Welcome to the Purpose Driven Investor, where we build more than portfolios, we build communities. I'm your host, Robert Howell, a real estate investor and founder of Define Communities. Each week, we'll explore how purpose and profit connect through affordable housing, land home packages, and impact-driven investing. If you're a lender, land seller, or a partner who believes money should move with meaning, you're in the right place. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Purpose Driven Investor Podcast, where we talk with entrepreneurs, investors, and business leaders who are building wealth while making an impact. Today, I'm joined by Chris Arnold. He's the founder of Cornerstone Upstate, a real estate investment company focused on residential properties throughout the upstate of South Carolina. Chris has built a business with multiple divisions including rental leasing, fix and flip projects, property management, and landscaping services. On top of that, he also works in AI and technology as a CX advisor, helping enterprise companies improve efficiency and customer experience through AI deployment. So today we're going to talk about building business, scaling real estate, leveraging technology, and how Chris approaches entrepreneurship across multiple industries. So Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks Robert. It's a pleasure to be here. All right. Well, cool. Well, I'm so happy to have you today. And, um, I think it's going to be a real interesting conversation. So let's first start with your entrepreneurial backstory. Tell us about how you Yeah, that's, um, it could be a really lengthy story, so I'll try to give you the cliff notes version because it's a very, I'll say non-traditional, um, path to entrepreneurship. I'll say I really worked a W-2 job up until last August. And so I was just your standard W-2 employee. Worked for a large corporation, Verizon, for most of that time. Actually started out in college as a call center agent, where really they had a tuition assistance program, helped me finish my last two years at Clemson. And when I got out of Clemson, they offered me a leadership job. And so then I was sort of off to the races in the telecommunications industry. Never really thought about real estate. Certainly didn't think about owning my own business and sort of heading down what I would have considered the very risky path of entrepreneurship. And so in 2002, when I graduated Clemson, I immediately bought the house, immediately sort of got engaged to the girl. And I sort of started checking all of the adult boxes all of a sudden. And I would say when I look back on it, my entry into real estate really started in 2002 with the purchase of that first home. It had an unfinished basement. So I started down the road of learning all of the contractor skills. I finished out the entire basement myself. I learned electrical, plumbing, so much so that I went and got my GC license. And so this was probably 2003, late, maybe early 2004 at this point. As soon as I finished that, the company I was working for asked me to move to Little Rock, Arkansas. And so couldn't say no, it was a great opportunity career wise. And here I am, I'm engaged. I'm getting married in July of 2004. In February of 2004, I left Greenville for the first time, you know, born and raised here, love the community, went to Malden High School, and left to move to Little Rock, Arkansas, of all places. And so we ended up getting married in July. She moved out. And, you know, after we got married and we started having children, you know, and sort of you fast forward from 2004 after having moved, I think we did eight corporate relocations. You know, and you're buying and selling houses, you're moving into new not only new communities, but we're moving into different states. And so that has sort of a set of lessons of its own, its own hardships. And she also grew up here and was the first person in her family to ever leave the state. So here we go. We're leaving. We're 12 hours away. We're starting to have a family. And then the company starts moving us around in 2008. We sort of took advantage of the financial crisis when everything was melting down. I found a foreclosure in Little Rock, and so we bought it. In the midst of that, Verizon came in and bought the company I was working for, Altel. And so it was just very tumultuous times. But I took advantage of the opportunity with this foreclosure, put some lipstick on, and we did a lot of cosmetic work to it while we were there. We were only there for about a year before yet again the company moved us to Charlotte, North Carolina. And so the moves continued over the years, and then in 2018, We came full circle. The company moved us back to Greenville, and so I had an office in Malden, where I grew up. And so you talk about full circle. Yeah, that is full circle. And when I look back on it, I'm a man of faith, and I see God's hand through all of this. You know, hindsight's 20-20. And so there's no way I would have been able to ordain all of this. 2018, we're back in Greenville, back close to family. We now have three kids, none of which were born in South Carolina. And we're literally five minutes from the grandparents. And then