Episode Transcript
Kyle James (00:00.11)
Hey, welcome to the AI Chronicles podcast. I'm your host, Kyle James. Today we're going to be diving headfirst into how a fintech company called Help With My Loan is using AI inside of their own company and share the exact steps that you can use in order to implement AI for yourself. Now, before we dive into that, please listen closely. Are you looking to implement AI inside of your own company or just struggling to get your AI to stop hallucinating? Speak to GPT Trainer.
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scheduled consultation today. Once again, that's gpt-trainer.com. So today I have with me Chris Karadjuzian, former CEO and co-founder of Help With My Loan and newly founder of Chris Alchemy Consulting. Chris, who recently exited the company he co-founded, Help With My Loan, successfully was acquired in 2024, a $1 billion AI lending software.
and he now helps entrepreneurs with his proven blueprint that has made him successful over the years. Hey Chris, super excited to have you on the show today. How are you doing?
Chris Karageuzian (01:34.248)
Great, Kyle. Thanks for that intro, man. I'm super excited to be here. Thank you.
Kyle James (01:38.282)
Awesome. Well, so Chris, tell me like, how did you get into the help with Y alone? how did that give me kind of the origin story? What made you decide to start it? And then like, what was like the results after you started it?
Chris Karageuzian (01:50.686)
Yeah, this is a 24 year journey in the making. you know, in the year 2000, I got my real estate license. I started practicing commercial real estate while I was finishing my bachelor's in finance and real estate at Cal State Northridge. So I joined Coal Banker, did that for about eight years, you know, finished up that industry and also finished up my bachelor's and I decided to go into the business banking world at Wells Fargo. I crushed it there. You know, my time there, I represented almost 40%.
the revenue of the entire region. So a lot of awards, lot of and learned a lot of course, you know, as I first corporate real job after, you know, at the young age of 24. After that, you know, I got recruited by the private client side at JP Morgan. So I was a top producing manager there. I ran teams of about 55 people. You know, we were always in the top three out of 95 branches in the entire country. And then I got recruited again, US Bank. went into the commercial division there and
Kyle James (02:22.094)
Thanks a lot.
Chris Karageuzian (02:48.648)
you know, was the number two and that's where I met my co-founder Jack Artinian. We sat in the same office. He had the Beverly Hills Market in California. I had the San Gabriel Market, you know, always the number one and two guys. And it was a lunch that changed our life. It was, you know, we were both being recruited again. You know, he was having some firm and then you were talking about it and he, I was getting recruited by another firm, but we were both frustrated with the industry. Like we were venting about.
Kyle James (02:59.928)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Karageuzian (03:14.204)
We don't like how it's still spreadsheets. We don't like how long underwriting takes, the mistakes that make, the wrong quotes, you know, the frustration of why am I sitting here at a desk for hours spreading deals where my passion is, let me go out and get business. Let me get on the golf course. Let me go to the networking event. Let me just work and wine and dine my clients, right? So we kind of said, you know, would you be open to partnering up? Is there something maybe we can do to fix this?
Kyle James (03:24.919)
Right.
Kyle James (03:29.56)
Hmm.
Chris Karageuzian (03:40.196)
And you know, and again, I believe in a lot of things the universe puts together. So he said, well, I have a domain I bought 10 years ago called help with my loan. And I was like, ooh, that's catchy. You can abbreviate that HWML. You know, it's marketing strategy where you want it forwards or less help with my loans. You're you're hitting marketing target that you don't want to be more than four words. Also, I said, well, I got this like, let's put some milestones and why don't we put pause taking those jobs? People call us crazy, right? Because they were
Kyle James (03:51.936)
Right, right.
