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Building an AI Term Sheet Tool for Brokers | Paul Louie of Essencap | The Brainiac Blueprint Podcast

Writer: Kyle Lambert
Kyle Lambert
Nov 2
25 min read

Today on The Brainiac Blueprint Podcast by Left Brain AI, we sit down with Paul Louie, Founder of Essencap Funding, a boutique commercial lender based in Great Neck, Long Island, New York, working across DSCR loans, commercial properties and SBA advisory.


Paul shares how he went from Wall Street derivatives to running his own lending firm, why he treats every client like a patient (the client's ask is not always the client's need), and how a boutique lender competes with big banks by keeping the box wider.


He also walks us through Fundesk, the tool Essencap built so brokers can get a white label term sheet within seconds and kick off credit, background and appraisal checks all in one shot. Plus, what comes next with AI for document review and property analysis, and the one thing he will never hand over to AI.


Full transcript below.


🎧 Watch or listen to The Brainiac Blueprint Podcast:


⏱ In this episode, we discuss:

00:00 - Intro

00:40 - Who is Paul Louie and Essencap Funding

01:34 - The ideal client and why a lender works like a doctor

02:41 - "I think AI is..." Paul finishes the prompt

04:35 - What makes Fundesk unique

05:34 - From Wall Street derivatives to entrepreneur

06:33 - How the DSCR lending market has evolved

07:48 - Big market shifts: COVID and the new Fed chair

09:38 - Checking interest rates every day

10:09 - Q4, elections and the signs to watch

11:31 - What the client asks for vs what the client needs

13:06 - Boutique lender vs big banks: a much wider box

15:01 - Why Essencap built Fundesk

19:02 - Quality over volume: how Paul measures success

21:16 - Stage two and three: AI for documents and property analysis

24:32 - Using years of experience to train the AI

25:25 - Why deals fall through and when time is the best doctor

28:00 - Quality assurance and the role of the appraisal

29:51 - What Paul will never give AI: client data

32:00 - Working with Chinese investors in the US

33:35 - Using AI to translate

34:58 - The next five years: government debt and stablecoins

36:27 - Rapid fire: automation, favorite project, poker and more

41:00 - Open forum: life is a journey, so embrace it

43:29 - Where to find Paul and Essencap Funding


🔗 Paul Louie


🔗 Essencap Funding


📲 Connect with Left Brain AI


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Episode Full Transcript:

Paul: I think AI we need to embrace with our future.


Kyle: Okay, welcome back to another episode of the Brainiac Blueprint, where we discuss the intersection of AI and how it impacts business and the world around us with our esteemed guests. I'm your host, Kyle Lambert, founder of Left Brain AI and Action Hero Marketing. In today's episode, we're going to discuss being a boutique lender in a competitive real estate market. With that being said, today's Brainiac is Paul Louie. Welcome to the show, Paul.


Paul: Hi, thank you.


Kyle: Paul, you're the founder of Essencap Funding. You're a boutique lender in upstate New York. If you could tell everybody a little bit about you and the business, to set the stage here.


Paul: Sure. We're actually located in Great Neck, Long Island, New York. We are a petite lender, just like you said. We're interested in any kind of commercial space, mostly the DSCR lending space, but our portfolio also lands on some others, like warehouses and restaurants, so our product is a bit more diverse. We also have an SBA and advisory team, so we can advise on SBA as well. So we welcome any kind of commercial owner-occupied or investment commercial loan opportunity.


Kyle: Awesome. If you had to describe your most ideal client, what would that look like?


Paul: I don't think it exists, unfortunately. But the ideal client is someone who knows what they need and what they want. A lot of clients will come to us and ask for a specific loan, so in a lot of situations we're trying to understand the client and decipher between what the client asks for and what the client needs.


That's very important as a loan person. We look at ourselves almost like a doctor. We ask a lot of questions, we go through the steps, we underwrite. A doctor goes through an examination; we go through underwriting, ask for the most specific documentation, and go through a process. We try to analyze the symptom and treat it with the most specific loan possible.


Kyle: I like that description. You can assess the situation and figure out what the best medicine is moving forward. Amazing. Cool. I want to dive into all of that a little more, but before we do, as you know, we like to have everybody finish a prompt. We'll jump into AI a little later, but I wanted you to set the stage. So if you could finish the prompt "I think AI is," that would be great.