in December of 2019, so we'd been back here a little over a year, my wife, 43 years old, suddenly passed away. And so December of 19, I find myself instantly a single dad, a widower, trying to figure out, OK, what am I doing? Because at the same time, I had decided that I was going to leave this nearly 20-year career at Verizon. And along the way, You know, we had picked up a lake lot at Kiowee. I'd always had this dream of us sort of retiring on Kiowee. I was getting my master's. I was two classes away from finishing my master's. She passes away. We are about we're already grading this lot, getting ready to pour concrete. And so when she passed away, I had to pause all of that. So for the previous five years, we had owned this lot and we had planned to retire there and I was going to become an adjunct professor at Clemson. It was always my dream to be back in the classroom and teaching the next generation. Overnight, that dream completely changed. And so I had about a month to sort things out. I had to get my family right. I've got three kids at home. My two youngest were in elementary school. My oldest at the time was in eighth grade. So you can imagine how challenging that was. Yes, here I am trying to figure out I'm exiting a nearly 20 year telecommunications career. I am now the sole provider and trying to figure out how am I going to do all of this. So, with God's help, I did find another fantastic job, which is the AI company that you mentioned earlier. started that job in March, so less than four months after her passing. And then one week after I start, COVID melts the world down. And so everything is, you know, in the sense of the world, everything's coming unraveled. And so I have to decide what am I going to do with this lake property? I decided because it was our dream to continue. And so we finished construction. It took us about 18 months on this lake property to wrap that up. And we started using it. And I made every single decision that went into that house. And every step of the way, I tried my best to honor what And it turned out incredible. But for about a year, maybe a year and a half, we used it. And as you already know, kids these ages, they're super busy. You know, life just sort of got in the way. And there was no more retiring to the lake dream. There was no more adjunct professor dream. All of that changed on December 19th of 2019. And so I had to decide, what am I going to do with this big, beautiful lake house? You know, it's a prime piece of property in Seneca. And I had to make the hard decision to sell it. And so in 22, I made the decision to sell it. You know, I won't give you all the details about how we ended up finding the buyers, but we found some fantastic buyers. I made a great premium on it. And that is really the catalyst for what got me into real estate as an investor. You know, that home was we attempted for that to be a short term rental when we built it, because I knew we weren't going to be able to use it as much as you know, right, what we were going to do, which was live in it. And so one month after I got the certificate of occupancy on the house, Seneca added an ordinance that prohibited short term rentals in the city. I happen to be in the city. And then my HOA came behind that and doubled down on it. So there was never really, there was one week where I had an opportunity to use it as a short-term rental. After that, prohibited. And so at this point, it's going to sit empty 85% of the time. Too beautiful a house to let that happen, so I had to let it go. And out of that, I was trying to figure out how do I make the most of this? And it came by way of a 1031 exchange. And so as I learned more and more about the tax benefits of real estate, the power of a 1031 exchange, I took that one lake house and I turned it into seven properties in Greenville. That's incredible. Greenville County is where all of my properties were at the time. And so that's sort of how Cornerstone Upstate came to be. And the name itself, Cornerstone, My faith guides every decision that we make as a company. Everything aligns back to that core purpose, which is honoring God and sort of having a God-driven purpose. And Upstate is where we've decided to focus. So as we get into the conversation, you'll see I'm very, very focused on making as deep an impact as I can here, rather than spreading myself a mile wide and an inch deep trying to do a lot of sort of remote investment. But that's how I got here. Love that. Yeah. That's quite the journey. Yeah. And, uh, sounds, you know, like you've really got a purpose, really got a purpose and what drives you every single day now. Um, so let's talk about, uh, cornerstone and, um, you talked a little bit about, you know, Hey, I sold the lake house and then this gave me an opportunity to buy additional properties. But what do you think drove you to settle on real estate in terms of, of utilizing those funds for Yeah, I've, um, when I look back across really my whole life, I, um, I've always been a builder. You know, it's sort of the same story I mentioned to you when I bought the first house. I just was compelled to finish that basement. And I've always been the builder. I was the kid, you know, in the neighborhood, out