The Most Dwanderful Real Estate Podcast Ever!

Clint Harris on Transforming Vacant Retail into Profitable Self-Storage

• Dwan Bent-Twyford/Clint Harris • Season 5 • Episode 383

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How can you transform a vacant big-box retail store into a profitable self-storage facility? Join us as we chat with Clint Harris, a general partner at Nomad Capital, who has mastered the art of converting underutilized spaces like old Kmarts and grocery stores into climate-controlled self-storage units. Clint shares his journey from traditional real estate ventures to this innovative niche, explaining the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of these conversions compared to new construction. You'll gain firsthand insights on revitalizing vacant properties and perhaps discover a new avenue for expanding your own real estate portfolio.

We also dissect the world of real estate investing for retirement, exploring the critical differences between accredited and non-accredited investors. Even if you don't meet the SEC's financial criteria, there are still lucrative opportunities available through self-directed retirement accounts. We share personal stories of transitioning from traditional careers to full-time real estate investment, demonstrating how leveraging retirement funds into multifamily properties and Airbnbs can yield substantial returns. Along the way, we emphasize the importance of financial literacy and provide historical context on retirement savings plans like the 401k, debunking myths about the wealth required for these investments.

In our deep dive into real estate syndication strategies, Clint elaborates on the nuances of 506B and 506C syndications, focusing on building trust and relationships with both accredited and non-accredited investors. We discuss the financial strategies involved, the tax advantages of accelerated depreciation, and the societal trends driving the adaptive reuse of retail spaces. Wrapping up on a personal note, Clint shares his family values, daily routines, and long-term real estate goals, emphasizing the importance of hard work, empathy, and gratitude. Tune in to learn how you can turn vacant spaces into valuable assets while instilling crucial life lessons in future generations.

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Make it a Dwanderful Day!

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Hey everybody, welcome to the most wonderful real estate podcast ever. I'm your host, Ddwan Minton-Twyford. I am America's most sought-after real estate investor and I'm super excited that you are on the show with me today. As you can see, I've got a very handsome gentleman over here, so he is our wicked smart man of the day. And if you are new to Dwan-der-ful, I take my name Dwan and wonderful, and I made a new word. So this is the world of Dwan-der-ful. I'm happy that you're in it. I'm happy that you're a part of it. Our motto at Dwan-der-ful is people before profits. So if that resonates with you, I'm your girl, you can go Dwan-der-fulcom and you can opt in and get a free ebook, flip your way to a fortune, and that's it. So welcome on board. So, clint, how are you today?

Clint Harris:

I'm very well. Thank you for having me.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I'm excited to have you on today.

Clint Harris:

Yeah, thanks, happy to be here.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I like all your stripes. It kind of matches the color on your shirt there.

Clint Harris:

Thank you. Yeah, we're going for a whole motif here. This is our little podcast studio.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, this is my background. I'm in Iowa right now and we're working on a bunch of buildings and, well, we're kind of redoing an entire downtown right now, and I moved from one apartment to the other one just last week, so I haven't set up my cool background. So this is my backyard in Florida.

Clint Harris:

How tropical, oh my God.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That sounds good. That's my backyard. I'll put that up on the back today.

Clint Harris:

Love it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

It's all fun, all right. So welcome to the show today. So what we do is we start off having a toast. So are you drinking something?

Clint Harris:

I am.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I got a sparkling water right here. Oh, okay, and y'all know I'm drinking my live enzymes, so cheers.

Clint Harris:

Cheers.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

And all of you listening get your drink, like have a drink, everyone just kind of stretch and, like you know, shake off what's happening in the world right now and just hang out with us and tune in and just spend some time. And you out with us and tune in and just spend some time and you'll love us. So what we like to do Over here, mr Clint, is we're just going to throw you like straight up into the wolves. Okay, so I just want you to do Just give us your name, a very short, like two or three sentences, what you do, but especially how we can find you on social media, and I want all your info at the top of the show notes and I'm just going to ask you a bunch of questions and we're going to have fun. We're going to find out how you came to be Clint Harris, who is on the DeWonderful show.

Clint Harris:

That sounds great. So I'm Clint Harris. I live in Carolina Beach, North Carolina. I'm a general partner with Nomad Capital. We're a self-storage syndication. I raise capital from investors. I got a wife, two little boys, and you can find me Facebook or LinkedIn, Clint Harris. Our website is nomadcapitalus. Email is clint at nomadcapitalus. That's the best place to find me.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I like it. U S like the whole United States. That's it I love that you do, so that's all great. So thank you for that Short and sweet. So we just kind of want to like what's your deal and then we want to get into it. So I like the you do storage units.