Chris Karageuzian (04:07.986)
bigger six-filler, six-filler, six bigger salaries, know, benefits, et cetera, cetera, right? They were moving up the ladder, but in another firm. So we stopped interviewing there. We put a plan together. And the funny thing is, and it's actually a piece of content on my Instagram, at Chris Alchemy Consulting is, that same evening, I love Gary Vee. He's a big time influencer in the entrepreneurship world. And I just, I saw a video from him saying, hey,
Kyle James (04:11.47)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Karageuzian (04:33.968)
If you want to create a site, business side hustle, here's how I would do it. So it's like the timing of that lunch, the timing of that video. I watched it and he gave free content of here's how you do it. And I put that video, I sent it to my coworker, which was Jack at the time. I said, I think the milestones we did and now this video we're lining up that we should do it. you know, we put that pretty much that plan together in May of 2017.
Kyle James (04:41.453)
Wow.
Kyle James (04:45.155)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Karageuzian (04:59.102)
We launched a company in July of 2017 and by the end of that year, December, we were post revenue. We were willing to invest money, Jack and myself into the company to create a nine month runway. And we had a healthy pipeline at the same time when we opened the business accounts, because we had money coming in. We were also giving about a $40,000 line of credit from that bank at that time. So we were in a position where it's like, it's time to quit. So 2018, we quit our jobs.
Kyle James (05:09.229)
Mm-hmm.
Kyle James (05:23.809)
Wow.
Chris Karageuzian (05:26.11)
We grew this company in those seven short years from a two person team to about a 12 person team. We went from 10 lenders in the beginning in the database to 300 lenders. We had an industry leading 97 % match rate, which was double any platform software, banks, brokerages. And we funded, yeah, now well over a billion dollars. And then, yeah, in 2024, we were approached by a company called Void and Company, which...
represented different celebrity and sport figures in the industry and they had technology that they wanted to adopt our technology into and create a benefit for the lending world and banking world and also their vision of what they were trying to do for the unemployed youth in Chicago. It lined up and yeah, we closed it on New Year's Eve of 2024. Yeah, a little bit about me and this story, Thank you.
Kyle James (05:56.93)
Mm-hmm.
Kyle James (06:08.045)
cool.
Kyle James (06:11.404)
Wow. Wow. Man. What a, what a, what a journey. What a journey that's been. I can't imagine like, if you didn't have that, that initial sit down with Jack, and crossing paths and then seeing that message and then him having that, like having the website bought 10 years ago. And then for it to finally come through, like that's life changing. You know what I mean?
Chris Karageuzian (06:29.15)
What
It really is man. We're living it. It's I think people sometimes need to see the signs I think you know they expect opportunities to be handed to them. Well opportunities are sometimes in front of you It's on you to act and I think that's what Jack and I did we acted
Kyle James (06:41.998)
Mm.
Mmm.
Yeah, I absolutely love that. So I know like starting off with help with my loan, using a little bit of AI initially or kind of started, I think it's fantastic what you guys are doing, but before we dive more into it, like tell me what, what made you decide to start using AI in the first place with help with my loan? And then, and then ideally like what challenges were you trying to solve with AI within that?
Chris Karageuzian (06:49.691)
Thank you.
Chris Karageuzian (06:58.034)
Thank you.
Chris Karageuzian (07:10.674)
Well, to replace a couple of things, these legacy archaic systems and processes from the 70s and 80s that I kid you not banks are still using. I just was over it. I don't want to use spreadsheets. I don't want to use Excel formulas, decimal points being missed and the spreads of the deal get
Kyle James (07:19.598)
Hmm.
Chris Karageuzian (07:27.612)
thrown off and then you got to fix that issue. So for me is it was fixing that we automated that into our forms in the 1.0 version of the AI, which was a very infancy AI in 2018. So we made sure we automated the questionnaire to the process of
Kyle James (07:28.952)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Karageuzian (07:46.554)
Spreading the deals so when we would get the forms we created the AI to get collect the forms with the little database technology we created it automated matching that process and then we went one more issue is There was no one-stop shop our platform does commercial residential business a paper to d-paper full dog No, dog private DSCR non QM. We attacked that also is
You go to too many different platforms that do I only do business line credits. I only do SBA. I only do conventional. We knew from the industry and we validated it with Jack and I's experience. Right. We each ran it for so long that where do these clients go when we're saying no. Right. Or in your lifetime you're going to need different products. Right. You might be needing a business loan one day. You might be needing a commercial real estate loan one day a residential or an investment residential and not a lot of brokers are handy with that. So we really attack those two things with our optimal
Kyle James (08:16.438)
Right.