Paul: I think AI we need to embrace with our future. A lot of people might or might not know that back in the day, when the automobile came out, people thought it would never replace horses. And most recently, during the internet revolution, people just didn't embrace it. I know we had Y2K, which was not exactly what we thought it would be; it just caused a little chaos in our economy.


So I think we definitely need to embrace it. And at Essencap, we're actually in the process of embracing it. We launched a tool called Fundesk. It's an automation for our respective brokers, who can set up a term sheet within 10 seconds after they fill out the questionnaire. At the same time, they can automate the execution of the background check, credit check and appraisal all in one shot.


We recognize the market is still very slow in terms of executing the required documentation. So with Fundesk we embrace AI, and we're going to build in a lot more AI tools to help our respective borrowers have a better execution experience.


Kyle: Yeah, I was diving into the tool. It looks great. Do you find that a lot of your competitors are doing something like this, or do you envision this as somewhat unique and a good selling point for you?


Paul: Definitely unique. I think the barrier to entry is the AI experience and the development, so we're probably one of the furthest along in terms of embracing AI. We know for sure that some of our competitors would definitely catch up to it, so we like to stay on top of it. If this message reaches you, brokers, we welcome you to come talk to us, and we can give you access to test it out. If you like it, we can turn on the engine for you, and we build true white label relationships.


Kyle: Amazing. I do want to dive into that more later on, but we're going to jump back to the basics to set the stage a little more. Correct me if I'm wrong, Paul: you've been in the game for thirty years now, a little bit more, correct?


Paul: I graduated from Baruch in New York in 1994. My initial career was on Wall Street. I looked after the equity derivative portfolio for a couple of well-known Wall Street firms, and then I hopped over to credit derivatives. When the CMBS and RMBS indexes came out, I was one of the initial people involved in the market development. After 2010, I ventured out and became an entrepreneur, and started focusing my career on...


Kyle: Great. Amazing. So what do you think you understand about deals today, and about what people are looking for, that took you since 2010, or even the past thirty years, to learn? Is there a major point that you understand now versus then?


Paul: Yeah, I think the market kept on evolving, right? When the first DSCR came out, it was pretty plain vanilla. As long as you had cash flow, there was always money for it. But the market has developed much more, with dissections. We dissect the deal based on client experience, the property location, the DSCR of the world, the property condition. So I think the market has developed much more segmentation by location, by type of borrower, by kind of risk. I think the market will continue to evolve, and I think that's actually a good thing for the market, because it's much more risk analytics.


Kyle: Interesting. And I would assume that evolution would take some time, over several years. The reason I ask is, we're recording on September 14th, a couple of days after September 11th. September 11th is one of those days that I think changed things instantly, whereas you're talking about an evolution that takes time. I'm curious if there's anything like 9/11, maybe even a positive thing, like some innovation, not including AI, that had an immediate impact, within a week or a month, that really changed business for you.


Paul: I think historically there are always major changes in the market. COVID is one example, right? When COVID hit, we weren't sure, and the market went quiet. When the government started helping the economy, pushing PPP and EIDL, the loan market actually flourished and rates went down. That's one example. The most recent example is the new Fed chairman. We actually just published a blog this week saying there are quite a few major developments in the market right now that we should be cautious about.


Interest rates have been ticking up over the last couple of days, and our new Fed chairman does want to raise rates. On the political side, obviously, our president doesn't want any interest rate increase. So that's always going to...


Kyle: How often are you checking things like interest rates? Is it every day, reading articles, or a weekly digest? Okay.


Paul: Pretty much every day. Last week I told the team, "Hey, let's get in touch with all the clients and see if they can lock the rate, so we can close within the 30-day timeline." That was last week's event. It's hard to anticipate. There's only so much you can do.


Kyle: You said there's a change with the chair. We're entering Q4, it's the holiday season, there's an election coming up. Do you have any predictions for these next couple of months? Do you think it's going to be good for investors, or good for you guys, or what do you think is going to happen?


Paul: It's very difficult to predict the future, unfortunately, and I'm not going to try. But I think there are a couple of major developments that are loan- or bond-related. Japan is an interesting place, because they had negative interest rates and now they're starting to tick up, right? Globally speaking, I think there's a lot of inflation in the talk.


