Guys, you can always try to send them an email. But I appreciate you coming out, Chris, and sharing all that information, guys. hope everybody at home listening took notes. Sounds like he’s got some great lending products. If you’re having trouble getting other lending, reach out or talk to him about his consulting business to help you get into the game and grow. Chris, thank you again. Guys, hope you had a good time on the show. We’ll see you on the next one. Cheers.

Chris Karageuzian (22:28.386)
Thanks so much, John. Take care. Thanks, guys.