Clinton Botway
The 1% Revolution: How AI is Killing the 6% Real Estate Commission | Clinton Botway
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"Everything that you can do, AI can do. And I looked at my last name, Botway, and I said, if I don't do it, somebody else is going to do it. So I made the leap and I believe that when you commit to something, you got to do it with both feet.
Key Takeaways
- ◆Clinton's friend from Microsoft walked him through his daily tasks, responding to inquiries, scheduling tours, answering questions, and said AI could do all of it, which pushed him to quit his steady brokerage job and build Botway on Labor Day last year.
- ◆Botway charges 1% (versus the standard 6%) and donates profit from low-income transactions to shelters and food relief in New York City.
- ◆Clinton uses multiple AI models in a feedback loop: he runs output through ChatGPT, then Gemini, then Claude, so each one double-checks and adds 5, 10% to the prior result, his tip for anyone building with LLMs.
- ◆The self-showing system requires a government-issued photo ID, a selfie, background check, and signed waivers; the person who uploads the ID is the only device that can unlock the door during the scheduled two-hour window.
- ◆Clinton partnered with a company that already has 1.5 million apartments set up for self-showing nationally, though New York City has been resistant and only about 100 units are in the system.
- ◆He chose not to raise VC money early because taking outside capital won't help you figure out what your company does, his advice is to bootstrap, fund the MVP yourself or with family and friends, and only raise later if you see 10X or 100X growth.
- ◆Time is the most underrated factor in negotiation: a non-contingent offer 5% lower can be worth more than a higher contingent offer because vacant real estate costs money every day in taxes, mortgage, and utilities.
Full transcript
Show
Chad
Welcome back. This is Chad Paris, founder of Stonefly Consulting and podcast host for Process Over Pressure. You know, some guests walk into an industry, my guest today spent 15 years becoming one of the best at his got to the top and then decided the whole game was broken. He's done more than $400 million in sales and leases across five states. He's led teams managing roughly 3000 apartment units in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. He has a passion for helping those who are less fortunate and giving meaning to new real estate brokerage. When he was at closing deals, he was singing bass on stage at Lincoln Center in Carnegie Hall. Most people with that resume would have built a bigger brokerage. He did the opposite. He walked away from the legacy model entirely and started building something to replace it. An AI powered real estate platform that charges 1 % of the 6 % everyone else charges. and donates the profit from low income transactions to shelters and food relief in New York City. He's the founder and CEO of a Botway. Please welcome Clint Botway.
Clinton Botway
Hey Chad, nice to be with you.
Chad
Glad to have you on here. I've been excited, really been looking forward to having an opportunity to get on the podcast with you. Man, this guy here, people, he's interesting, he's cool, got the Clark Kent vibe, but he's a smart guy. And really I spent some time speaking with him, and so I'm excited about having him on the show today. So next 35, 40 minutes, we're going to...
Clinton Botway
We'll see you.
Chad
Yeah, we're going to dive right in. We're going to have fun and get after it.
Clinton Botway
We'll see if I'm Clark Kent or Peter Parker from Forest Hills.
Chad
There you go. Yeah, he's from Forest Hill. know, let's do Peter Parker, know, some film right there your neighborhood.
Clinton Botway
That's right, that's right. Yeah. Proud resident. America is from Brooklyn. So, and I think Batman might be from Manhattan. So happy to represent all of them. Yeah.
Chad
That's awesome. That's awesome. So Clint, you know, welcome to the show. Let's dive in. You look, you spent, you know, a lot of your years, 15 plus years in regular brokerage and doing the American dream of what a lot of people want to do. know, you're not an older guy. You've seen a lot of success. You've done that. And all of sudden you like... You know what? I'm tired of the way that everybody does this. I'm going to start something different. I'm going to flip everything on the script here, what I'm going to do. And so, so, so tell us what, made you do it?
