Table of Contents
Podcast Transcription
Dave Dubeau [00:00:08] Hey, everyone, this is Dave Dubeau here with another episode of the property Profits Real Estate podcast, and today we’ve got a special real estate investment club spotlight interview. And it’s my pleasure to be interviewing Detra Harris from Strive Wealth Builders. It’s a club based in Albany, California, which is close to San Francisco, so. Welcome to the podcast.
Detra Harris [00:00:32] Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Dave Dubeau [00:00:37] Well, I’m excited to talk to you because you’ve got a thriving club going on and one of my favorite cities in the states. San Francisco are pretty close to it. I’m just up the street here from you and beautiful British Columbia, Canada. So just a few blocks up the road from you guys.
Detra Harris [00:00:53] And just a few blocks up.
Dave Dubeau [00:00:57] So detour, let’s start with this. Tell me a little bit about your club. I love the names. Drive wealth builders. How did this come to be? So tell us about your club and how many members you’ve got. How long you guys have been going for that sort of thing?
Detra Harris [00:01:16] Yeah, it’s great. So again, thank you for having me. So as you said, we’re located in the San Francisco Bay Area. My husband and I, we formed strike of builders at just about eight years ago, 2014. We formed strike wealth builders. And the reason being behind that at the time, I was laid off from my Corporate America job, and a year later, my husband was also laid off. So we knew that we had to find a way to build wealth and not to be dependent on a job and JLP, right? And so one of the ways that we decided to do that was to collaborate with some of our local residents, and we formed sidewalk builders by attending our small meetups and at restaurants with just a handful of us. And it grew over the over the years. And so we decided to form a legal corporation and build our network. And that’s what we’ve been saying for the last eight years. So wonderful. Yeah, yeah. We specialize in working with real estate investors, helping our members to increase their passive incomes and learn to grow their real estate business and build great relationships, also to develop personal values, which include self-worth and, of course, grace. Close many great deals and add value to newbies. So we’re really, I really love working with new investors and bring them bringing them this business. It’s very rewarding for me.
Dave Dubeau [00:02:52] So, Dieter, which is that is really fascinating where you and your husband are actively involved as real estate investors before you started the club or did you kind of grow with the club and kind of, we’re all in this together. We’re learning as we go kind of thing.
Detra Harris [00:03:07] Well, thanks for asking. No, my background is family and real estate for the last 30 years. I am a licensed real estate agent. I am also having several credentials in property management. I have worked in corporate America as a portfolio asset manager for some of the largest property management companies in the United States. So I travel quite a bit managing assets, apartment assets for other investors. We also have a smaller property. We have some duplexes and some single-family homes. I started my career with fixed and flipping over twenty five years. And yes, I am telling my age. I started fixing, flipping and then I moved into rental ownership. And today are my love, and my passion is multifamily, affordable housing. I am affordable housing advocate and I really spend a lot of time working with our communities and our local nonprofits. We also have a nonprofit organization that we offer transitional housing. And so yes, we I have been in the real estate industry for several years, so I am not new.
Dave Dubeau [00:04:21] No, definitely not. Oh, well, that’s that is interesting. But I really admire the action that you and your husband took under that very difficult situation that time when you both lost your nice corporate jobs. And now it’s fortunately created a really good background in real estate, real estate investing. But just the fact that you decided, Hey, let’s jump in, let’s take massive action. Let’s create a group of people around us, expand our network and help other people to succeed through real estate investing. So you’ve been running the club for, I believe you said, almost eight years now. Yes. How many people do you have actively involved in the club, but at any particular time at?
Detra Harris [00:05:06] We have about 300 to 350 members that are active, our membership base is now over eighteen hundred and we provide several opportunities for not only new investors, but we also serve as sophisticated and accredited investors as well through several different events that we promote monthly. And then we also have some training opportunities and we have a loan program for investors to seek and funding opportunity. But one thing before I forget that I want to mention to you, that’s really, really a niche that we have very different from other areas is that we practice six drive principles. So the drive is that we’re in them, which means sacrifice, true relationships, integrity, value, education and our niche is strive represents a personal development and one building represents a business development. And so we tie into two and we talk about growing passive in your passive income people illustrates the state quite often, and we use a model called a wealth ratio that we use to determine where our past income is and in comparison, to our monthly expenses. And we use a scale to measure our growth and that’s what we practice.
Dave Dubeau [00:06:36] I think very it sounds very, very practical.
Detra Harris [00:06:39] Yes.
Dave Dubeau [00:06:40] Oh, that’s great. That’s wonderful, because a lot of things are just seem kind of out there, but it sounds like you guys are really providing people with tools to not only learn about real estate investing, but to track their progress and to keep them on track, so to speak, so more much more accountability.
Detra Harris [00:06:59] So yes, financial literacy is very important.
Dave Dubeau [00:07:03] Oh, definitely. So, Deidre, it sounds like you and your husband are probably part of other real estate investment clubs and organizations prior to starting to strive, and you’ve got eight hundred people that are part of your organization now. What are some of the most important reasons that real estate investors should consider joining a club or an RIA or an organization like this?
Detra Harris [00:07:31] No one is networking is real estate, it’s a relationship business, and growing strong relationships is vital to improving your portfolio. Terms of building relationships with lenders, with other investors that may become your joint venture partners for syndication purposes. Also for attorney, if you have legal issues or if you have, you need your questions answered. And again, you mentioned surrounding yourself with likeminded people with awesome motivation, especially under the pandemic and struggles we’ve been having afford new investors as well as seasoned investors. It really helps to surround yourself with likeminded people that can help you get through your challenging days. So that’s been very successful. Press and building and building capital. Having access to capital is number one.
