You Don’t Need More Leads: How AI Helps Real Estate Investors Close More Deals | Chris Bounds

Mike Hambright (00:33)

Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. I’m really excited today because we’re talking about something that’s near and dear to my heart. and I know Chris Bounds is our guest today. He’s an expert really on the AI side. but as a practitioner, you know, one of his biggest pains was making sure that you don’t have a leaky funnel, like your leads are not getting caught are lost in the funnel. And I think that happens for a lot of real estate investors, and a lot of times the answer is just I need more leads. But the truth is is you might already have a bunch of gold that’s stuck in your pipeline. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Bounds (01:01)

Thanks for having me, Mike.

Mike Hambright (01:02)

Yeah. You know, I didn’t tell you that because obviously I own a Lead gen company that we exited earlier this year, or I I’m still an owner, but I talked so much about this because a lot of people, a lot of it’s this is not ign this is not about real estate investors. I think all entrepreneurs have leads in their pipeline that they don’t necessarily do a great job of follow up. They don’t necessarily do a a good job of even the inbound lead like taking those leads up front. I we’re gonna talk about all these things. I don’t want to steal any of your thunder here, but

then a lot of entrepreneurs will just blame it on the leads. And the truth is is, you know, it was kind of how they handled the leads or didn’t handle them maybe. That is the real culprit here. And so miraculously your your marketing looks better if you do a better job of kind of handling those leads, right?

Chris Bounds (01:44)

Yeah, it’s funny. Like when you have a leak in your pipeline and you plug the leaks, you are happier because you’re closing more deals, make more money, and you’re actually not spending any additional money. Because I I fell into that trap where like we needed to do more deals and the only thing that I the only lever I was pulling was more marketing. So shovel more money down the down down the hatch. And that works, but it also

you know, exponentially increases the leak. And when you don’t pay attention to that, it can it can get really messy.

Mike Hambright (02:15)

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I’m excited to dive into this today and get some tips and tricks. And like you said, AI and tech can help with this more than ever than in the past. So excited to kind of hear what’s on the cutting edge. Hey, before before we talk too much more about this stuff, tell us a little bit about who you are. Tell us your background.

Chris Bounds (02:31)

Yeah, so Chris Bounds in Houston, Texas. I’ve born and raised in Texas. flipped around two hundred houses over the years. So the I guess summarizing the long story, read that purple book in college, realized that, I’m gonna be rich and then realized like, okay, it doesn’t actually teach you how to invest, it just teaches you you should. So

Took this course from a local guru who taught you how to knock on doors for pre-foreclosures. So that’s what I was doing. I was knocking on doors every weekend while in college. I was drawing driving from Texas AM all the way to San Antonio because they were the only county in the nation at the time that was online. And I could look up pre-foreclosures in my dorm room, drove down, knocked on doors, took three months, got my first deal, did four deals that that that first 12 months, took a little break after graduation.

Because I got a high paying sales job. And the one thing that gets in the way of a great life is a good life. And so I had no no debt and I actually still had two of the two of the rentals from the the four that I did in college and I had a really high paying job. but got married and realized, hey, I wanna plan for, you know,

kids’ private school and the future and all this stuff. so I dropped this bomb on Jamie’s lap. Like weeks into being married, I’m like, hey babe, I wanna start flipping houses again. And she she knew I did that. But we ended up doing it. I did the only thing I knew, knocked indoors for pre-foreclosures, eventually figured out you can only knock on so many doors a day, found about direct mail and scaled from doing four deals a year to four to five a month.

All in all flipped around sort of it’s around two hundred houses over the years. and then nine hundred total doors if you include the large and small multifamily that w we’ve done as well. And raised around twenty million dollars in private funds to do those deals.

Mike Hambright (04:16)

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s great. And in the process, I know you feel the pain of is the answer more marketing or is it working the leads better? And it’s interesting. I think of obviously I talk about funnels a lot. Marketing is just a funnel. And there’s a lot of areas where you could have a leaky funnel. It’s not just the top or the bottom. There’s a lot of things in between, right? And so and I think what’s interesting is a lot of you know, what I like to say is a lot of people that contact the types of people that we buy houses from, distressed houses.