Clinton Botway
Yeah, it's a good question. Sometimes I ask myself the same thing, but basically have 15 years selling real estate, mostly in New York City, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, like you said, a few other states as well when the clients asked us to. But, you know, sold a bunch of different types of real estate. buildings, investments, condos, co-ops, land, single family houses. I don't want to say that I've sold everything, but I've sold a lot of different real estate. And, you know, the process, it's not exactly the same every time, but you're answering the same questions, chasing emails, following up with people, scheduling tours, negotiating over and over and over again, across thousands and thousands of transactions. and thousands of conversations that I've had a thousand times. you know, after 15 years of doing it, realized, and now, you know, there was a new technology that came out a few years ago that everybody's heard of called AI. And, you know, I'm not the only person trying to use AI in real estate, but, One of the things, there's a few things that we can go over that AI is really good at. Number one is answering questions from a data set that you give it, and then aggressively following up with people, that's like a machine. And that's exactly what short form sales is. So if you're selling a coat, if you're selling a car, if you're leasing real estate, The sales cycle is quite short, it's somewhere between let's say one hour and maybe one week. It's not a long form relationship that you have to form with somebody. You want to give people information when they ask it to you. And then, like I said before, follow up aggressively. And AI does that potentially better than humans. And I'm again, not the only one that's thought of this as well.
Clinton Botway
Basically, I was sitting with a friend who works at Microsoft and I walked him through everything that I was doing on a daily basis. This was Labor Day of last year. So responding to inquiries, scheduling tours, answering questions, managing leads, updating clients. And he said, everything that you can do, AI can do. And I looked at my last name, Botway, and I said, if I don't do it, somebody else is going to do it. So I made the leap and I believe that when you commit to something, you got to do it with both feet. So I jumped away from my steady job as a manager at a boutique brokerage and I said, let me build this thing. Let me do as much research as possible. And here we are. The MVP is, which is a minimum viable product, is never going to be a hundred percent done. But it's as done as I'm comfortable and I've done a few test cases where it can rent apartments. Obviously with my help I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. So it works and now I just got to go sell this thing.
Chad
And now I think that's, yeah, I love your passion. know, just like a lot of entrepreneurs that, you know, in your, in your mind, you think of this, right? You come up with something or you think about a, a, something that you want to do and you can, you know, I always tell any entrepreneur, you got to do something that you're passionate about that. That's, that's first or not going to be fun. You know, do something you love doing, you know, kind of make that into a work. So, you know, I know when I. stepped out, people looked at me and said, man, have you lost your mind? I'm sure no one when you said that said, man, that's the greatest thing ever. Did you have those? And said, are you crazy?
Clinton Botway
You know, it's funny that you say that. So the people that I'm pitching to, which is right now it's basically New York City landlords, they say there are more people like that that say I'm crazy. Everybody that I talk to on the street, meaning like family, friends, tenants, people I meet at a party or whatever, they're like, wow, that's an amazing idea. I've, if I've rented a, apartment before in New York city and the real estate broker doesn't get back to me or they, they brush me off or they have, you know, a hundred applications or inquiries already. And they're like, okay, whatever. This person is asking way too many questions. I've had a lot more people say, this is an amazing idea. Who aren't my clients, which is good or bad. It's, it's not going to be for everybody. It's not going to be.
Chad
Yeah.
Clinton Botway
I'm not expecting my market share to be more than one or two or three percent or competitors like me that are doing something similar. But that's a sizable chunk of market share. yeah, listen, it's not going to be for everybody. A lot of people want a person opening the door and selling their apartments. They want somebody's neck on the line. when something doesn't go their way, they want people to think they want agents to really have skin in the game and really work and hustle. I do that as well. It's just in a little bit more of an efficient manner. you know, people, it's been, I'll say not tepid, but there are some real questions going from a human to software. for a lot of people, but I think the vision is there and even the landlords that I've talked to that they might not be saying right now, they recognize that what I'm telling them is more efficient potentially than what their process is right now.
Chad
Yeah. You know, think, I think, you know, New York, for example, you know, it's the apartment renting and building leasing has been a thing for a really long time. I mean, you know, I got friends that have grandparents or great grandparents have had property and, know, they, they have, maybe they, they've had a piece of property or a apartment that they've rented and maybe a rented it for $250 a month on the West side and the property manager now, whatever. so there's just been so much variations over property rentals in New York City over the years. think what makes this, what I find and maybe you can elaborate on it is that, this is just a new way to look at it. Like maybe you've done it. the old fashioned way or the way that it's been done for the last 20 years. But we also have a lot of people that don't want that. They just want to find a place to live and they want to feel like they're getting the value. They're okay. They've done enough research in New York. They know where they want to live. They know the building they want to live in. They don't need people to walk them through the building. They don't want that time. They just want a place to live. And I think this is a great resource for them that they don't have to... Literally, you can shop online and find the apartment that you want within a matter of hours, minutes, really.