And with the election coming, US housing inventory is still low in our time. It's a very interesting dynamic right now. I think we should watch for the signs, and I think what I just mentioned will be the major signs of what our economy could do.


Kyle: Yep, that makes perfect sense. So you're keeping a pulse on these macro factors, and using that against the individual who is approaching you and could use some financing. I'm curious, is there anything you would typically make an exception for? Maybe this is someone you would normally say no to, but because of a personal factor or something you're seeing trending, you would say yes. Or vice versa: normally you would say yes, but something weird is going on, so you would say no. I'm curious if there are any stipulations or exceptions you might be looking for.


Paul: No, I think it has to do with our approach to clients. Like I said, we treat our clients like patients, right? We go through the motions of asking questions, reconciling the documentation and then trying to interpret the symptoms. One of the things I do differently is that we try to answer as many questions as possible for the client.


We're trying to fulfill the client's ask, but at the same time, in the back of our minds, we have to work toward what the client wants. What the client wants is not necessarily what they ask for. So we try to be upfront, proactive, describe, explain, and then see if we can agree before we walk the hall.


Kyle: Makes sense. Would you say one of your biggest selling points, especially over some of these large global banks, is this personal attention and this approach, where the client is a patient and not just a number?


Paul: Yeah, that's a good question. A larger bank is more stipulated to the regulatory environment, rather than answering what the client asks for or wants, right? They have a box, and you just have to fit the box. We have the flexibility that our box is much wider. Most of our DSCR products don't even require tax returns. So our box is definitely much wider.


Kyle: Yeah, so you can be flexible. Do you think there's a speed aspect too? You can get it done quicker than maybe some of the bigger guys?


Paul: Yeah, definitely. A lot of our lending guidelines are pretty static, per se, and we have the ability to review a certain angle on the loan rather than the full spectrum of the loan.


Kyle: Got it. That makes perfect sense. You can be quick, you can be flexible, you add your own little spin to it to make sure it's working out, and everybody wins. I know when we first talked, I was happy to see my own vet down here in Cape May getting some wins from you guys too. That was great to see.


Paul: Right. The Cape May one was an interesting one too. For example, it's actually in a rural location, and we don't rely fully on the tax return to provide the loan. That's not something he could get from a local or even a regional bank.


Kyle: There we go. Perfect example. That's great. Cool. Like I said, we did a little foreshadowing earlier about Fundesk, and that's Fund, F-U-N-D, not "fun," in case anybody was confused: fundesk.ai. Tell me a little more about what led to the decision to invest in something like Fundesk. What was the problem you were trying to fix? Was there a moment that really pissed you off and made you say, "I've got to figure this out," or did you just see a big opportunity? What was the genesis of this?


Paul: So the concept of Fundesk I wouldn't say is new, but the technique is pretty new. A lot of our competitors have an online GUI where a borrower or broker can enter their information, but it's not a one-swift kind of processing, right? A lot of the time, people have to do something, stop, pick it up again, stop, do something again and pick it up again. Fundesk is designed to be a tool for brokers who, number one, might or might not have their own process systems. Fundesk eliminates that, and you also don't have to stop and go, stop and go.


We have a short questionnaire that can be completed in, I would say, 60 seconds if you're experienced, or two to three minutes. We just need the property type, the value, the rental income, and the expenses on tax and insurance. Within 10 seconds, we generally produce a term sheet on the broker's behalf. The broker can use the term sheet and communicate it to their client. We stay behind the scenes, so it's a true white label program. All the rates and stipulations are on the term sheet.


Once they agree, they can pay by credit card through our system. We collect the cost at one time, and then our system automatically executes: querying credit, querying background, querying appraisal. All the due diligence happens spontaneously once we have the information. Again, we stay behind the scenes, and our system automatically opens up our portal, where the client can upload all the information required to close the loan. We designed the tool as a very front-end tool for the broker, so they can execute, execute, execute in a very smooth fashion.


Kyle: That makes sense. I know when we first talked about it, you mentioned that this initial launch was about process automation, leading into speed. So that makes sense, like you said, especially if they...


Paul: We have two goals in mind, sorry to jump in: customer intimacy and operational excellence. I think we got both in here.