They’re not generally people that just got distressed yesterday. They’ve been distressed for years, if not decades. And if you’re not ready when they’ve finally made that decision, then that’s a problem. And also some of them are not ready to make a decision yet because they’re natural procrastinators. That’s why they’re in the situation they’re in often. And so if you’re not following up like a beast, then other people are, and you’re gonna get you you’re gonna lose that opportunity. But

Why don’t you jump in? I know you want to talk a lot about just the importance of you know, inbound lead generation and making sure you’re answering the phone live because a lot of people don’t.

Chris Bounds (05:16)

Yeah, in

Maybe it’s my sales background. So after I graduated, I worked in a inside sales on on a sales floor. Eventually I was managing sales agents and just answering phones all day. and it’s funny, when you actually answer those phone phones, you you can make a sale. So you’re actually talking to someone, and that someone on the other end of the line is someone who wants to sell their house. In the case of well, what we’re doing with our business, they want to sell their house, and when you can actually talk with them, you can help solve their problem and it gives

You

a much higher likelihood of closing that deal versus voicemail. Voicemail is where deals go to die. Because in my revelation, we were pretty good at this because I again with my sales background, I knew to answer the phones. Now, in the beginning, I had a full-time job, so I did the best I could.

But the moment I was able to, I had staff and I had a call center and to make sure that 24 hours day that that call that line was answered. But my aha moment and and and knowing what I was doing and and why I was doing it was we bought a house and like Houston floods. So this was a floodhouse. It had a flooded out truck in the driveway.

And I needed this truck gone so I can sell it. and I called a tow truck, a company, they didn’t answer. Called another one, they didn’t answer. Called another one, they didn’t answer. I called like five, seven different ones. I left messages to the ones that had voicemail, but it didn’t matter. The first one they answered the phone got the deal. And some of the other ones did call me back, but not all of them. And it didn’t matter.

Mike Hambright (06:43)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Bounds (06:44)

Problem’s already solved.

Mike Hambright (06:46)

Right.

Chris Bounds (06:46)

And

it was just this aha moments like that’s what motivated sellers do. And I used to get stacks of direct mail to my rental properties. don’t get as many today as I used to, which means there’s big opportunity with direct mail because people aren’t sending a lot of mail. So if you are, you’ll probably get noticed. But in any case, I’d I’d I’d call them because I’m adding these people to my buyers list. And I remember calling like 10 or 15 just like in in one setting. And nobody answered the phone live. Nobody.

And two of them called me back. It was just like crazy. Like they spent money on that. And only two out of like the 10 or 15 or whatever called me back and no one answered the phone line. It was like this this is insane. That’s the bar. The bar is pretty low. So the easiest thing to do to close more deals is just answer your phones. And it’s

Mike Hambright (07:31)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Bounds (07:31)

like flipping switch. You just answer your phones, change nothing else, you will close more deals.

Than you were before.

Mike Hambright (07:42)

Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. I have a similar story that I’ve I’ve told in the past. This is like ten years ago or something. I decided to, you know, hire somebody to put Christmas lights on our house and I called like five different people that I found ads. This was these weren’t ads. I think I literally this is gonna sound super old, but I think I used Craigslist or something. So so many like local like where do you go to find Christmas light people? So anyway, I called I think five people. One guy answered it live, the fifth guy, and you know

He got the job. And then on the others, yeah, I think a couple called me back, a couple never did. The ones that called me back were like pissed that I didn’t wait to get a bid from them. I was like, well, that’s not how it works. I got a problem I’m trying to solve. And somebody else solved it before you did. So therefore he won. But yeah, it’s interesting. Let’s talk about kind of inbound versus outbound leads. I know we we talk specifically about inbound. Obviously, when people are raising their hand and they’re calling you and they want to talk to you, that’s an indicator that.

It’s a it’s a warm lead, right? They’re raising their hand. Outbound leads are very different, but you still need to kinda follow up with them forever. I know we’re gonna talk about follow up in just a moment, but just talk about like how you handle those leads differently, maybe.