Clinton Botway
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And then you can go see it maybe not whenever you want, maybe not at 2 a.m., but, you know, somewhat sometime between the hours of seven and eight. And this works, you know, just to be clear, this works everywhere. It works in Connecticut. It works in Texas. It works in California. And I'm not the the only one that's doing it. There's a company that I work with to help open the door.
Chad
Yes!
Clinton Botway
to an apartment and they have about one and a half million apartments available on their system with self-showing capabilities. if anything, New York City specifically is resistant to it. They only have, I'm making this up, 100 units out of the 1.5 million across the nation. There's a few other companies that are doing something similar. They don't really have a foothold in New York City for whatever reason. But this is very common. I would say that people that are renting an apartment, again, it's a short sales cycle. would say, and again, don't think that, I think that an amazing real estate broker, I always used to say this to my team, a hungry, motivated salesperson.
Chad
Yeah.
Clinton Botway
There's nothing more powerful. So you get somebody in the door, you get you talking to somebody who's really passionate about the product. That's amazing. But me personally, I don't think I'm ever going to buy a car because the salesperson is amazing. I don't think I'm ever going to buy a house or rent an apartment because the salesperson is amazing. I think the salesperson is a net neutral.
Chad
Yeah.
Clinton Botway
you know, maybe, and I would say a bad one would be very clearly a net negative. So that's, you know, and that's not totally correct. That doesn't work for everybody, but I think people like speed and convenience as opposed to waiting for, waiting for somebody.
Chad
Yeah, I mean, I think about this and maybe I'm way off, but you know, we're kind of going from a time of, know, I use this as a scenario, car dealerships, right? For people that are, we used to, the only way cars were ever done transactionally was you go into the dealership and you met with with a cell guy and he said, Hey, come out here, let me show you this new Lincoln. And you go out there and you look at it you touch it and you feel it and you crank it and you drive it and you come back and yeah, I want this. Let's come on inside. And look, there's still transactions done today.
Clinton Botway
Most of them, most of them for sure.
Chad
But there's a lot of people, a lot of people that, you know, with the way of the internet's availability is today, you can get online and search, you know what you want. You've been, you've seen the cars, you've looked at them, they're on the road. You're like, this is what I want. I want this car. I have several friends that get online and find a car they want and they send it into the dealership and say, this is a car I want. Just tell me where to send you the check. I don't need to come in look at it. This is what I want.
Clinton Botway
Yeah, if they already test drove it and they know they like it or that specific model. Yeah, I mean, you you look at Carvana and you look at Amazon and you look at Tesla, which has a similar model to Carvana. They don't have actual dealerships. I wouldn't buy the stock, but, you know, the process is online, like you said.
Chad
And I think this relates to exactly what
Chad
Absolutely.
Chad
Absolutely.
Clinton Botway
That's what people want and not to be ageist or anything like that, but people my age, I'm 37 and younger, they don't want to talk to a human, which I think is kind of sad and maybe that's a different conversation to have, but people like texting. People don't want to talk on the phone. Again, I like talking on the phone. I like talking to my older clients on the phone and they like talking to me and whatever, but we're going to a place where convenience is king, speed is king. And that's what people want. I think that, you know, we could talk about this a little bit more later, but price is what you pay, value is what you get. So, you know, your friends shopping the same car, you know, in 10 different states or five different states close by to them, you know, they're looking for the best deal. That's what everybody wants. I think that's what wins as long as the execution is there as well.
Chad
Yeah, I totally agree. I think, you valuation of you said something there that really, really kind of got me thinking there for a second, you know, value, what do we, what do we think about a value in a transaction, right? Because we talk about transaction. mean, this is, this is a transaction. What I do is a transaction. Everything's a transaction when you own a business. And, and we typically, most people always think about a transactional is a dollar amount, is a, is
Clinton Botway
Sure.
Chad
a cost, it's this amount, this is what it costs, this that's what they kind of think about. And I think about transaction a little bit deeper in that, that if I'm a business owner and I am trying to accomplish something or I'm trying to grow or I'm trying to develop or I'm trying to get to something that I want, sometimes it's beyond just the dollar transactional. It's what is the, what is the services that I'm using going to give me in return? Is it going to help me to get to, you know, a sell faster? Is it going to have me get to a dollar amount that I want to earn faster? Is it going give me that nice apartment that I want? What is that? And that's where I think people especially are starting to realize that a transaction, while we still get caught up in pricing and everybody does, it's really, I like to say it this way, what is the ROI I'm getting out of the transaction? Because if your ROI is really good from the transaction you're having, did it really matter what it costs?