Kyle: No, you're fine. That's great. I love to hear that. Yeah, I mean, like you said, if someone can finish a process in sixty seconds, in today's world that's huge. Time is money, everybody likes that instant gratification. So I think sixty seconds, anybody can...


Paul: And we want the broker to know the pros and cons of the deal very quickly too, right? Sometimes a client doesn't know their credit, or their background. They might have a charge or a judgment that they don't remember. The sooner we make a note of it and notify our broker, the sooner they can act on the negative, and the quicker they can close the loan.


Kyle: Interesting, makes sense. How are you measuring success from Fundesk? Is it simply lower touch points for you and the team? I'm curious what you're going to...


Paul: No, I think we have a slightly different model, right? From the beginning of our conversation, Essencap is a boutique firm. We want to continue that boutique firm style. We truly want our brokers to become our partners. We're trying to avoid a single touch-and-go kind of broker. We want brokers who are already focusing on DSCR and the LTR (long-term rental) market, where we can really build relationships.


So we are definitely not driving a volume kind of game. We drive quality of work rather than quantity of work, so I think that makes us a little bit different. We're going to work hard for the brokers who actually sleep and breathe this market, and we're going to give them a better tool.


Kyle: I think you kind of read my mind there. What I was going to ask next, just knowing you and from our conversations, is that I don't think you're doing this to double the size of Essencap, right? You want to make sure there's good quality, you're still getting the right people in, and maybe some repeat business, versus trying to double the volume, double your headcount, all that type of stuff.


Paul: Yeah, we already have good relationships with our brokers. It's just that our process is pretty manual, so we're trying to give them more. We're trying to make our current brokers happy to do more, and at the same time pick up a little more with new relationships. That's what we're going by. Like I said, we're focusing on the quality of the work. That's not our number one outlook, because we know there are a couple of gigantic funds out there, and we're not competing with the gigantic funds.


Kyle: No, absolutely. That makes sense. You guys have your lane, you're winning in it, you might as well continue to work there. When we first connected about Fundesk, you mentioned that this was stage one, and stage two was expanding to AI for docs and then even analyzing properties and things like that. I'm curious if you can elaborate a little more on what the end vision is, what you're hoping to get to, and how you're going to continue to improve and expand.


Paul: Yeah, so stage one is complete, which is the execution. We are working on stage two. The development is actually there already. We are waiting to turn on the mechanism where AI can go through the appraisal, the bank statement and the credit, so it can just flag issues for us. And stage three, as we mentioned earlier in this meeting, is to have AI predetermine the outcome of the property.


The market, you know, the US, is pretty fast. So the database is there, right? The question is how we're going to use it. That's why I go back to this: we need to embrace AI, right? AI should be able to tell us a couple of things in this very unique DSCR market. Are we funding a property that's outside the box for the location, right? Is it average for the location? Is the home twice the size of a normal home in the community? Is the valuation average in terms of the average per square foot on the property, and what's my nearest comp? Sometimes we don't necessarily need to rely on the appraiser, which can take anywhere from five to ten days, to give me the answer. So we want to be proactive and have AI embrace the data, and then give us the interpolation: do we or do we not have an issue on the property?


That's stage three, and I think we should be able to launch and complete it within 90 days. So by the end of this year we should be fully there. We're already up and running. We just suppress the logic on some of the tools, because we want to make sure stage one is working fine. So within 90 days, we should have a very robust AI running the tool.


Kyle: Very cool. And by the end of this year, is that supposed to be stage three also, or just stage two?


Paul: That's correct. Stage three, yes.


Kyle: Stage three also. Got it. Awesome. That's aggressive. Are you doing this in-house? Do you have some people that you've hired and are working with? I'm curious what the process is like for building it.


Paul: Yeah, we have people in-house who are already experts in this AI functionality, so we're very fortunate. We came up with the idea and we executed. It still took us a hundred and twenty days to get here, but it's been a very good experience.


Kyle: That's cool. That's great. Congrats on that. You and I, as we've continued to work together, I know we've discussed your case studies. You have years and years of case studies, some good success stories, and I'm sure you have even more docs and estimates of ones that didn't go through. So you have a wealth of first-party data. Are you using that to train the AI and build your own model, or is there another way you're approaching it?