Chris Karageuzian (08:42.304)
Automization and like automation that we did, you know fast forward to 2019 with a part where I finally said to my CTO It was again a lunch us three were having Jack myself and I see to you I said guys I'm getting so tired that we still have to look at financials and we still have to kind of spread it like You know and I said dear on is there technology to bring in AI? To get rid of some of this tedious work, you know
and it can read millions of lines of tax code and just simply read the financials we give them like you would write personal financial statement bank statements PNL's tax returns all forms of tax returns for every entity. He stepped back and he's like.
I think there is a way, let me research it. Right. And then we found basically technology that we created. We patented it in our software where we use OCR optical character recognition technology. Notice where we taught the AI to read financials and use the guidelines that we have encrypted for now well over 300 banks. So when you came, it's basically a broker and underwriter in our platform that listens to you, takes your scenario, knows the guidelines.
Kyle James (09:23.352)
Hmm.
Chris Karageuzian (09:50.922)
behind with the 300 lenders, collects your package, spreads it out and I mean in seconds. Like it doesn't take... when we say we cut the time in 80 % we mean that. Like instead of you waiting a day, weeks, month for your underwriter to do it, right? Because it's still humans doing that and no human can read millions of lines of tax code in seconds. That's what we did and that's when our company really...
Kyle James (09:56.566)
Wow, wow.
Kyle James (10:07.95)
sure.
Chris Karageuzian (10:14.686)
Adoption became bigger and better because we just started blowing up that was like 2019 and 2020 we started becoming a seven-figure income company profitable, you know, and it helped us also not necessarily need to raise a series a series B we were really just bootstrapped minimal pre-seed funding and a profitable company with
Kyle James (10:19.212)
Yeah.
Chris Karageuzian (10:35.622)
regular debt. So we really kept a lot of our shares and had, you know, only one investor really. Everything else was debt capital, traditional, without liquidating our shares.
Kyle James (10:46.146)
Yeah, that's incredible. I think that's so, so paramount to you. talking about like this, the banking industry is, it was a bit slow. They've had some kind of like dinosaur tactics, I guess you could say it. And then to finally make that, that shift where it's like, where you said, Hey, there's gotta be a faster way. And then to implement the AI and see so much growth. I guess my question here is like, do you feel like once that you started implementing AI, did it spread it to different departments or different areas? And then what were us like?
Chris Karageuzian (10:56.327)
yeah.
Chris Karageuzian (11:08.541)
Yeah.
Kyle James (11:13.39)
You mentioned the 80 % of like time, Sammy, but like what, what, what were some of those results that you saw? Um, I just started like really expediting your growth on the revenue side.
Chris Karageuzian (11:24.862)
Yeah, I think because how fast we move and the fact that 97 % of time we're matching your accurately, which is double the competition. the frustration. Yeah, I mean, think about, you know how many clients came in saying, I've been in the market for months. I've been declined five times. All we had to do was literally take their scenario, put it in our AI. Our AI said, here you go. This is the bank you need to do it at. And we would get their approval. That
Kyle James (11:33.518)
That's high, 95 % is good.
Kyle James (11:41.421)
Hmm.
Chris Karageuzian (11:50.022)
That part alone seems simple enough, but you needed the technology to be able to do that. Once that happened, our key factor, basically our repeat business, every customer averaged four loans with us. So I think that's what really skyrocketed our production.
Kyle James (12:05.102)
Four loans, four loans. Is that fairly like, that's higher than average you would say? Or like most, imagine just one.