Clinton Botway
Yeah, Yeah, listen, I think the lower price that you pay, again, you're getting better value. I do think, and I've done, since I've been building my product the last, let's say four, six, five months, I've been doing a lot of, and I'm trying to code my chat bot, trying to code my... basically my LLM or a version of let's say a plugin to the clause, the chat GPTs, perplexities, whatever it is. I've been trying to code the best negotiation strategies, how to set up a negotiation, how to think about frameworks to accept or not accept an offer or what to counter at, basically decision science. the most underrated, most important factor of a transaction that people don't think about, and this is from conversations, thousands of lines of texts with the LLMs, is time. Time, once spent, cannot be retrieved. And so if you have a vacant apartment or if you have a home that you don't live in anymore, because you moved somewhere else for a job or family or whatever it is. Not only are you not receiving any value from it, it's also an expense, right? Because it's not free to own real estate. You got to pay taxes, you got to pay your mortgage, utilities, everything like that. So time and that's also, you know, when you're evaluating offers, that's why non-contingent offers are so powerful, right?
Chad
Yeah. yeah.
Clinton Botway
With a contingency, you could get, of course, re-traded. Mortgages take a ton of time. Title insurance takes a ton of time. Inspections, scheduling inspections take time. A non-contingent offer, it's making this up 5 % less, but it's basically a sure thing, or if they don't close, you get to keep 10 % or 5 % or whatever is negotiated from a sale. It's time that makes it powerful, not necessarily, you know, not contingent.
Chad
Yes, that's so true and oftentimes forgotten. So you've been in business, you've seen how businesses work and here you are now, you've got your own thing. Honestly, how's it been? How's the journey been? there been things that you've been, you've been like, you know, I'd probably if I had a chance to go back a month later or earlier, would.
Clinton Botway
I did
Chad
I'm everything has been very easy and successful, right? Always is, right?
Clinton Botway
Yeah, listen, everything, especially with tech, everything, takes longer and is more expensive and more difficult than you think when, you know, when your contractor gives you the quote, it's never on time and under budget. That's not totally true with what I'm building. I do have a good team that I'm pretty satisfied with. listen, the obvious... Difficulty, I'll say two things. The obvious difficulty for me, I don't have a tech or technical background. I'm a real estate broker. Doesn't mean I don't like using technology. Doesn't mean I don't like setting up systems for myself, but building something from the ground up with no coding experience isn't something that I was prepared to do by myself. So again, I hired a team. I use Claude and Chat GPT and Gemini every day and I'm teaching myself the things that I need to know. But what's really amazing about this AI revolution that we're in right now, and there's a brand new model dropping every week that seems to stocks down or software stocks and real estate stocks down, is that You don't need to know how to code to code. Right? So, and, and I'll give it, this is an interesting tip and trick for everybody to use. the best LLM is not one LLM. It's all of them. So, you know, you do an output in, in GPT, you give it to Gemini, and it'll, it'll search, you know, these questions, what people are actually asking, you know, it's double checking the work, adding onto it. You put it into Claude, it'll do the same thing. This is where it's lacking or, this is really good. You know, here's an extra five or 10%. So that's a little tip and trick and something that I've been doing. do know what works and what doesn't work. I won't compare myself to Steve Jobs, but he didn't know how to code. He wasn't a technical person either. You should be able to, for me at least with a product, you should be able to look at it.
Clinton Botway
and kind of instantly know what's going on, why it's useful, and kind of how to use it. But yeah, going back to your original question, the second answer to how it's going is, listen, some days you wake up, or I wake up and I might feel sick, and not a lot gets done that day, which is a little bit sad. If I don't have an output, yes, I have teams that are working, but the tasks that I set out for myself that day didn't happen or maybe only half of them happened. that's really the challenge with solo entrepreneurship is motivating your own self and keeping your own self in check and trying to pick up the pieces when you might have an off day if you're sick or...
Chad
Yeah.
Clinton Botway
you know, you get stuck on the subway or something like that.