Paul: No, definitely, our past experience helped. It's a combination of a lot of the underwriting guidelines in the marketplace, a lot of experience, and a lot of AI training. It's a combination of methods where we got to here.


Kyle: Interesting. And what about from an exclusionary standpoint? Are you able to say, "These ones didn't go through," analyze that, and maybe find some trends that we can either fix or call out? Is there anything like that?


Paul: That's not so much to fix. If it doesn't work, the category will be credit, right? So we advise our client, "Hey, repair your credit and then come back." Number two will be the property condition. If the property needs work, that's something we have to push to the bridge loan market, which is what we call the residential transition loan market. Or the rent data just doesn't work, right?


In terms of fixing, time is the best doctor. Meaning we can't do the deal now, so perhaps we just wait it out and see what happens. There are certain areas, such as rural locations, where we are a little bit finicky about it, because we just don't want to sit with a property that's out there that has no liquidity.


Kyle: I'm curious, is this helping you with segmentation at all? You mentioned a rural market. Has Fundesk, or even AI, helped you understand more about the rural market versus an urban market, or a DSCR versus a bridge, or any of that? I'm curious if it's helping from a decision-making or audience-comprehension standpoint, whatever you want to call it.


Paul: Yeah, definitely. Like I said, the AI tool will go through the market analytics, right? A lot of the time what we ask AI to do is come up with a value, looking at surrounding properties. We're sensitive to rental data, so the AI tool also goes through the rental data in the market. The size of the property is important to us too. We just don't want to fund, say, locally, where a single-family home is twelve hundred square feet, and all of a sudden I get a mansion. How do we value that, right? So AI goes through all the segmentation and tries to value it based on transaction data, rental data and per-square-foot data. The AI tool does go through all of that and gives us an answer.


Kyle: How are you approaching quality assurance? Obviously it can read all those data points you mentioned and spit something out, but in the end you need to make sure it's accurate. I'm curious how you're approaching that.


Paul: Yeah, I think there are two facets to answering that question. One is pre-approval, pre-engagement, as soft data, right? Obviously AI can produce negative-positive or positive-negative. That's where our experience comes in, with our success cases. We have to interpret it. The second is being transparent with the client and giving the client the data. It's their selection whether to move forward. And our final validation is the appraisal, right? My office is in New York, and I live in New York. I wouldn't claim expertise in Alabama or Montana or somewhere else. So we still rely on local expertise, the actual appraisal process and the appraisal report, to determine the final value.


Kyle: And is that a network of partners that you have locally, or is there a database? What does that look like for you to verify that?


Paul: A lot of us depend on what we call AMCs, appraisal management companies. They source a local licensed appraiser, and the appraiser goes out, does the examination, measures the size of the property and sets the condition. They have the local expertise, so they're the ones who have the final say.


Kyle: Got it. Yes. The appraisal bells are going off. I'm thinking about our mutual friend. I know she's handling a lot of that stuff. That makes sense. Cool. So this is great. I think it's so cool how you're using AI and building this out to change the business. I'm curious from your perspective, is there anything that you just absolutely will never rely on AI for? What are you not going to give AI, that's always going to be you or your team handling?


Paul: I might not be the most perfect person to talk about not using AI, because I use it pretty much every single day, for searching for information, helping me analyze it, or even making a report a little prettier. I actually ask AI to do that. I'm not one of the guys who says, "Hey, AI is going to end mankind." Right now I don't see any foreseeable sign of that. I just don't think we are in the Terminator era where it's going to happen tomorrow.


Will it happen to my grandkids? Maybe. I have no idea. But as far as my concern, the only thing I'm concerned about is AI security, which is a huge thing in our sector, with protecting client privacy and client documentation. So we have yet to share any third-party report with any AI tool that we have. We obviously ask AI to look up a certain location.


That's one thing we are very finicky about, because we have heard of AI leaking other data and hacking into other systems. So we are not giving AI any access to our database. That's one thing that we are definitely not in the comfort zone to do.


Kyle: That makes sense. I think you and I have a similar approach in terms of how we do business: you might as well do it, and even if it breaks, you fix it and you move forward. To your point earlier, everybody was expecting doom and gloom with Y2K, but it was just a big "if" and nothing happened, right? So you might as well not worry about the robots, and use AI to your advantage while you can.