Chris Bounds (08:46)

Yeah, and and I’m probably not the best person to enter this ’cause I’ve always been an a an attractor. Maybe it’s my personality. I’m a bit more of an introvert. but I like leads coming to me. And sending out direct mail, which has been my bread and butter that

i it it’s a natural thing. They come to me. I’ve also done pay-per-click. had a nice referral network ’cause I did local meetups and stuff. So leads would come to me. I love those. They’re a lot easier to handle those conversations and close. I’ve done cold calling to a degree. never scaled it. I did a test run, I guess you would say over like three or six months.

and ultimately decided that wasn’t a channel I wanted to lean on and on. But it works. There’s plenty of investors out there doing a lot of deals with outbound. so with outbound, obviously the you don’t have an inbound phone call because you are that inbound phone call. You’re making it to them. They may call you back though.

And if they call you back and you’re not answering that phone, we’re back in the same situation. Now a much lower

Mike Hambright (09:42)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Bounds (09:42)

percentage number of those inbound calls are gonna be motivated in this situation because, you know, they don’t know why you called. You probably didn’t leave

Mike Hambright (09:50)

Right.

Chris Bounds (09:50)

voicemail. But you still need to make sure that phone calls answer. Because if they are motivated and they call you back and it goes to voicemail, again

it’s a leak. You just left an opportunity for them to call someone else. And that’s what you don’t want.

Mike Hambright (10:01)

Yeah. Yep.

Especially if they have a problem to solve. Like they just want a solution. Like at this point, they don’t know you from the next person at all. So they just are looking for somebody to answer the phone for they feel like they’ve solved that problem, right?

Chris Bounds (10:13)

Yeah, you can demonstrate that one, they can trust you. So they know I can trust you. And they trust that you can actually solve the problem and you can do it in a way that meets their needs, your chances of closing that deal are astronomically higher than just not answering the phones and and then playing chase. And now they’ve already called and spoken with so say you do actually get a hold of them again, but now they’ve called three or four other investors.

Odds are those investors did not answer the phone either. Maybe one did. Maybe one did. but there’s multiple people in the situation now. So that’s what

Mike Hambright (10:46)

Yep. Yep.

Chris Bounds (10:46)

plain chase, that’s the situation it puts you in.

Mike Hambright (10:49)

Yeah.

So let’s talk about follow-up because you know it’s been said the money’s in the follow-up. A lot of people are terrible at follow-up. most people honestly, probably most people in most businesses are terrible at follow-up. I’ve often said I could almost take anybody’s business that’s under let’s just say under two million bucks a year and probably show them how to double their business in the next 12 months just with better follow-up. And better answering the phone and lead follow up.

because most people just don’t follow up. They maybe they call you once or twice, but I’ve been shocked at how many people that I’ve done business with, like never call me again to say, It’s that season again, it’s that time again. Just wanted to check in and say how you’re doing. Do you need more of this thing? Right. and that’s repeat business. That’s actually people I’ve actually done business with. And the ones that I never did business with, but I could have are far worse usually. But let’s just talk about like the right way to follow up and then let’s kind of get into

Using multiple ways to follow up. And there’s so many different ways to follow up. If anybody even does it, most of them are automated emails, maybe a phone call or two, and that’s about it.

Chris Bounds (11:47)

Yeah, and so in my sales job that I had before real estate, so it was it was online cruise vacations. so I mean online sales, selling cruise vacations. And I I would tell the sales agents that I was managing, I was like, every single person that calls you will be going on a cruise. May not be today, may not be this month, but they’re going on a cruise.

And your choice and how you depending on how you answer that call, how you handle them and how you follow up is whether you get paid for it. Follow up. Now I took the same approach with well you know with real estate and I called a it’s like a bucket. So you get all these leads and you’re putting them in this bucket. The problem is you have a giant hole at the bottom of your bucket, and that hole is you’re not following up. So six months so here’s what happens. they call you.

Or maybe you’re cold calling, you call them, and they do want to sell. But you break their heart. You give them that lowball offer because you’re a smart investor. and you’re not offering full retail and gonna go try to Airbnb this thing. You’re offering them a true price for a real estate investor with margin because you’re in this business to make money. And they say no, and they probably give you a hard no because there’s no way that they’re going to sell the price, sell the home at that price yet. Now

What we have here is they have a problem and then there’s a price, but there’s a gap in between the problem and how they value that problem and then the price that you just gave them. That gap will sit until the situation changes. Now they say no, you part ways, six months go by, now the tenants you know they’re a few months late, and there’s a roof leak. Okay. The problem that the owner has to deal with now is much higher.