Chris Karageuzian (12:10.192)
In this case, it's about triple what happens at most banks. Most banks will give you one or two loans at best.
Kyle James (12:15.598)
So it's because like, because it was so simple and automated for the most part, 95 % accurate, you're able to get not just one loan, but three, four loans on average. I'm sure there's some that are even more than that because it's not, they're having, they're not having to spend weeks on end filling out applications, going through underwriters. It's just done an instant. saw on the,
Chris Karageuzian (12:18.833)
Exactly.
Chris Karageuzian (12:25.918)
Yeah.
Chris Karageuzian (12:34.536)
Think of the referrals we would get if I turned your bad service experience into a great experience and I just saved you because your business doesn't go under because you got the line of credit you need. You're refinanced that you need, Especially during, we were huge during that PPP and EIDL time during COVID. We automated that technology. We worked with the right lenders. We worked with the freaking SBA department.
Kyle James (12:39.843)
Mm-hmm.
Kyle James (12:43.726)
Hmm.
Chris Karageuzian (12:56.06)
to automate that EIdeal and we saved hundreds of businesses that were just getting declined and we automated that process even. And you know, the calls of getting, you know, teary eyed owners that, hey, you saved my house, you saved my 25 employees that are family to me, I don't have to fire them. So we funded so much PPP round one, round two and EIdeal during that time because of that technology and.
Kyle James (13:07.021)
Wow.
Chris Karageuzian (13:19.966)
Referrals just start happening naturally right if I do a service to you, and you know these hey you saved me Well guess what when your family or your friends need alone? What are you gonna? Do you're set up to help with my loan? That's kind of you know our our blended customer acquisition cost was like anywhere between $55 to 115 and we're making you know lifetime revenue anywhere from you know 50,000 to 200 thousand dollars per client
So we had a very good marketing strategy and a low customer acquisition cost that made it also very enticing to be acquired.
Kyle James (13:52.118)
Yeah, absolutely. So man, I appreciate you sharing that. It opens up the doors. And I mean, even talking a little bit about like the, personal side, because I mean, it's business, business is one thing, but when you have business owners, like you said, who are coming to you and they're struggling, they can't find the line of credit and to be able to approve that credit for them is game changing, not just for their business, but even for their families. You know what mean? So, and I would say this, like looking kind of looking ahead here.
Chris Karageuzian (14:11.197)
Yes.
Yeah.
Kyle James (14:17.1)
Because I know, you know, ended up selling off the help with my loan, but now you've got the Chris Alchemy Consulting. You're doing that full time. I think you're doing a little bit of advising slash on the board, right, with Help Me With My Loan Still.
Chris Karageuzian (14:29.662)
Yeah, I have nine equity shares, which is amazing. And I'm on the board. You know, I have a fantastic relationship with the new CEO and COO of the company. And it's an exciting ride for me to still, I'm very much still involved on the tech side. I'm still leading those calls and development because we're also bringing a 3.0 version later on this year. And we're going to rebrand that technology. It's either going to be called Lend IQ or R-Share. So giving a little tidbit of what else to come as far as the name branding.
Kyle James (14:57.388)
Yeah, a little,
Chris Karageuzian (14:59.666)
Yeah, it's going to really now attack the middle end of it. We're a front end process. Now we're attacking the middle end of lending to eventually end to end the closing conditions too. So, yeah, I'm definitely giving about, you know, I would say like five, 10 hours a month on that front. And then my question really has been what I've been working on since October of last year, as I knew the exit was happening and then my commitment, needed the first five months of the year to balance out. Okay. Where is my heart and passion? And it's always been helping people, coaching people, developing people and
You know, my life story, there's a lot of things I'm happy to share as we continue on this conversation. I just wanted to do that because I want to help entrepreneurs or people that want to become entrepreneurs, what it takes, share my blueprint, you know, to really avoid all the pitfalls there are. And there's millions of pitfalls in entrepreneurship. You know, and also helping what it takes, last parts is your mindset and your healthy habits that you're going to need.