Chad
Yeah, mean, listen, anybody tells you that, you know, being an entrepreneur is all gravy, is lying to you. There's days where it's a beat down. I mean, you look yourself in the mirror and you go, why, what am I doing? And then there's days that I find it most rewarding. I sit there and go, man, just, the happiest, you know, I tell people, since I've walked out and started my own company,
Chad
It's been some of the happiness that I've had in 15 plus years, because I'm doing something that I know is meaningful and it matters and it's going to be successful. And I get to be the workhorse behind it and the benefit of the success and the failures. And I think there's some reward in that to know that everything that happens is an outcome that you've had a piece in, that you have a small piece in that. You know, it's just a different world. And I tell people, if you're looking at being an entrepreneur, it's not the faint for everyone, but I tell you, if you, if you have a passion, do it, go do it, right? Go do it, step out and do it. Cause you're not going to get, know, you can't look back and go, I should have, or I wish I would have. Go do it. Just go do it.
Clinton Botway
That's what I told my wife and my friends before I quit my job. If I don't do it, somebody else is gonna do it. And then I'm gonna say, man, I had that idea.
Chad
Yeah, that's true. It's so true. So one of the things that we had talked about, I'd like to kind of discuss a little bit about, or you discuss it, I hear you got a new app about to launch here in the next day or so.
Clinton Botway
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd love to tell you about it. Sure. So, let's see. So, you know, when I set out to build my company, I had never said, man, I need an app. I feel like apps, you know, I have a memory of apps from, let's say 2012, 2010s, where, you know, not to say it's a joke, but it's like,
Chad
Nothing else to add.
Clinton Botway
Just because you have an app doesn't mean you have a business. So I was never like, man, I really need an app. That's the only way that I'll have a tech business, right? So I will say though that with this new age of AI and technology, something that Zillow spent years and years of making and
Chad
Heh.
Clinton Botway
hundreds of man hours or thousands or God knows how many man hours and dollars into their app. I spent a few thousand dollars in a few tens of hours building. But basically the idea behind the app is that you can search for properties. It's not outside. It's not anything that I don't control. So it's only going to have my exclusive listings on both for rent right now and eventually for sale. Eventually I'm going to upload the, you know, the MLSs that I belong to and all of the properties that are publicly available. But I don't think that I'm competing with Zillow. That's kind of a fool's errand. And I am giving information and location and everything like that, like a Zillow or a Trulia or a realtor.com or whatever. So giving information on my exclusives. You can apply, can chat with Botway, which is my chatbot. It's connected to GPT, has all those negotiation playbooks that I was sharing earlier. And you can ask about the property and it has all the information that I know about the property as well. So that's pretty cool. But the biggest thing that, and the reason that I actually built the app is because I want people to be able to access the real estate, go inside of an apartment or a building when I'm not there. So I take security very seriously. everybody who tours, and I'm also, we don't need to go into, you know, the best way to run a listing, but basically you want to let anybody who's interested and qualified into your
Chad
Mmm.
Clinton Botway
apartment or house or whatever it is. That's how you create the most demand and that's how you sell for somebody to be in the apartment. Step one is make people feel like they're in a building or an apartment or a home before they go in. That self-selects a lot of people. You share a really good video or a 3D tour. with a voiceover explaining what's going on and great pictures, great marketing assets. You want somebody to feel like they've already been to the apartment before they've actually gone to the apartment. So that's step one with marketing. Step two is let them go when they're available within reason. let's say, I think I said this earlier on the call, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., let's say. I think those are pretty reasonable hours. And then... you, the person has to upload a photo ID. We collect all of their contact information, make sure that the information that they uploaded is accurate by sending them, you know, some pings. They upload a, so it's a government issued photo ID that we, that we background check basically. They take a selfie and then that person that uploads their photo ID is the only, device that can get access to the apartment. And we have them sign a bunch of waivers and stuff like that. then once they get to the building, there's basically a big orange button that pops up onto the screen, which is open the front door only during a specific time window that we set with the owner. let's call it two hours. You might want to. coffee and come back or maybe your boyfriend or girlfriend is late or something like that showing up. Point is that you don't have to wait around for a real estate broker to open the door for you when they're running late or you're running late or early or whatever it is. It's a little bit more flexible. so that's the whole point of the app is just getting somebody in the door. And then once somebody's in the door,
Clinton Botway
Yes, all of the information is already pulled up because they have the app open and they just use the code to get in or press the button to open the door or whatever it is. And then if they have any questions, they can call, text or email or chat with Botway through the app and apply right there. If we don't hear from the person, we're going to follow up with a survey. Hey, what did you think? takes 60 seconds to fill out, tap a few buttons, a few open field boxes if they want to write anything. And we'll send them the application as well. they basically go into the system and they'll get followed up with a certain number of times. And that's how you rent an apartment. You open the door, give people information, answer any questions that they have, and then follow up with them until they say yes or no.