Cool. The last thing, a hard pivot away from AI, that I wanted to discuss with you, just because I find it interesting when we talk about international markets. I know you're always looking into growing and partnering up with different Chinese investors. I'm curious how that's working for you. As a marketer, I always like to think about the big differences. What are the big differences with working with those investors and that market that may have led to success for you guys?


Paul: Yeah, so with my heritage, obviously, I have a lot of Chinese inquiries, and we do handle a fair amount of foreign investors in the US. Just to clear the air, we only do transactions in US-domiciled locations. We are not an offshore kind of firm. We have a lot of connections in the market, so we help investors know who to talk to and where to find inventory, we connect the dots, and we come in at the back to do the funding transaction. It has worked very well for us in that aspect.


Kyle: Makes perfect sense. Have you used AI to... I know there are some, I almost said Spanish-speaking, there are some Chinese-speaking people on the team. Have you been using AI to translate or anything as well? Has it been helping out with that?


Paul: That's a good question. I do speak it, but I write horribly, so I actually use AI to help me translate. I write in English and use AI to translate. We are very religious about writing blogs, just to tell the market, "Hey, we have the knowledge, we have the experience," so we definitely use AI to translate all of my Chinese writing.


Kyle: Makes sense. I know there are multiple Chinese languages and dialects too. Do you have them all covered, or just one primary one?


Paul: Predominantly Mandarin. I'm a native Cantonese-speaking person, but I do write in Mandarin.


Kyle: Was Cantonese your first language? I don't know if I knew that. Interesting. I did not know that. Were you born in China?


Paul: Cantonese is my first language, yes. Well, I was born in Hong Kong, China, so I'm on the Cantonese-speaking side of the territory.


Kyle: Interesting. Okay. What year did you come to the States?


Paul: Now you're testing my math. 1983.


Kyle: Okay. Was that with family?


Paul: Yeah, family immigrants, yes.


Kyle: Interesting. Interesting. Okay. We never jumped into the history, so I was curious. Very cool. I think the final question I wanted to ask, and I know you said you don't like predictions, but I'm curious, even from a high level, is there anything in the next five years that you're expecting, in terms of the investment market, or how AI is going to change things, or whether it's going to continue to be more and more global? Is there anything that stands out from a next-five-years standpoint?


Paul: I think debt, government debt, is definitely an issue, and I think globally speaking we will have an issue, because somehow, somewhere, governments have to sustain their balance sheets. The other thing I would say is the direction, not so much of Bitcoin but of stablecoins. I think that's very important legislation that the US government will focus on at some point in the future. They already have, I forgot the name of the act. I think it's one of those situations where, as a society, we somehow have to embrace digital currency. So I think those two will have a major, major impact on our economy.


Kyle: I feel like it's a matter of time. I myself almost never have cash. Everything for me is numbers on a screen, so I feel like it's just the next step: it's going to be digital, and cash will be gone. So very interesting. Cool. All right, Paul, I have five quick rapid-fire questions for you, just to have some fun and end it on a good note. I always ask everyone this. It's an AI podcast, so I like to see what people answer with. Whether it's personal or professional, if you could put on your red ruby shoes, click your heels and have any automated process built into your life, something that's fully automated, what would it be?


Paul: Ooh, that's a tough one. Maybe answering my call? Work the phone. Work the magic, yes.


Kyle: There you go. Someone to work the phone for you. Question number two. I'm curious, do you have a favorite project that you've worked on, whether it's with Essencap or previously? Is there a favorite project that you've had?


Paul: That's another good one. I will probably point to my school. I graduated from Suffolk University, so I'm getting more involved right now. I'm actually going back at the end of August to be a panelist with the MBA and EMBA students, and Suffolk has a finance club, so I'm getting more involved. I'm not taking any glory. I actually donated fifty books last year to the school. I just purchased one, A Random Walk Down Wall Street. I think it's the greatest book.


So I need to come up with a second book to donate this year. Most likely it's The Snowball, the Warren Buffett book. I actually do enjoy that book. Now I have it on tape, so I have to work hard to make sure the school gets those books before I arrive for the two sessions I have planned with the school.


Kyle: There we go. That's very cool. I like that. What was the first book that you mentioned you donated?