in the woods, building tree houses, forts. And when I look back, the common thread is that I've always wanted to build something, something of my own. And so it just became super apparent that when I built this lake house, and that was not going to be the optimal use of that over a long period of time because of the unforeseen death of my wife. Then it became obvious to me that I could make an impact here in Greenville County, which is sort of my beyond my kids. Greenville County is my next love. I have such a deep appreciation for this community as does apparently the rest of the world. They're all moving here. And so, you know, there's a lot of. I'll say tailwinds for us as real estate investors in Greenville. You got to play your cards right because obviously prices are difficult. Demand is super high, which puts pressure on supply and then obviously price. But it was so important for me to try to be as efficient. with the sale of that lake property as I could. And there's nothing more efficient than many times keeping dollars out of Uncle Sam's pocket, which was the 1031 exchange. And it became obvious that now this can become a legacy for me. Because I've thought a lot about having four kids now, what am I leaving behind? And it's such a beautiful legacy to think about what all of these, you know, the real estate properties themselves can do for my children. It gives them so many options that I didn't have growing up. And so once I really wrapped my mind around all of the benefits of real estate, it Love that. Love that. And I think especially it's timely today, we're talking on April 16th. Tax day was yesterday, right? And so, you know, talking about the tax benefits of real estate is important, right? I know I had, even though I'm in real estate, I did as much as I could to address my tax bill in 2025, but I still had a tax bill, right? I'm hoping 2026 will be different, but that's important. Sounds like it's been extremely beneficial to you. So talk about Cornerstone and your multiple divisions. So how did you evolve I guess the way that I would first answer that is sort of with a life lesson that I've learned. Sometimes learn the hard way, and it's to hold things loosely. You know, it's like as hard as it was selling that lake house, I had to hold it loosely. Because if I held on super tight to it, you know, you fast forward enough years and it's just going to end up getting run down. It sits empty. It ultimately will not live up to its potential. And it certainly never would live up to the dream that my wife and I had for it. And so I had to hold that lake house loosely. And I was super discerning when it came to who I was willing to sell it to. And under what conditions I was willing to sell it because I didn't have to. So I was in a position where I had the ability, sort of the leverage to set some of those conditions. And so I've just learned over time, instead of having this sort of a lot of us walk around with this, it's not an abundance mindset. We have this sort of scarcity mindset and we cling to things super tightly and we end up missing the real blessing. We really end up missing the greater thing that we could have. And so I've just learned with an abundance mindset, I can hold things loosely and when I do that, New doors open, you know, and so I take these small steps, the 1031 exchange, took one lake house, turned it into seven sort of buy and hold properties, because that's what I wanted to do. And the bigger purpose behind that was I wanted to be a landlord that you never heard about. I wanted to be the landlord that managed my own properties that really created a great experience for either my guests or my tenants. We haven't gotten into this, but I really use all three formats. I do a little short term rental, I do a lot of midterm rental, and now I'm doing some long term rental. So I've kind of hit all three bases. And so I always wanted to really sort of be that host or that landlord that you never hear about, which is the ones that create a great experience by taking great care of the property. And so I think that's part of my way of giving back to Greenville County is to create these great experiences for renters. It's really tough out there. And now that, you know, we've been very successful with the buy and hold, you know, I've reached a point where I don't need anymore. You know, and you hear about all these real estate guys that are sort of using the number of doors, number of properties as bragging rights. That's not me. How much is enough? I don't need more doors. I need enough just to take care of my family, to sustain my legacy. Right now, that's 13 doors. I'm happy with that. Out of that was born, the deals keep coming. I don't really want to buy and hold anymore. I'm managing these myself. The cash flow is great. It's enough to keep me super busy. Maybe I need to start going down this fix and flip path. And in terms of beautifying the community, this is an opportunity for me to find these problems to solve, you might say. And that's sort of the core tenet of everything I do, is find a problem to solve. And Yeah. And so out of that sort of holding things loosely and really being committed to improving the community in whatever format