Chad
Bye.
Clinton Botway
That's how you sell anything, by the way.
Chad
Yeah, that's great. So what is the name of the app? And people were wondering, hey, what is it going to be called? How do I?
Clinton Botway
There's only, know, Chad, the company name was the easy part. The app name, that's the easy part. It's called Botway. Yeah, that's, you know, again, if I don't do it, somebody else is going to do it. And there are some people trying to do the same thing. They don't have the name. I guarantee that.
Chad
Man, you can't go wrong. Why not? That's a great name. Why wouldn't you use that?
Chad
No, they don't. love that bot way. It's great. That's fantastic. Well, you know, as we, as we got to start kind of winding down and we've had an opportunity to talk and learn a little bit about yourself, you know, for, for someone out there that is a young entrepreneur or a business owner, or maybe they're not young, maybe they've been in the business for a really long time. Maybe, maybe they, you know, have a real estate company they've been working at and they're frustrated with it or, or, what, what would be, you know, It's gonna be tough, but maybe one advice that you would give that person that you could say, from your experience of being in that, what would you give them?
Clinton Botway
So the best advice that I could give anybody is find a mentor. If you've already found a mentor, if you're already on your journey, you've been in the industry, if you have a great idea, it kind of be twofold. One would be try it before you buy it, which is try getting your business going, try building it while you still have income, while you still have connections to your company. And number two, you can quit like me, but if you don't have income or a safety net or a wife that's got an amazing job like I do and amazing supportive family, you maybe you shouldn't do it. So either have a business or have a support system. That would be my biggest recommendation because hopefully Everything goes according to plan, but there's like a 0 % likelihood of that happening. And I forget how many small businesses fail or businesses in general fail within the first year or two, but it's something ridiculous, like 90%. And similar, even worse, the same metrics apply to real estate brokers as well. Just, you know, trying to buy, help people buy and sell properties. I think it's like a, you know, 70 % of people are out. within two years or something to that effect. for starting your own company or trying to sell real estate, make sure you have a safety net, make sure you have savings. That's the best advice I could give.
Chad
No, it's great. You you hit on some things that, again, it's not always easy. It takes determination, it takes a process, it takes a repeatable process, it takes a vision, it takes clear understanding, and it also takes the ability to adapt. Because what you have in your mind today may not be the answer in two years, and you have to be willing to say,
Clinton Botway
Absolutely.
Chad
okay, this is not working, we gotta change direction. think that's important and so that's so true.
Clinton Botway
And one of my friends who's an entrepreneur, was, because when I started talking about this seriously and telling people and friends and family and connections and everything like that, know, everybody was like, are you going to raise money? Are you going to go out to a bunch of VCs and raise money? I made the decision not to. And one of my friends who, you he's not in real estate at all, but he's built and sold and now has another company and now has another company that he bootstrapped himself. He told me taking other people's money won't help you figure out what your company does. So you got to figure out what you're doing first, what you're selling, and then if it's, and it could be a lifestyle business. Every person that I talked to about VC money. Not every person, but a lot of people that I talk to about VC money, you don't need to raise VC money for a lifestyle business. Sometimes it makes sense just to, again, if you can, fund it yourself or maybe a small seed round from family and friends who believe in you and your idea. I personally would feel really bad if I raised a bunch of money from family and friends and then didn't give it back. You know, that's just another, it's already stressful enough running a business day to day and dealing with clients. The added pressure of raising money is like, I don't know, I personally couldn't handle it. Now, if I see a vision for the future, we're raising outside capital to get to, you know, a hundred X or 10 X or whatever. If I see some amazing growth happening.
Chad
That's right.
Clinton Botway
and a company taking off where that could make sense. Great. But, you know, the interest, like if I, if I had VC money right now, I might hire some people and I would probably spend most of it on marketing. Like the, tech part, the tech portion of it, again, not to say that it's free, not to say that it's easy. Certainly not. But the tech portion is no longer the most expensive part. It's
Chad
Yeah.