Kyle James (15:46.017)
Mmm.
Kyle James (15:52.312)
Hmm. Yeah, that's impactful, man. That's having that blueprint too. mean, like you've been through the thick and thin and you know what it takes. And like, I think that's so paramount, like the pitfalls, right? Avoiding those pitfalls. That's huge for some of those entrepreneurs. So like, far as like the upcoming initiatives, I mean, cause you're still, you've got your hand a little bit and they helped me with my loan, you know, five, 10 hours a week, but then you've got the Chris Alchemy consulting. Like what type of maybe upcoming AI initiatives do you have in place?
Chris Karageuzian (15:54.888)
Thank you.
Chris Karageuzian (15:59.784)
Cool man, we got some stories about you man. Yeah. Yeah.
Kyle James (16:19.842)
for both and then where do you kind of see that, I guess, playing a role in your operations next?
Chris Karageuzian (16:25.424)
Absolutely on the help of my loan side, the main part we're also rolling out is automating and using AI to help with closing conditions, risk management, managing your portfolio after you close loans. A lot of these banks are still doing it old school where 90 days, six months before the renewal, they're sending the items to the client, emails get missed, things get missed, and then all of you have a 30 day window.
Kyle James (16:44.963)
Mm.
Chris Karageuzian (16:48.614)
And markets change, right? I think these last few years we've had a lot of volatility and different banks going under, different now inflation rates going up. Now they're kind of coming back down this last year finally.
These are factors you need an AI. So we're gonna plug in that data so it helps you manage your portfolio better. And in hopes banks adopt that so they can avoid what has happened in 2008, what happened again, you know, on a smaller scale around 2023 with a lot of banks that went under to just stop avoiding this stuff. It's avoidable. You just need an AI that lives, breathes 24 seven, doesn't take vacation and is monitoring your portfolio and knows what is time for renewals, what rates are happening.
when it's time to also de-risk or move ahead, not wait three months, six months. Hey, this loan you have on your books, a year ahead of time, it's telling you this is a risky loan. And start doing things like that. So I'm excited for Help with My Loan to do that. On the Alchemy Consulting, it's really helping business owners use AI automation in your business development.
Kyle James (17:39.639)
Wow.
Chris Karageuzian (17:51.518)
There's so many tools now that help with email marketing, SMS marketing, that follow up grinding process. You there's a statistic, I love sharing that, a lead takes five to 12 contacts to convert. A cold lead. Ask anybody in sales, they're not great at it. Almost 80 % of salespeople stop after the first attempt. Make a phone call, they don't pick up, next.
Kyle James (18:04.622)
Mm.
Kyle James (18:13.399)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Chris Karageuzian (18:16.988)
So, you know, using AI systems to do that follow-up, to do that nurturing emails and making sure it's being done. You know, I've had experiences where employees, you know, bullshit what they're doing and they're just putting all that voicemail or they're just hanging up. It's like there's AI systems now that look at the call duration. So when you have those unethical people that are faking their numbers, they're just dialing hang up, dialing hang up, you can catch them.
You know, it's really I'm helping entrepreneurs really take out the BS in their sales team marketing team with AI systems that will automate, you know, and track there's even AI systems that will do the coaching for you. They'll tell you, hey, this is how you sounded. This is how the customer sounded. Here's all the follow up actions. Here's what you could have done better. You don't need to hire these managers anymore to do that. I have
systems in place that will help you put all these things where now you're running lean, you have an AI system with all the analytics on your sales and marketing, coaching your team, and you're just holding them accountable now with those reporting. That's much easier process is that I'm teaching a lot of clients right now and entrepreneurs setting up a plug and play basically system for them where, you know, whether they sign up for with me for a month, two months, three months, one year, once I'm done, you know, I'm there for you for support if you need more coaching or just follow up.
Kyle James (19:28.429)
Right.