you can, it has Great. And so when you look at the divisions, are those all internal divisions for Cornerstone or are you working with, uh, outside and like a third, you know, like me as an investor, you come and landscape my property as It's all sort of vertically driven inside a cornerstone. It's all been 100% organic based on the relationships that I've built over time. You know, sort of the fix and flip business. We're shooting for five or six properties a year right now. Again, not shooting for the moon, but that's plenty. Oh, and I've got an incredible GC. We've got a great partnership. And anybody who does this understands You know, and he's a guy that I don't have to watch over him. We meet once a week, we walk the project, you know, we design, we partner on every detail. You know, every floor plan decision, I manage sort of the business side of it on the front end, the acquisition side. I deal with all the attorneys, all the banks. I deal with all the agents on the back end when it's time to sell. He focuses purely on construction. And so I think of it as almost like two Venn diagrams where I do what I do, he does what he does and where that overlaps. There's just magic that can happen, and it really comes down to doing what you say you're going to do, doing it with a high degree of integrity, do it the right way, even when it hurts. And sometimes it does hurt, and you have to eat that, and that's the cost of tuition. You know, and we all have to if we do it right, we have to be willing to to pay the cost of tuition. Otherwise, we're not working with integrity. And again, that comes back to the core tenant of Cornerstone. And so out of that comes all of this organic growth that's really rooted in relationships. You know, and like the landscaping piece of it, when you're a buy and hold, you can spend a whole lot of money on landscaping and maintenance. Well, guess what? I got a son that's got two able hands and he is my heir apparent again, going back to legacy. So I've got him starting his own landscaping business. He started pushing a mower. And I said, son, how long do you want to push a mower? You need to start talking to people, learning how to not only attain more business, I want you to go out and get corporate contracts. I don't want you just mowing lawns to mow lawns. You need to talk to people who can come work for you, and they can push the mower. And so he's only in 10th grade, so we're starting to teach him some of those lessons. Again, that goes back to legacy. And all of that's organic, and That's great. You're teaching them a lot of valuable lessons, right? And the ones that will last, you know, talk about legacy. Those will be with him forever, which is great. Um, all right, cool. So, uh, market obviously has changed quite a bit since you got started. What, what have you seen shift in the upstate You know, I'd say the biggest shift since I started were interest rates. Um, You know, I haven't seen a tremendous amount of change in terms of sort of what I would consider the supply and demand. Demand was already super high in 22. It went up in 23, you know, and I'm seeing more and more what I would consider institutional competition. In my space, you know, where I focus very much on single family homes, residential, I ventured into a little bit of the small multifamily, I picked up some duplexes. But it's really, really tough on the sort of the money side of things. Everything's so much more expensive if, in a word, it would just be prices of everything have gone up. And it puts incredible pressure on real estate investors who are paying higher taxes, higher insurance, higher interest rates. Money is expensive right now. And that is in contrast to where we were in 2018, 2019, 2020, money was cheaper. And so you have to really double down on your your ability to manage the expense side of the equation. Rents have not kept up with the price of everything else. I think this is where sometimes landlords get a bad name, where tenants, people out there shopping for rentals consider us to be greedy. Most of us are greedy. I think everything is super expensive. Rents at 2,000 are breaking even all of a sudden. You know, and that's a challenge, but I like the fact that we have so much of a tailwind when it comes to demand for our product. So it just incents me to create an even better product than everybody else that's in the space, you know, sort of competing for those renters. So I try to create a very high quality product at the lowest expense. And so far that has been sort of a recipe That's great. Love that. And that leads me to the next question in terms of, you know, obviously cost are increasing. It makes deals harder to find. I imagine. Um, so when you look at a deal now in today's market, what makes it attractive for you? What do you, when you see a deal, you say, Hey, that that's an attractive Yeah, for sure. It reminds me of when I did the 1031 exchange, sold the lake house, that in and of itself, taking that because you know, the the time constraints of a 1031, I had six months to turn this one property into seven. You know, and so. That's a lot. That, you know, it took a lot. It took systems for me to be able to execute that. And it took great