Dave Dubeau [00:08:31] Yeah, well, you well, I think the shortcut to creating your power team is a huge benefit, right? So you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, you don’t have to go out that people quite as much. I mean, you’re hanging around with other folks that are actively doing what you want to do. It is an ultimate shortcut, I would say.
Detra Harris [00:08:52] Absolutely. And the trust trustworthy people, you surround yourself with trust and there’s a lot of scammers in this industry. Dishonesty. And it’s very important to feel confident and comfortable with the partners that you decided to do business with.
Dave Dubeau [00:09:10] Yeah. So you help do some of the vetting for people as well there. Exactly because the scam artists don’t tend to hang around the same club for very long. That’s for sure. Yes. And they get they get ahead. They get shuttled out of town pretty quickly. All right. So we talked a little bit about the pandemic. How has that affected your club in your organization? I know it’s had a. It’s kind of a. Causative yet negative type of negative thing, yet in certain ways, this kind of positive, a lot of clubs have gone online and kind of expanded their reach. How about you guys? How or how has the pandemic affected
Detra Harris [00:09:50] the system where you’re exactly right? There’s been some good and some bad. Of course, the pandemic is awful, and what it’s done to our economy is awful to the world. However, you know, usually in real estate, a downturn, or usually it affects our industry in a lot of ways in multifamily. Absolutely, absolutely. So there’s been pros and cons under the pandemic for one way, and we’ve started our club. It was local and Bay Area. We would hope we would hold in-person events here at our office in Albany. And actually, we started in Oakland and we had an office in Oakland. Then we moved to Albany, but we would hold five events. Once the pandemic hit, we forced us to go online and in Zoom meetings, lots of Zoom meetings. So that allowed us to scale, and it gave us exposure to other investors in different areas, in different states. And as a matter of fact, in one year, our membership base increased three times. Wow, that’s impressive. Yeah, absolutely. And now in this market, as we do as investors, it’s been a somewhat challenging for the new investors, and it’s endemic that it’s seeking funding because the Olympic industry changed their criteria and requirements significantly. So that’s been a little bit challenging for some new investors to get their feet wet and get skin in the game, as we say in this industry. And there’s been some low supply inventory as well. So some of our real estate agents that are a part of our plan because our club is not only for real estate investors, but we also have several service providers. We have several real estate agents in different states that are apart. So we’ve been watching them have some challenges. Also with inventory and being able to compete in this in this market. So that’s been challenging. But the family, with the exception of the moratorium, that’s been hurting a lot of our investors as well as our investment team. However, we still have managed to survive through the moratoriums. And as a matter of fact, you know, a lot of this statistic doesn’t show that the majority over 90 percent of renters in the United States are paying their rent. So there, you know. So yes, some of your A-Class buildings and ownerships, they’ve been suffering because people just can’t afford the ones that have been unemployed and laid off just have to move. They have to downsize so that that market has been impacted. But for the most part, multifamily continues to strive. Go, figure. And in this market, and it makes sense. Yes. So we’ve been so. So we’re just really pleased with our growth and meeting great people and all around the country. It’s just been great.
Dave Dubeau [00:13:09] That’s wonderful. Now here’s one of my favorite questions for four club directors when we’re having these interviews. What is your number one member success story that pops into your mind? If I ask you what an example of would be one of your members at the Join Your Club is just done. Some wonderful things.
Detra Harris [00:13:34] That would be a. Well, I have several there’s so many, but I again, my love is working with new investors because a lot of times they believe that they cannot do it. You know, they don’t have a clear plan of how am I going to come up with my down payment for my first property, right? And so obviously, in
Dave Dubeau [00:13:56] a market like San Francisco, you got cheap properties.
Detra Harris [00:14:00] Pretty small. Yeah, very expensive here. And as a matter of fact, one of our club members out of he lives in the San Jose area of San Jose, California. Expensive. Yes, he actually took one of our training courses, and within three months he was able to purchase his first investment property. He was very aggressive. He had very little capital. And he met. He started with our networking and this met as many people as we possibly can. He also signed up for other investment clubs, and he network and built his relationships. He found a job partner. And he was able to land his first deal last March, and that is very impressive because that’s not always easy to do.
Dave Dubeau [00:14:56] Yeah. Well, that’s a wonderful, wonderful story. Congratulations on helping that member two to succeed like that. So Dietrich, time flies when we’re having fun. And if people want to find out more about you and about the strive wealth builders, what should they do?
Detra Harris [00:15:13] They should definitely visit our website at Strive WallBuilders.com. Sign up. There’s no membership fee to join us. That will at least get you on our distribution list, and you start getting our announcements and join us and jump on one of our events if you need training. We have training programs if you’re looking for that funding for your first deal. You can also reach me by email at Rob ETR a drive wealth builders dot com. We are our business is located in Albany. We’re in the Atrium Plaza and we are open for business Monday through Friday. So you can also give us a call. Send us an email. I’d love to talk with you.
Dave Dubeau [00:15:57] That’s wonderful, Deidre. Thank you so much and congratulations on creating, running, maintaining and growing a very successful club.
Detra Harris [00:16:06] Thank you, babe. It’s been a pleasure.
Dave Dubeau [00:16:08] All right, everybody, take care. We’ll see you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning into this special Spotlight episode. Now here a real estate investor and you’re looking to find private money partners and raise capital for your deals. Then check out our money partner formula dot com. We had a free copy of my book. You can find out how to raise six figures or more in six weeks or less. Again, that’s money partner formula dot com.