Patrick Harris on Building Wealth with Real Estate + Automation

Patrick Harris (00:00)
The AI’s capability to perform future standard operating procedures, getting APIs automatically and doing these types of things. Because we’re going to be manually setting them up, but they’re going to be forever referenceable, if that makes sense. essentially, that makes us the linchpin between what AI is able to do now and what it will be able to do in the future, because it’s going to take our tool and learn from it.

Quentin (00:15)
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Patrick Harris (00:26)
to be able to then become a operator in the future.

Quentin (02:01)
Everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I am super excited about being here today. As always, I’m always excited, man. I mean, we always get some amazing guests that’s doing amazing things, and today is no different. I’m here with somebody that’s making moves within the investment space, but also in the tech space. And you know how I do, I don’t like to tell people stories. I like to tee them up and give them a good intro.

But I love when they take control of their own narrative and tell you exactly what they’re doing. So I am excited to introduce you to my friend, Mr. Patrick Harris. How you doing today,

Patrick Harris (02:39)
Thank you, you’re doing great today. Thanks for having me on the show today. Yeah.

Quentin (02:42)
Nah man,

absolutely. Thank you for coming to Hangout with Us, man. I know our listeners is gonna get some good stuff from you. You’re just missing a key word. You’re gonna be a conduit, right? You’re gonna make sure that people get some really good information that they need. And I’m just excited, man. So I’ll be honest with you. I don’t wanna waste no time. I just wanna dive right in. So let me ask you this. For people who may not be familiar with your world,

I want you to give us a short version of what your main focus is these days. And if you don’t mind, tell them what markets you’re operating in.

Patrick Harris (03:17)
Sure. So these days I encompass a lot of focus, but I started off in real estate and that’s really the broad general category that a lot of my attention stays. And my development into tech has kind of stemmed from my real estate ⁓ investment starting like focus. And I used to, you know, why I still do buy and invest in, you know, residential single family properties and self-manage and

That kind of evolved into doing tons of transactions with funding. And I started Centric Q Capital.com, which is a real estate investment funding company. along the way, ⁓ we service nationwide, by the way. So it’s not really any one central location. But we came across some issues. just like in real estate, we want to solve problems. We want to help people.

come out ahead when they’re dealing with a home issue. Obviously, like when you’re buying from somebody that’s different than when you’re helping someone who is buying from someone to flip it or to burr it, whatever they’re doing. So now we’re focused on trying to help investors get these best loans they can, high ATV, lowest interest rate. So we started building technology to fill in the gaps where we weren’t able to give them the best service that we possibly

And that means being able to look at different types of loan products at a bigger scale and say, hey, we can get you the highest LTV and the lowest interest rate and the best fee schedule based on these different ⁓ scenarios around your specific deal and your specific circumstance because there’s a lot of factors that go into a specific loan. And that’s kind of what led us down the rabbit hole to the tech business that

We’re now developing software for automations. And infinity sales.ai, our new company that’s ⁓ actually going to be handling conversational AI, can answer phone calls, do MCTP. For those of who know, MCTP is motivation, time, condition, and pricing standard when someone wants to sell you their home. We could have a receptionist who can gather this information, pass it along.

Also outbound, can book a call in real time with an email that goes out and all of this is gathered information conversationally like we’re able to do now.

automation part then became really cool because it’s kind of separate from the AI voice assistant component and we’ve been developing software that’s about to launch which will allow us to take standard operating procedures and replicate them on scale and this is a broad tool that is going to be

able to integrate in with our conversational AI. So can actually ask it in a conversation to perform a task. We can already say, hey, write me an email. It’ll give you the subject line. It’ll help draft the content or even dictate. I can do that right now for you. But this is going to allow us to actually create our own standard operating procedures, apply it to our assistant, say, hey, I need you to execute this standard operating procedure. And it’s going to be able to do that. And it’s going to be able to change out the output.

based on the input that I give it. And that’s an incredible advancement that we’re excited to introduce to the market. And it’s going to allow us to be far more competitive with our lending companies. So this all came and stemmed from solving our own problem. But now it’s going to open up our ability to solve problems across other industries. So I’m really excited right now to introduce what we’re on the cusp of bringing to market.

Quentin (07:39)
Yeah.

I love it, man. I love it, man. It sounds like y’all trying to get ahead of the curve. And if I quote you right, I hope I do, you be telling me y’all will be the lynchpin of this, right? Y’all will be the lynchpin of the growth, right?

Patrick Harris (08:01)
Well, so there’s some advancements in AI right now. We’re operators like open source. AI has an operator agent. They can autonomously do tasks through dialogue, which is a huge advancement, but it’s it’s got a lot of issues and it’s going to continue to have issues through several more generations. But as well, I guess where we are today, let’s just look at where we are today. It’s not capable of.

taking any standard operating procedure I have and then replicating it. But what we’re producing can. And we’re actually setting the stage to be kind of that, we call it the missing link. When we talk about evolution, you’re looking for that missing link. What’s going to connect those pieces? Well, we’re going to be able to bring that component that the LLMs, the language learning models that these AIs are built on, can learn from in order to then

Quentin (08:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Harris (08:54)
advance

the AI’s capability to perform future standard operating procedures, getting APIs automatically and doing these types of things. Because we’re going to be manually setting them up, but they’re going to be forever referenceable, if that makes sense. essentially, that makes us the linchpin between what AI is able to do now and what it will be able to do in the future, because it’s going to take our tool and learn from it.