relationships. And sometimes when you're under a time constraint like that, you can you can sometimes let the tax tail wag the dog, you know, and maybe you buy a property that you wouldn't have otherwise bought. It could have been a little bit of that where, you know, I paid a premium because I was buying retail. I was buying off the MLS. you know, because that clock's ticking. What's different now, you know, and it has really nothing to do with the market, when I'm no longer under that time constraint of the 1031, I take my time, the deals are there, you know, and you have to have by way of these relationships, I'm finding off market deals left and right, so much so that I can't even take advantage of them. So in a sort of a surgical way, I am giving deals to people I have relationships with. I have other landlords that I'm taking tenants that I have no space for, and I'm helping them drive down their vacancies. And so it's this ecosystem of relationship. And what's different is that I no longer feel like I have to pay a premium. There are so many off market, I'll say problems again, you know, bigger problem you can solve, the bigger the opportunity, you know, the upside on the back end. And so I've got real estate agents that are aware of what we do, how well we do it, you know, we have high integrity, we have high quality. So they bring me deals. You know, I do a little bit of driving for dollars on Fridays, I go to the best neighborhoods, and I look for the worst house in those neighborhoods. And I've got a flyer, I'll drop in mailboxes. you know, that has changed a lot too over the last three years, I would say there's so much more of that people buying old, ugly houses. And so there's a ton of competition. But there are still plenty of off market deals. And that's where I really focus my attention because those are opportunities for me to come on, you know, and help a seller solve a problem that they otherwise can't sell. They can't go to a bank. They can't sell the property because they don't have the funds to fix it up. And here I am, I can come in and Love that. That's a great way to look at it. You know, a lot of people look at real estate investors, and I think you mentioned earlier, or landlords and say, oh, you're greedy, right? You're trying to make money off. But really, at the end of the day, you're just trying to solve a problem, right? And Let's talk a little bit about AI. I think you've got some experience in that. That's a very hot topic today, right? And I think we can focus it a bit. First, tell us a bit what you do in the AI space. And then I'd love to hear from you also is how do you think AI is going to impact the Yeah, AI is where I spend the vast majority of my time. So I'm an advisor for a company called ASAP, ASAP with two Ps. We have been for the last 10 years, so we consider ourselves a startup. But that was a W2 job that I had up until August of last year. And then I left and became an independent contractor. They asked me to stay on as an advisor. And so we work with really Fortune 500 companies who are trying to figure out how to install artificial intelligence into their very complicated technology stack, their convoluted processes. They have data all over the place. They've never really put all of that data to good use. Data is sort of the fuel that makes the AI engine go. And the better the data, the better the output. So it's like garbage in, garbage out. So I spend a lot of time working with these large enterprises, looking at their current operations, saying, here's where we can add intelligence in a way that will actually change your business outcomes. It's not this feature that you bolt on and, you know, it helps us do more work faster. No, it actually changes It's massive, you know, and it's also massively hard. But I would say history will show that the ones that took on the challenge, those will be the companies that go further fastest. And anybody that's still sitting on the sidelines, I would consider it an existential threat. to their survival long-term because AI is going to, the way I think about it, in probably five years, maybe seven, AI will just become part of the environment. It's not going to just be this chat GPT thing that I type in a question and it spits out this great answer. No, it's going to be in everything that we use. It'll be in the walls. It'll be in the coffee maker. It'll just become part of the environment, a little bit like the internet. The internet's just ubiquitous. And you couldn't imagine meeting a person who says, you know what? No, I'm not going to use the internet. I'm playing wait and see. AI is going to be a lot like that. There is no playing wait and see. We all need to be using it. And I think from a real estate perspective, There are tremendous amounts of data that are out there that when all of this comes together, and it's already available today. So you think about the Zillows and the Redfins and all of the websites that exist today, that you would have to go to these disparate sources to go find deals, to go find information, market trends. all of that will sort of fade into the background. And you will be able to go to, you know, like a chat GPT in the short term, and you will be able to ask