Paul: A Random Walk Down Wall Street.


Kyle: Got it. Okay. Interesting. I might have to check that out. Cool. Question number three. Are you more of a beach or a mountain person?


Paul: I would say both. Definitely both. I don't have the muscle tone for the beach, but I do enjoy both. It's hard to pick.


Kyle: And you and me both. Fair enough. I feel like when it's summer and you're roasting, it's like, "I could use a cold mountain right now." And then when it's winter and you're freezing, you're like, "I could love a beach." So...


Paul: I think there are just so many places to visit. If I have the opportunity, I wouldn't hesitate. I wouldn't choose anything, I would just go.


Kyle: Sure, fair enough. Cool. Question number four. I'm a big sports guy. We've never talked sports. Do you have a number one team, or are you a fan of anybody or anything like that?


Paul: Unfortunately, no. I would say my number one sport would be poker.


Kyle: Okay. Do you play online?


Paul: No. I like to play tournament style, limited buy-in. I go for the same thing: I go for the analytical skill. It's not about the money, it's just about going through the process, diagnosing other players and trying to win the pot.


Kyle: I was just going to ask, are you good at reading people, knowing whether they're bluffing and everything?


Paul: I did okay. On average, I wouldn't say I win first place, but I typically take part, and I typically have around a twenty percent chance of winning something.


Kyle: Interesting. Very cool. That's awesome. Cool. Fifth and final question. I'm curious, do you have a saying or a mantra or anything like that that you find yourself going back to a lot? Maybe during a challenging time or something like that. Any kind of mantra?


Paul: I would have to say "Lucky Star" by Madonna. I think it brings me luck every time I hear it on the radio.


Kyle: There we go. I like that. That's great. Well, cool. So, Paul, that was everything that I had. I wanted to give you an opportunity, as an open forum: is there anything you wanted to share that maybe you're passionate about, you're excited about, you're working on, whatever it may be? Just an open forum here.


Paul: Yeah, so I think life is a journey, right? You don't know where you are. My first half of my career I was a corporate guy, and the second half of my career is going to be, definitely, the entrepreneur. One thing I learned from my boss is, if you tell God you can plan, God will laugh at you. Right? So I would say just embrace life, walk the hall, do what you enjoy.


So I truly enjoy Essencap, I truly enjoy the success. Obviously we're a boutique firm, so I don't have a crazy headcount. I don't have a humongous number of clients, obviously, right? But with Fundesk, with the model that we have, I'm trying to make sure that not only do I succeed in the business, but my entire team is successful in the business.


Kyle: I like that. Yeah, I feel like you get a lot more out of saying yes to things than no, so just embrace it and go for it. You were a Wall Street guy back in the day, right? And is there anything you miss about Wall Street?


Paul: Yes, I am. Back in the day, it was very different from Wall Street today. I tell people that I'd show up at work at seven and not leave until past midnight. It's just kind of the culture. So I definitely don't miss that.


Having the title, having Wall Street, is nice. It's always nice. But the long hours are in the past. I wouldn't say it was a super high stress environment, but the long hours are definitely something I don't miss.


Kyle: Yeah, I can't imagine. That sounds like a young man's game. Well, Paul, I really appreciate you joining and sharing all of your knowledge. People can check you out, Paul Louie on LinkedIn. Are you involved or active in any other social media channels?


Paul: Mostly Facebook and LinkedIn. I think some of the Facebook stuff feeds into Instagram. That's one thing my team pointed out: I'm not a social media maniac, so I don't necessarily post that much on social media. So maybe, with your guidance, I'm going to change that a little bit.


Kyle: Well, you can't be good at everything, Paul, so we'll help you out with some of the social stuff. I know you also have a WhatsApp channel for some of the Chinese investors as well.


Paul: Yeah, we call it WeChat. It's where most of my Chinese content goes.


Kyle: That's right. Right, cool. And of course SNCap dot com is the core website if anybody wants to learn more. So, Paul, thank you so much for joining the Brainiac Blueprint and sharing everything. If you don't mind, could you look at the camera and say, "Stay brilliant, Brainiacs"?


Paul: Stay brilliant, Brainiacs.


Kyle: Awesome. Thank you so much, Paul. I appreciate it.

 
 
 

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