Quentin (09:11)
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Patrick Harris (09:22)
to be able to then become a operator in the future. So that’s

Quentin (09:26)
I love

it, man. There, can hear the excitement. I see it, man. I mean, of course, I don’t know all the technicalities like you do, but I see it. And I can only imagine as you’re building this, things don’t always run smoothly, right? Like it can be tough in this climate. Like, so what keeps you going? What keeps you running as smooth as possible? How does that passion stay burning?

Patrick Harris (10:25)
Well, I think it’s really just about looking at what we need to do today versus where we want to be in the future. a lot of pause and reassess and reprioritize. I think that’s a common practice that me and my team are taking. And I think the fire inside is really the same fire I’ve always had. It’s just

I shift from then evolution in what I consider to be an ecosystem of services. When we look at real estate, I started off with a cleaning company. Then I built it to a contracting company, all while buying real estate so they could fulfill my own ecosystem. And then I took over my own property management after I converted from having that outsourced and internally managed. Now I have another little side project which

Yeah, isn’t my main focus, but it’s at my broker’s license here in Richmond, Virginia, in Virginia region. So the plan is in the next year or so to actually start bringing on property management clients and not just self manage our own portfolio, but also for others and build that company where we also have our contractors license class A. We build houses, we’ve done development, but also can help people do their repairs and their maintenance because we have.

contractor teams turnover. I mean, I just came from a house where we’re doing a turnover right now. And this is just, you know, part of day to day life. So it’s, it’s just a constant evolution, but it’s all focused on the real estate ecosystem that I’ve always been focused on building around my investment activities. So I can serve other real estate investors really well, because this is

All I do is I focus on the real estate investment ecosystem and I have services and capabilities to offer ways to enhance people’s investment practices all the way around. that’s what I try to just be a conduit as we said.

Quentin (12:22)
I love it, man. Listen, while we’re here, you’re kind of, you, you hinted to it, you hinted to having a pivot, like, and so of course there’s moment when things get real. Maybe things go sideways at times when you had to pivot fast. Do you mind sharing one of those stories with those people that’s, that’s, that’s viewing this?

Patrick Harris (12:40)
Well, mean, yeah, sure. The pain is real. In real estate investment, there’s a lot of opportunity for pain. We had an excessive amount of turnover in the last year. It was actually coming off of COVID, and we had high inflation, and we just experienced a big portfolio hit to people who weren’t able to keep up with payments. And then there was an edit.

higher level evictions than we had dealt with in a really long time, really ever. That came along with a lot of property damages. Unfortunately, the two were correlated in a much higher than anticipated way. And this caused us to have a major financial obligation to turn those properties over. some of those damages were upwards of $25,000 to homes.

that had occurred just from people on the way out mismanaging them and then just giving that push of destruction on the way out the door. And yeah, I mean, there’s legal recourse and there’s processes to go about that. And of course, we have our attorney who handles all that stuff naturally as part of their process. But it doesn’t take away from just that operational

I mean, because now we have resources that have been allocated where otherwise, you know, I could have had some the software developed, you know, arguably six months or even a year ago, but it’s just complicated. So, yeah, I mean, this is how we try to pivot around.

This is one example, mean there’s tons of issues of course that we come across.

Quentin (14:58)
Yeah, listen, I’m right. No, absolutely. No, man, I appreciate you sharing, man. I appreciate your vulnerability, your transparency, man, because honestly, sometimes people don’t want to talk about this type of stuff, you know, but this is like the real, this is what happened when you were business, when you’re trying to go from point A to point B to point C, like you’re going to face opposition. And so I just always like to let the viewers know, like you’re not alone. know, some people that’s listening to this, you may be in.

you know, a different transitional point, but hey, you know, we’re to hit these obstacles, but this is what’s going to establish you from just being somebody that dabble to somebody that’s in it for the longterm. And so I appreciate you saying that, man. ⁓ so let me ask you this. What are you most focused on solving right now? Like what’s the, what’s the next scale up? What’s your, your next kind of real goal for you?

Patrick Harris (15:52)
Well, a little over a year ago is when I started getting into conversational AI. I had a license with a platform that was on the front edge of everything. And they actually went under. Their GPUs crashed. Their ability to serve clients literally disintegrated as I was selling my first built out agents.