it anything that you want to ask it. And it will bring forward deals, it will bring forward problematic areas in whatever zip code crime rates, all the things that you need to know to really identify location, because I am a firm believer for real estate investors, it all begins with location. That's a cliche for a reason, location, location. And so I think AI's ability to bring all of these disparate sources of data together into a comprehensive answer is just more than the human mind can do. And it's more work than we're often able to do by going to all of these different sources. It will pull it together in a very effective way to help you identify where should I point the investment engine next. That's huge. I love that. So let's say I'm individual real estate investor. I'm not a fortune 100 or fortune 500 company. I just want to get ahead of the curve. What's, what's one thing that I should learn in AI today or focused on be focused on learning to get me ahead I think in an answer, it's going to be get really comfortable speaking to whatever the AI is that you have access to. Today, I use Claude and I use ChatGPT. I just need something to compare the answers to. And what's happening right now with a lot of the real estate specific entities, like I mentioned Zillow as an example, they are on the AI train. They're trying to use AI to make their website more useful. to do a lot of the things that I just mentioned. Unfortunately, I don't think that will be the long-term answer for them. I think a lot of these websites, like I said, will fade into the background and we will be able to use whatever sort of LLM, you know, large language model solution, whether it be Anthropic, it be OpenAI, there will be a host of others. Gemini at Google is a pretty good one. You will be able to go in and you will be able to type what it is that you are looking for. I would say right now, the way to do this is to get really good at using these LLMs, pick a couple, do some A-B testing, see what outputs are most useful to you. Because it's going out to the Zillows and the Redfins and all the other realtor.coms of the world, and it's already scraping those websites for the information we need. Well, if I were you and us as relatively new to the AI industry as real estate investors, get really good at those prompts. Asking better questions will give you better outputs. And I think that's a very iterative process. I have watched myself over the last year get better at asking the AI for certain information. As I like that. I think I've seen it in my life too. It's like, I think there's two things. One, practice makes perfect, right? So continue to practice using it. But to your point, like ask better questions, you're going to get better results. And I mean, that's in life, right? Whether AI or not, but if you do that with AI, your results are going to improve. I like that. All right, let's get into purpose. Um, we've got a couple more segments here. We'll talk about purpose and then we'll do a rapid fire close. Uh, like, uh, I like to do at the end, but, um, I think it, you know, from our, our discussion previously, and at the beginning of this, this call, you talked a lot about purpose and kind of teased it a little bit, but talk about what drives you personally and what your purpose is day in day out beyond just making Oh, for sure, yeah. I'm constantly reminded, with four kids, the importance of that legacy. And real estate just happens to be the vehicle in which this legacy, which is, we all should want something that's going to outlive us. And I don't think you can, if your purpose ends with, how much money can I make? How many doors? If your purpose is a number, you're never going to reach it. because I've had the good fortune to, by way of these W-2 jobs, climbing the corporate ladder, I've had the good fortune of making a lot of money. I remember when I was doing that call center job in 2000, I'm two years from graduating from Clemson. I remember the thought of thinking, if I could just get to $70,000 a year, that's all I need. And I got there. And guess what? That didn't quite do it. And I've learned now that I'm old and wise, I've learned that as long as your purpose is a number, doesn't matter if it's dollars or doors, you're never gonna get there. And so, purpose has to be something bigger than ourselves. And for me, it's leaving something for my kids. And what they do with it will be totally up to them. I try to, again, hold things loosely. I don't try to become too prescriptive. But I do want to leave them in a better place than where I was left. You know, never received anything from my family. Everything at Cornerstone Upstate is 100% my blood, sweat and tears. You know, started working at W-2 at 14 years old, pretty much never stopped. You know, and then in August at 52 years old, I was able to walk away from the W-2. You know, what a blessing. Because it's not so much about financial freedom, it's about time freedom. And that's what real estate has provided for me is time freedom. And that's what I think we should all be striving for. And so if it's a number, you'll never get there. Realize that early. And so my purpose is really making sure that I put my kids in a place where I