And that problem it has to be solved. They’re much more likely to accept your offer now, your local offer. Only if they remember you. But here’s the situation. Their their life is busy. So they forgot you because you didn’t follow up. But other investors did contact them. They sent them mail, they’re getting pay-per-click ads or Google ads,

Maybe some people, you know, cold calling them. Other investors are in their ear. You didn’t follow up, so they just call someone else. And then you lost a deal. Now, here’s the worst part about it. You’ll you’ll never know, because you didn’t follow up. And when you do follow up, it will be a gut punch. but the worst part is that other investor, they get a layup. Because you already did the hard work. They already know what to

Mike Hambright (14:05)

You warmed him up.

Chris Bounds (14:06)

expect.

And when that

Mike Hambright (14:06)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Bounds (14:07)

other investor comes in with their price, and they’re like, I mean, maybe a little negotiation, but it it’s pretty easy. And I have this

Mike Hambright (14:13)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Bounds (14:13)

theory that any any like one call closes that you have, like they’ve been the other investors gave them an offer and they just didn’t follow up. So we want to plug that leak, that bucket of leads that you have. We wanna plug it with follow-up. And it can’t just be a automatic email drip campaign. That doesn’t count. Like

That’s like the baseline. If you do nothing else, you should have that. A lot of people probably do have that, but the reason why it doesn’t count is 80% of all your emails will never get seen. And that’s if you’re really, really good at email marketing. About a 20% open rate at scale. That’s about what you can hope for. You have to be multi-channel and you have to be long-term and you have to be consistent. So email, text, voice, so actually calling.

You but you can also tie in am I thinking of DMs, social DMs. so if you have contact with them on social DMs and it really depends on how they communicate with you if you’re gonna have that.

Mike Hambright (15:08)

Sure.

Chris Bounds (15:08)

But you could also in some circumstances do some Facebook and meta stalking and direct mail. So we have five different ways. we can have sixth, you can go knock on their door. Like if it if it’s local, you can go knock on their door. So six different ways to stay on top of

So you stay top of mind. So now, six months later, when the tenant is screwing them over and they’re fed up, they call you. They already know you. They already like you. They trust you. They already know what you offered. Everyone else is a stranger. So you have a huge advantage. All you have to do is the easy thing. And here’s the scary numbers behind it. 75% of all deals that you do will come from follow-up.

Fifty percent of those deals will come from follow up thirty days or more after you originally make your offer. So it’s like half. So you want

Mike Hambright (15:51)

Wow. Yeah.

Chris Bounds (15:53)

to double your business, follow up more. Like answer phones, that’s the easiest. Following up.

Mike Hambright (15:55)

Yeah, that’s awesome.

Chris Bounds (15:58)

Do nothing else. You don’t even have to do anything else.

Mike Hambright (16:00)

Yeah,

yeah, yeah. You don’t have to be you don’t have to be exceptional. You just have to do the fundamentals. Yeah. It’s interesting. So my this has been a while back, but my the the longest we’ve ever followed up with the deal that I know we’ve gotten was fifty four months. And this was if I go back, this was like many years back. This was kind of pre AI and a a lot of the sexy tech that’s out now. We were, you know, back then we were literally using a podio account. It just had very little automation.

And it was just a task every 30 days. Every 30 days, somebody in my team has to call them and leave a note as to what happened. And I saw, I remember looking back, because whenever we get a deal, I always go back and like I just want to s I want to see the history. So I remember it’s like called and left voicemail, called and left voicemail, number disconnected even. And back then I was like, keep calling because some people just don’t pay their bill and it comes back on.