Kyle James (19:33.934)
Sure.
Chris Karageuzian (19:34.886)
It's a plug and play system I'm teaching and setting up for companies and entrepreneurs so they can just continue and be successful.
Kyle James (19:41.686)
Yeah. Yeah. It's so important too, because like, especially if you've working with like entrepreneurs specifically, I mean, there might be some who are solopreneurs and there might be some that are probably a little bit bigger, bigger companies that you're working with, getting that scalability is the key and implementing AI in that space and having not just like AI and figuring it out, but like an AI that's actually a plug and play can make all the difference in the trajectory of your company. So I think, I mean, it's definitely the right, I mean, I love the direction you're headed there.
Chris Karageuzian (19:56.264)
Exactly.
Chris Karageuzian (20:07.558)
Absolutely.
Think about this. You're a one person band that's trying to play 25 piece orchestra. Well, if you put the AI, guess what? Now you're one person managing this AI system that's doing the work of possibly 100 people without the real cost, without the HR, without the issue. You know how I mean, sorry, man, we know what people are capable of, right? I manage teams of like 55 people. Like you can imagine the egos and drama that happens. Now, that's real, right? So but I've always been good at like getting the team to buy in. And I've also been
Kyle James (20:11.17)
And then.
Mm-hmm.
Kyle James (20:22.114)
Wow.
Kyle James (20:26.518)
Yeah, yeah.
Kyle James (20:32.778)
Yeah, yeah, I bet. Yeah.
Chris Karageuzian (20:40.414)
great at trusting and verifying and holding people accountable. Like if I have to fire fast, I'll fire fast. That's the nature of the game. It's when you promote toxic employees and keep that in your culture, you're affecting your team. So I think that's also a pivot for solopreneurs using AI. You can get AIs that create content for you, schedule the content, the newsletters, the blogs. You don't have to go and hire all these people. You don't have to outsource it either. It's really a lot of great tools that are available, but I think...
Kyle James (20:52.494)
Mm.
Chris Karageuzian (21:08.882)
there's people lost right now in it because there's so much AI out. You just don't know where do I use this? Where do I fit? And I think that's where I step in and like, I built it, I've done it, I have the blueprint. Let's get to work.
Kyle James (21:20.462)
Yeah, that's it. That's amazing. Man, as we wrap up from here, where for those who are listening in right now, and they just maybe want to learn a more about you, Chris, or maybe learn more about your services or even help with my loan, like where can they go and what would you suggest that they do to hear to hear more and learn more from you?
Chris Karageuzian (21:29.648)
Absolutely.
Chris Karageuzian (21:38.384)
Absolutely a few things you can definitely do my LinkedIn profile. I'm very active. I have a lot of great content on there So Chris Kara Goosian, so I know we haven't posted the name So LinkedIn is always a great work on source You can always email me also at Chris at Chris alchemy consulting comm and I would say those are the two ways you can always check us out what we're doing at help with my loan comm So just help with my own comm and then yeah the direct way to reach me is through LinkedIn And of course my email that I provided
Kyle James (22:07.63)
Awesome, man. Thanks Chris. I've absolutely enjoyed this podcast. Great conversation. Great to have you on too, man. And remember those who are listening, yeah, man, absolutely. I wish we could have you back on again, but know, this podcast might be a couple of months. But remember those who are listening in, if you're looking to implement AI into your business today, don't try and do it yourself. The time and stress that the AI will cause just isn't worth it. Schedule a call with GPD Trainer and let them build out and manage your AI for you.
Chris Karageuzian (22:09.874)
Thank you.
Chris Karageuzian (22:14.659)
We'll come back again. This was awesome.
Chris Karageuzian (22:22.984)
Always.
Chris Karageuzian (22:29.608)
Yeah.
Kyle James (22:37.55)
Again, that's gpt-trainer.com. Signing off for now, have a wonderful rest of your day and looking forward to seeing everyone on the next episode of the AI Chronicles.