don't have to worry about them after I'm gone, and that I do all of that in a way that's honoring God. And that clearly informs exactly how we show up at Cornerstone every Talk about that a bit further. How does your faith drive how you show up every single day, even during the Oh, it starts with reliability. And I mentioned integrity earlier. We do what we say, even when it hurts. And I always tell my crews, I'm like, we're not going to take shortcuts. And I'm looking for shortcuts. And if we take them, we're going to do it over. I had a flip. I guess it was earlier this year. It was probably a mistake of mine. I wasn't clear, but they put three tab shingles on this house. And I made them take three tab shingles off and replace it with 30 year architectural. Take them off, you know, and I ate that. But that's the cost of tuition. And so it's little things like that, where if you're going to say you're going to be committed to making the Greenville community better and more beautiful, in spite of all the craziness that's happening, all the craziness that can happen can sometimes cause us to get distracted and lose heart. It sometimes feels like the world's rapidly running in the wrong direction. So all of what I'm doing doesn't really matter. I'm just working here with 13 doors, you know, four or five flips a year. Does that really matter? Yes, it matters. It matters in how you show up every single day. And do you show up in a reliable way, high quality product, solving problems in a way that genuinely helps people get into their first home, helps your tenants really have a great experience. This is their home. You know, and so that informs how I perform maintenance. Am I doing my quarterly maintenance inspections? Am I changing air filters? It's all those little nuances. Again, I don't outsource any of my property management. I'm about as hands-on as you can get. And it's because I'm completely married to sort of this God-centered expectation that I do everything with excellence. And it's all for the people that are sort of under my care, whether it be my tenants or it be the buyers of the homes that we're fixing I love that. And that could be huge impact. I know you mentioned like, oh, well, you know, sitting here with 13 rentals, how much impact you make, but it's like. Think about the 13 families that are in that house. Right. And then the amount of those people then that they can make an impact on just because they have a better living situation and they have a landlord that takes care of them. Right. And then you think about your crews. Right. And you just multiply it by all the people that you touch every single year. It's huge. Right. And the people that they touch, because. Maybe they're in a better mood today because hey, Chris was nice to me today or Chris gave me an extra bonus or Chris did the right thing and so I'm gonna do the right thing, right? I And I think that's part of the abundance mindset, you know, so my GC gets a bonus when he finishes ahead of schedule. Why not? You know, we all win, there's plenty to go around. But so often we sort of, we cling to this scarcity mindset, and it causes us to take shortcuts. And unfortunately, I have worked with some GCs before I've, you know, I formed this relationship with my current one. Too many shortcuts. And I took people too often for their word. And I paid the price. And that was my cost of tuition. And so I now have this trust but verify mindset. And so you have to be very judicious when it comes to these relationships, and you have to inspect what you expect. So it is work, but man, is it worth it. If you do it right, and you've got a purpose that's bigger than just yourself, because I like to say a man who's caught up in his self makes for a very small package. And there's probably been times where I've been selfish, and I haven't always had this abundance mindset. And it's one where you have to take on the risk. And that's where my faith comes in. I know that he provides. There's too many times in my past where I didn't see a way out. And he led me there. He led me through the darkest days. And I want my kids to see that. Again, it goes back to legacy. They watch everything we do. And so I want them to see how I run Cornerstone. I bring them to every project. You know, we go into these homes that we're fixing and flipping and we write prayers inside the walls before we drywall it. Love it. Love it. You know, and so there's so many ways that you can have a meaningful life that's guided by this purpose that's bigger than ourselves. Anybody who's, you know, stopping at a number, you know, eventually you'll realize that Yeah, love that. That's great advice. All right. Let's conclude with some rapid fire questions here. I've got five questions for you and would love to hear Oh, that's a tough one. My favorite business book is probably. Honestly, it have to be, I hate to say it, Robert, Rich It feels like such a cliche, but it was such a mindset shift for me because I grew up in, like I've said in this conversation, you know, I spent all of those years working at W2 and it never became so clear to me until I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, you know, we're taught to work for money instead of