Call and as soon as I told them who it was, they hung up on me, but they didn’t say take me off the list. So call them again every 30 days. Just keep calling. And then eventually they said, Is that offer still good? All right. And so that’s that’s the reality of it. Is a lot of people that are in a distressed situation. It’s not like we want that for anybody, but let’s be honest, most people’s situation doesn’t get better. If it’s a financial distress situation, then it just takes a health issue, a tax issue, like

Know it’s like the straw that’s what’s gonna be the straw that broke the camel’s back because and I don’t want this on for anybody, but unfortunately a lot of people that have made bad decisions continue to make worse decisions over time and their situation gets worse. Again, hopefully they dig themselves out. But if they don’t, you they want to remember you, right? And they’re like, You’re that person that never stopped calling me and was you know, pleasant on the phone, like you always like listen to me or whatever. and

Chris Bounds (17:37)

Yeah, and a lot of

times like it may not even be like to the to the property itself. It could just be a headache. This is a property they inherited or Yeah,

Mike Hambright (17:42)

Right. Yeah. It’s not about the property, it’s about them, right?

Chris Bounds (17:47)

so you’re just you’re just solving the problem. so one of my he’s like an unofficial mentor as he’s flipped thousands of houses and his philosophy was if they have equity, he goes. So

If he’s on the phone with them and they have equity in the property, he did not care about anything else. He went on the appointment. Because he knew there’s a reason why they called him. They already know what he

Mike Hambright (18:07)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Bounds (18:07)

does, they know he’s an investor, and they already know he can offer cash. This is in all the marketing. He goes, but he he goes for the strategic advantage of relationship. So now when they’re finally ready, whatever that timeline is.

They call him because he knows that you can get them to like them, like him and trust him. At that point, it’s just a timing issue. And he follows up.

Mike Hambright (18:30)

Yep. And there’s this thing. I mean, and not that everybody has this, but I have this there’s this reciprocity issue where people feel like you followed up with me. You I like to reward good salespeople. Like if they do a good job or they’re like kind of persistent, but not like annoyingly persistent, but just like persistent, I’m like, gosh dang, like this is who I’m gonna work with whenever I make this decision because I appreciate

now I’m also a s a salesman and an entrepreneur, so maybe I’m a little bit different, but I just appreciate that somebody was reliable enough. Like it says something about somebody. If they’re reliable enough to keep following up, then they’re probably gonna be reliable enough with the fulfillment of what they said they would do, right? So I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but it’s interesting. Yeah.

Chris Bounds (19:09)

Yeah, no, that’s good insight.

Mike Hambright (19:11)

So let’s talk a little bit about the kind of tech stack. I know historically there’s a lot of you know, people are doing all sorts of cool stuff with AI today. There’s all there’s more CRMs out there.

than ever. one of the challenges historically is people have bolted together a whole bunch of different systems and tools to kind of make this work. They might have a CRM, but it’s got a plug-in for sending SMS messages and it’s got a different plugin for sending emails. It’s very fragmented, which is kind of hard to manage. Let’s just kind of talk about where where we’re at with the tech stack world.

Chris Bounds (19:37)

Yeah, and so when I got started, I I had no money, so I was on Google Spreadsheets or or Excel spreadsheets, like a a lot of folks, so that’s all I had. But the moment I was able to upgrade to a system, I kind of looked out at the landscape of systems. Now, this is a while back. Podio was the only option for real estate investors, so no other option existed. and then there was the Enterprise softwares, you know, like the Salesforce and Zoho.

So I actually made the leap to go to Enterprise. because I I knew I wanted to build a real business and podio at the time. They’ve changed a lot since then, but they they still hold true to this philosophy that

They’re just really simple. And you can do a lot of things with it. But beyond that, I mean it’s really simple and it will be fragmented. I didn’t want to deal with that. So I went with Enterprise and I built out the advanced fragmentation, if you will, of tools. The the dialer, the text blaster, the connections to funnels and websites and my direct mailhouse and my data provider, and you know, of course the CRM and and the notes and pipelines.

And all this stuff. And I had Zapier in the background playing like you know traffic control, just send it sending traffic where it needs to go. And that that was fine until it wasn’t. and unfortunately, I didn’t really learn the lesson until it cost me about a hundred thousand dollars. So every tool is good at what it does, but they’re not meant.

To really work well with all the other tools, because they’re not native. So you have to build that bridge, which can be a webhook, an API, some bolt-on. And when you do that with five or seven different tools, it it you end up creating chaos. And that was manageable chaos for me for years. Till one day, one of the things broke, and it, you know, I was spending about $30,000 a month from marketing. And

I realized my leads, my lead flow, a little light. And it only been like maybe twenty-four or forty-eight hours. But it didn’t now that w that was long enough for me to figure out the problem and realize the backlog of all these leads and I’m mad. so I’m I call and then like it was like five of Said we already signed with another investor. Now I’m a flipper.