Clinton Botway
Where are my customers and how do I get them to buy?
Chad
Yeah, you're right. Because without the transaction, it's just a nice dream, right?
Clinton Botway
Yeah, you said it.
Chad
Well, listen, what a great time we spent here. I really appreciate you coming on. Again, to learn about you and this amazing company that you're creating. Hats off to you for stepping out there. Not that you have invented, nobody else is doing it, but you have stepped out and said, I want to do it. I want to do it a little bit different. It's admirable and I hope nothing but the best for you and you grow. So if someone was trying to, maybe they're listening and they're in an area where you are located and you get a piece of property, maybe tell them how they would go about even just to begin the search, right? A lot of times it's just, hey, you gotta go experience it, feel it, touch it, see if you like it. How would they do that?
Clinton Botway
Sure, yeah. So I would invite them to go to my website first, botway.ai. They can also email me, clinton.botway.ai. If you want, you could reach out to any of our exclusive listings, chat with Botway, and see if we get back to you in a timely fashion, which should be about one minute. But I think every person is different. Every person needs something different from a real estate broker. And I've played the game long enough to know that I can't control my clients. They're gonna do the best thing for them at their specific time. So I'm really trying to empower people to use My tools, yes, but their own tools and just make better decisions. So if I'm happy to help people sell real estate in the most tactically advantaged way possible in New York and Connecticut as a broker, but anybody who wants advice on any other part of the country. If the transaction is large enough, I'm happy to get my broker's license there. they're welcome to use Botway as a resource, as a free tool to help, again, empower themselves to do a transaction themselves, and again, in the most efficient manner possible.
Chad
That's great. Thank you very much. And guys, always, with me, with Stonefly Black Consultant, I'm here. I mainly focus on companies and businesses that are trying to grow or are trying to figure out what they want to do. And sometimes help them with the processes. That could be through a sales and marketing, it could be through AI automation, I do both. But again, always glad to have guests like Clint on my show. to highlight these companies that are out there that are, look, they're not always getting it right, but they're growing and they're learning, they're taking chances and to share a little bit about their experience and what they're doing. And so, if you're in these markets and you're looking for somebody who's got a great resource, reach out, use it. I encourage you all to give it a try. Just give it a try and see what you like. No obligation if you like it. If it helps you, great. tell other people about it. I know he would appreciate that and I would too. Guys, thank you so much for being on the show today, Clamp. Look forward to you. And as always, this is process over pressure. If you got the right process, you don't feel the pressure. So, Chad Paris glad to have you on the show today. Thanks.
Chad
All right, we'll cut it there. Man, great. I enjoyed it. Thank you for doing that. hope you enjoy it. Okay, good, good.
Clinton Botway
Yeah.
Clinton Botway
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Everything's great. Part of the journey is doing as many demos as possible, getting the story down, getting just, what do I say to this when somebody asks me this? So yeah, I think that's super helpful. Appreciate your time. I appreciate you having me on. And if you're ever in New York City, let's get a few beers.
Chad
Absolutely would love to and hey, if, and for else, if you run in.
Clinton Botway
No fly fishing by me, unfortunately, but upstate Connecticut, where I'm originally from, there's some pretty good fly fishing. So maybe not worth a long trip, but there's stuff for everybody here.
Chad
Hey!
Chad
Absolutely. would love that. And Clint, same thing with me. If you run across something like, hey, man, I could use another set of ears for something, as you grow, I know you mentioned some marketing, things like that. If you're in the market or if you run across somebody that's the market looking for an honest consultant, just look, I don't charge people to listen. There's some things that I can hear and say and offer. I'm in this because I want to help companies grow and be successful. If you ever run across anything like that and you need some help, please feel free to reach out and maybe, know, it's word of mouth, you hear somebody else in need, you could pass them along, pass me along to them.
Clinton Botway
Awesome.
Clinton Botway
Yeah, sure. Yeah, it was great to meet you and same thing. Happy, always happy to talk real estate. or even if I'm getting paid or not, happy to help people out. yeah, Chad, great to meet you and we'll be in touch soon, okay?
Chad
Sounds great.
Chad
Thank you. great, Clint. Bye-bye.
Clinton Botway
All right, bye bye.
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