having money work for us. And this is all I teach my kids right now. I beat it into their brains because, again, it comes back to time freedom. And I gave up so much time wearing the corporate chains. It was a gift to me. Don't get me wrong. I'm appreciative of it. I'm glad that I had as much success. It laid the foundation that we're talking about today. But there's so many better ways to do it. And I want my children to have the time freedom that comes from sort of that rich dad mindset. So sorry for the Oh, it's a good one. And it's impacted a ton of people. All Oh, you will not believe I am a big fan of biographies. I have learned so much by trying to read as many biographies because there's so much wisdom in learning from their experiences, even in industries that are 150 years old. I love Warren Buffett. I love Charlie Munger. These biographies are super powerful, but Rockefeller just had a way about him that was different. And a lot of people misunderstand Rockefeller, Awesome. Love it. I'm gonna have to look at that for sure. All right. Oh, man, it's got to be the sort of the abundance, the availability of abundance. And maybe some of this is the market in which we work. Greenville County is such a, not only is it beautiful and it's popular, but there's so much to go around. And I talk a lot about time freedom. This is part of the reason why I've chosen not to have employees. Growing up in corporate culture, I had lots of employees, and so there's plenty of reasons not to have employees. But the biggest one for me now is that I can't preach time freedom. and put all of these people under my employment, what I do is I try to give back to as many of my contractors as I can. I employ the same cleaner for my midterm, short-term rentals. Wherever I can go deep, I find the person that's really going to deliver for me. And I go deep with them. I give back as much as I can for them, rather than spreading it super thin. And that's an opportunity for me to really make a difference in their lives, where they too can have some time freedom that's often come by way of financial freedom. And it comes back to relationships. You probably hear it on all your podcasts, the core of a successful real estate, a purpose-driven real estate business Love it, love it. All right, last question for you here You know, I think when I contrast what we do to what I've seen a lot of landlords and real estate investors do, A lot of those folks don't have a willingness to get their hands dirty, you know, and so it comes down to how consistently do you inspect your properties? You know, we do a lot of turnover, obviously, on the short-term and mid-term side. How often are you in there inspecting the plumbing, inspecting the air filters, inspecting the water heater? You know, we sort of have this set it and forget it mindset. We don't like to be as hands-on. Maybe even sometimes people think that, well, those tasks are below me. You know, I'm just an investor. No, if you want to create a great experience for your tenants or your buyers, then you need to be hands on. And so I am in the trenches. And I think this maybe is rooted in how I grew up. I've never been ashamed to do any job. I don't care if I'm the founder and CEO or if I'm cleaning toilets. It doesn't matter. Because for me at all, sort of the cumulative outcome of all of that work is these great experiences, you know, and that's what I'm really married to. And I believe when I do that well, and I do that consistently, I'm inspecting what I expect, whether I do the work or it's someone that's, you know, working for me. When I do that, it's the most God-honoring thing I can do. And it really is what stands cornerstone, upstate, up, and different Love it. Well, I appreciate you coming on, Chris. This has been really great. You shared a lot of great information about entrepreneurship, AI, purpose, faith. So really, really valuable. I appreciate you being here. If Robert, we didn't talk any about social media, because I don't recommend people reach out to me on social media. You can find me on Facebook, and if you do, but know that I really use Facebook only for business purposes. There's some Facebook groups that I think are incredibly useful, but that's about the extent of it. Anything else I find, for me, this isn't a knock on anybody else. For me, it's a huge distraction and I just don't have time for it. I can't get into the scrolling. So to answer your question, you can email me at chris at cornerstoneupstate.com or you can just call me 864-214-6757. I don't mind. I love making relationships with people. And if we can do business together, I am open to every possibility. I am very focused on Greenville County. And so if you have something that will help make Greenville County a better community, I'm all in. Call me, email me, Awesome. Well, hey, appreciate you joining and thank you to everyone for listening and tune in for the next Purpose Driven Investor. Thanks for listening to The Purpose Driven Investor. If today's episode sparked an idea or inspired you to make an impact, connect with me at howellandsons.com. Join our community of purpose-driven investors who are helping families find stable homes while building real returns. Because when