So those leads weren’t worth fifteen thousand dollar assignments fees to me. They were worth forty, sixty, eighty thousand dollar, you know, flip profits. It was a lot of money. Those leads represented a lot. And

Mike Hambright (21:55)

Yeah.

Chris Bounds (21:55)

I got mad.

So I had two weeks left before I had to renew my system and decided to rebuild on a single engine that had everything centralized. So the dialer, all text, email, all communication. So text, email, phone calls, funnels, websites, my pipeline management, full automation workflows, and it had something that I did not have, which was AI.

And it hit AI woven in core at the center, which AI was new then. It was a you know a bit of a novelty. but you know as time has you know told the story over the last few years, having AI at the core center, or as you’ll see, AI powered is kind of a probably an over overused term or AI centric, that is a multiplier effect.

On a fully centralized platform.

Mike Hambright (22:44)

Mm.

Chris Bounds (22:44)

By comparison, the fragmented tech stack, so if you have that now and you’ve got five or seven different apps, what you actually have is five or seven different apps, which each have their own individual AI bolt-ons because of their legacy. They weren’t built with AI in the center. And that exponentially increases the fragmentation problem.

Because they’re not AI centric and they still don’t communicate well with each other, which compounds the problem. And it’s it’ll be f it’ll be fun to see how this plays out. I’m sure some of the disconnections will smoothen out over time, but it by comparison, having something that’s fully centralized where AI can see, touch, write, react to your native workflow in real time.

That’s a major advantage. So in the stock market, you know, you know, microseconds matter in a in in a trading environment when you’re when you’re watching stuff. Microseconds matter. We don’t necessarily, well we’re not dealing in microseconds, but we are still dealing in seconds to minutes where answering and following up at the right time and reacting at the right time can potentially lead to you you get a shot or you get a deal or you don’t.

Mike Hambright (23:50)

Yeah, that’s great. And I know you built a system. We’re gonna talk about it in just a moment. I I have a question where I like one of the other or at least maybe a statement is one of the problems with all these like archaic systems or things where things are connected is a lot of times if you’re the business owner and you’re the architect and something breaks, then nobody on your team knows what to do, right? You’ve got this issue where you have to keep getting you keep getting pulled back in because you created something that you know.

Nobody nobody else knows how to handle. And so there’s something to be said for simplification that you’re t it either almost can’t break or if it does, it’s pretty intuitive that your team can handle it without you, right?

Chris Bounds (24:24)

Yeah, and and so at the enterprise level, I had that because you can do pretty much anything you want with like a Salesforce or Zoho. The problem is you have to build it. And if you don’t have the technical and also the the financial capabilities to not only build it but maintain it and do that constantly, then you’re kind of handicapped.

either you’re gonna be handicapped from growth or you’re gonna be stuck in this you know maintenance mode and the the team itself is gonna have limitations on their ability to self-improve or or troubleshoot issues. Now in the case of vibe coding, which is you know AI’s made that very easy to do, you have a similar problem. And in which case you own the product, that’s an advantage.

You also own all the problems. And and like your team can’t help you there. Maybe you can if you know what you’re doing, but you still own all those problems. And you own them in real time. And and the question really comes down to do you want to be a software company or do you want to be a real estate investor who has powerful software? so you kind of need to make

Mike Hambright (25:25)

Yeah.

Chris Bounds (25:25)

a choice there.

Mike Hambright (25:26)

Yeah. Yeah, that’s so true. I’ve I’ve told people in the past I’ve talked about, you know, property management. Like if you want to run a property management company, then manage your own and manage them for other people as well. And if you don’t want to do that, then same I I think it’s the same thing with marketing. If you don’t if you’re if you can’t become as good as a marketing agency, then you shouldn’t be your own agency. Like if nobody else would hire you, then you shouldn’t hire you. Right. So

Well, Chris, I know you built an amazing system, a CRM and AI system for real estate investors. Tell us a little bit about Pathwaize.