It was a little bit of a crushing moment because it took a long time for me to regroup from that because it was a big financial commitment to get into that and then that was completely lost and then to get turned around and find my way. But in the midst of all that, I created out of necessity, technological stack to have my own conversational AI. And ⁓ as I went down the path of developing that, we came up with

product called Phone AI Friend. And we actually have phoneaifriend.com. It’s patented. And the idea behind Phone AI Friend was that we were going to have a conversational AI that you could literally have do any of the things that you would want an assistant or a friend to do for you, which is something that I’m actually still working on. And because of where we’re going with this AI and the software I told you about and the features,

Not only can we do this for commercial, but we’re creating a product that’s for consumers. For you to be able to, this is cool, but you can call it and change temperature in your house, or anything with IoT, like interactions. So any smart device, it would be able to tap into the API function, all by voice command. So this has kind of been my back focus, bringing it into where I am now, but with the

development of our technology. I plan to use that in my company’s, my property management company, my planned property management company. Obviously we have our internal, so I’m gonna start serving myself there, but then we’re going to expand that to serve others. Century Q Capital, we’re going to be using this as our customer facing interface where people can actually talk with the agent, it can input their information.

in real time produce options and guide people through highest LTV lowest interest rate. So like we’re going to have this sprawl effect where all of our businesses are going to become more robust because of the technology. But then we’re also really, I mean, my pivotal focus right now is on getting this technology up and going so that I can make it available to other people so that they can

enhance and automate their own operations and make it you can focus on revenue generating activity instead of activities that are like occupying.

Quentin (18:35)
No, man, I love it. That’s big. love how you really, you know it’s going to help other people because it’s helping you. Like this is serving and finding a need, serving and fixing the need for yourself. And so you’re scaling it like, Hey, I want people to be able to use this so they can focus on creating another revenue. You know, they can take the think out of this part and we’re going to help them do this part. And then when they can focus, you know, their attention on somewhere else. So I love it, man. I love the moves that you’re making.

And of course, like the next move can either compound things or create chaos. And so that just depending on how you play it. And so, yeah, you know, so I get it, man. And so I know a lot of people, like I said, they’re listening to either early in their journey or they’re looking to level up. I think they have benefit from hearing this when it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you?

Patrick Harris (19:32)
So, know, I actually talked about this on.

channel I started recently called Motivated Investors and it’s funny I haven’t put out much content but I was just talking about this the other day and it was the involvement of saying that you are what you are

making yourself to be presenting yourself as the real estate investor even if you haven’t done a deal if your mindset is that you are a real estate investor then present yourself as a real estate investor if you’ve bought a house you haven’t bought a house if you want to buy a house tell people that you buy houses and plant the seeds and talk to people and tell them that you’re looking to buy go to real estate meetups and introduce yourself and say hey i’m looking for properties to buy because if you have someone like me or someone who

you know, can help you fund projects, then really all you need to do is find the deal. And then we can calculate and structure the in and out of the deal. So one of the things I love, and I’m out of Richmond, Virginia. So in Virginia, you know, I have a private money loan network, which we offer in addition to our other loan products. And we have some bridge stuff across the country, but.

It opens up a whole other world, a can of worms. I think if you can present yourself in this way and put yourself out there, talk to the wholesalers and open up as many interpersonal connections with people that know what it is you want to do, it’s just going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy and deals are going to come to you. Someone’s going to tell their grandma that they know someone who buys houses because

Like she’s in a tough spot, whatever happened with that family situation, they need to deal with the house, no one knows what to do, but you come to mind. And that’s really where it starts. I think that’s what I would say.

Quentin (21:30)
I love it,

No, man, I love it. I love how you talk about making these connections, man. You even took it down to grandma. Listen, make the connections. Make sure you get talking. And I love that, man. Because I think, matter of fact, I know relationships are everything in this space. So making those connections is key. So listen, before we wrap, if someone wanted to reach out to you, yep, absolutely. So listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, maybe collaborate, learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you?

Patrick Harris (22:03)
Well, I have an email. It’s [email protected]. That’s going to go directly to me. But it kind of spans across all of my enterprises, come through that email. And then, of course, infinitysales.AI You can book an appointment with me there. Or centurykeycapital.com. We also have appointments that can be booked there. But yeah, we have telephone numbers. You can call through any of those.

I’m an open and available person. I try to be helpful to everybody who would like to talk to me. I there’s not as many I’m here to be helpful and I want to be a valuable resource to people.

Quentin (22:45)
Absolutely, my friend. There’s no doubt you’re already a valuable resource. I appreciate you, man. Well, there he is, y’all. Mr. Patrick Harris. Listen, I thank you for your time, sir. Thank you for sharing your story and your perspective. Man, we definitely need more people like you that’s doing it the right way. So thank you so much for coming through,

Patrick Harris (23:03)
Thanks, Hugh. It’s been an honor.

Quentin (23:05)
Absolutely. And so y’all know, you know how I try. I’m trying to end this the same way all the time. If you are tuning in and you got value from this, make sure you are subscribed. We’re going to continue turning out these conversations, just like with my friend, Mr. Patrick Harris here, and you do not want to miss it. So until next time, y’all have a great.