Chris Bounds (25:56)

Yeah, so Pathwaize, when I built it, didn’t have a name because it was just I built it for me, solved my own problems. Now, I had 15 years of experience of handling the fragmented tech stack with an enterprise solution. So I had that expertise and I was able to take that once I used a centralized platform to build out the architecture, build out the workflows, build out the infrastructure for that to work really well. And I did that for three years.

in my business before it ever became a product for anyone else on the outside. and that was just more of I guess I don’t know if a s serendipitous or I think a former student of yours, and he was doing some coaching and and he’s really good at it and I was like, well

You’re you’re busy. I know you’re busy. I’ll help with sales marketing because the platform can handle that as well. But you know, they also need a platform. So we did like this bundle thing and it worked out really well. And it gave me the insight on what I really built and how this can handle the three problems and and solve the three problems that every investor has. Inbound leads, answering them all live 247, qualifying those leads and booking appointments on your calendar. You’ll never miss a lead. Ever.

And that’s what we talked about before. That’s the easiest thing you can do to do more deals. Second is follow up consistently, no lead left behind, and do it multi-channel, text, email, voice, social DM, direct mail, ringless voicemail. so it won’t knock on doors for you, but it can do all the other stuff. that’s the second thing that you can you can do with no more marketing spend, like no more hiring additional people, like just do those two things and it does it for you very well.

And then the third is it’s all in one login, one source of truth for your entire team to see exactly what’s going on to manage your entire pipeline. So I built that it was game changing for my business. It saved me a lot of money because I was able to cancel a lot of the other apps. but beyond that, it actually made me leaner and meaner. So it was much more effective with everything that I did. And we’re

Mike Hambright (27:49)

That’s great.

Chris Bounds (27:49)

starting to see this in real time with with

wholesalers and you know house flippers across the country that are leveraging it.

had one just the it was a couple weeks ago. I met with he was doing a little meetup, and he’s so busy because he’s scaled since he came on board. He’s so busy. I I really haven’t had time to sit down and get some KPIs from him, but he said there’s he’s doing an extra three deals a month that he directly attributes to the efficiency that Pathwaize gave his team. And

That I mean to to my knowledge, he he hasn’t done a lot of other changes, but he’s been very effective now. And he does a lot of deals. So when you’re talking about doing an actor of three a month, like that’s pretty good.

Mike Hambright (28:28)

yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s one heck of a re one heck of an ROI.

Chris Bounds (28:33)

Yeah, I know he and he’s good he’s good at social too, and he got that on video. I’m like, I I need a copy of that.

Mike Hambright (28:38)

Yeah.

That’s awesome. Well we’ll put a link down below for for Pathwaize. is there any anywhere else for folks to connect with you, Chris, on social media or anywhere else?

Chris Bounds (28:45)

Yeah, and hit me up on Instagram, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, I’m all over those. find me on TikTok. I’m really if it’s a social channel other than Snapshot, I’m probably on it. but I’m huge on Facebook and LinkedIn. And then pathwaize.com, P A T H W A I Z E. I think you probably got a link you can you can share with folks.

Mike Hambright (29:04)

We’ll share a link. Yeah, that’s great. So awesome. Well, thanks for sharing some insights with us. I mean at the end of the day, these systems are meant to be tools to make your life easier and make the business just kind of run and make it more profitable. And so, like you said, and if people just did the fundamentals, answer the phone live and follow up forever until they say, I’ve sold it and you can confirm they’ve sold it, or they asked to be removed from the list, then follow up forever. Why not? Right.

Chris Bounds (29:31)

Regardless of what platform you use to solve those problems, do those two things. You will make more money, guaranteed.

Mike Hambright (29:36)

Yeah, that’s awesome. Thanks for joining us today, Chris.

Chris Bounds (29:39)

Thanks for having me.

Mike Hambright (29:40)

Yeah. And everybody, thanks for listening. at the end of the day, business is hard, right? But there is a harder way and an easier way to do business. So make sure you’re staying on the cutting edge with tech because it can make your life easier and quite frankly, not only increase your profit, but just reduce, especially these days. I I’m not a huge fan of like using AI to like completely eliminate your team, but use AI to make, you know.

Five people on your team do the work of of 30, right? So tools like Pathwaize can help with that. So appreciate you guys for joining us. We’ll see you on the next show.