Clint Harris:

With a little bit of a twist, but yeah, we do. Climate controlled storage.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Okay, so-controlled storage. So I am a fan of storage units. I actually bought my first little set, one of the. We're in Clinton, iowa, and we're kind of helping this bring back the downtown beautification program and on the, so it's three blocks wide and three blocks deep right along the Mississippi River. So on the third block there was a building, three buildings that are like to work on cars and trucks Because they're tall and they've got all the equipment, but there's just a very small set of like 30 storage units and I was like, ooh. So I had not invested in storage units up until I've always wanted to. So I have. It's tiny, only like 30. I have my first little tiny storage unit over there. So I'm excited to build more because I've got the land and the space, but I want control too.

Clint Harris:

Yeah, good, well, you're on the board. Good for you.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So I have a set. They're all rented out already. So I'm like, okay, I'm pretty excited about that, but I don't know a whole whole lot about having them, running them, finding them. They just sort of came with the building. I was like, hey, it's a start, but I've got lots of land here. I want to put storage units on. So I'm going to have you educate me on storage units today. So that's exciting.

Clint Harris:

That sounds great. So we've done everything in the past new development and expansion projects. Our niche right now is a little bit unique. Over the last three years we focus on buying old, nasty, vacant big box retail buildings like Kmart's grocery stores and warehouses that typically have been vacant for years and we convert those into climate controlled self-storage. So we can do it, for we can buy an old, you know 100,000 square foot Kmart and convert it into storage for about half the cost of ground up construction and in about a third of the time.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Now see, I love that because there's a lot. There's so many of those big old stores like the Sears are gone now, and the Kmarts are gone, and I don't even know. There's a bunch of those, the JCPenney, a lot of those are gone.

Clint Harris:

Yeah, big box retail is taking it on the chin. You know there's big box retail used to kind of control a lot of these small secondary and tertiary markets. Everybody in that community used to drive to that location for their home goods. The reality is Amazon and Walmart have really crushed that space. But if you think about the building an 80, 90, 100,000 square foot building even though the people aren't going there to buy their home goods anymore, it still is a great location for the same people in that community to drive back to the same building and pay us to put the same stuff right back inside it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, heck, yeah it is. So let's just say, here in this whole town of Clinton, we actually do have a big, giant building that's vacant right outside town. I think it was maybe a K-more. So I'm new and I'm like, hey, I want to buy this building and make it a storage unit. And I call you up Are you helping me build it, finance it? Are you owning it with me? What does that look like? I'm going to say, hey, clinton, iowa, over here, I've got a big building. What am I doing?

Clint Harris:

So all of our projects we own them ourselves. I raise capital from a group of investors. We have an acquisition team looking at 50 to 70 properties a week, just to get down to one to three that we might do underwriting on. We're sending usually one or two letters of intent per month. A typical deal for us is we'll buy a building for usually close to 2 million bucks. We'll put about 2 to 3 million bucks into it, we'll be into the whole project for 4 to 5 million and convert it to a climate controlled self-storage facility. Our buildings are typically appraising for 13 to 17 million, which means we can do a cash out refinance at 55 or 60% loan to value, pay off the principal, double all the investors' money and keep a couple million for ourselves. And it's all tax-free because we're not selling anything. It's a recapitalization through refi.

Clint Harris:

If you find a property, I can point you in the right directions. The reality is we're looking through hundreds and hundreds of properties to find the right ones. We do in-house construction as well, so there's not as many of them that work as you think. So Obviously, the feasibility study in the community is the most important thing Residential density how many people live there? How much storage is there, the price of storage, the demand, et cetera. So there's that. Then obviously there's the construction side of things and the cost of that as well.

Clint Harris:

So for all of our projects we're, over the last three years we've done two K-marts, three warehouses, two textile mills, a grocery store and a bottling facility, so about 600,000 square feet of storage. Currently we're sitting at 150 million in assets under management and we haven't sold anything in assets under management and we haven't sold anything. So that's kind of our model. I mean, it's basically the BRRRR strategy, but it's on a commercial level. You change the asset class. It changes the formula by which the asset is valued. You take 1K Mart and you split it into 750 storage units, you rent them all out and then from a net operating income standpoint it's typically worth 13 to 17 million.

Clint Harris:

We refinance and keep rolling.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

And so how would I so? I'm a person. I want to get involved. How do I get involved? Am I, is it, are you syndicated? Am I putting in money and is that what's happening?

Clint Harris:

That's exactly right. Yeah, so we're a syndication. We started off as a 506B syndication with non-accredited investors because we typically only needed to raise a couple million bucks. So we would have, on average, 12 to 18 people would pitch in and put $50,000 or $250,000 or whatever in. We pull the money together to do projects. So we've got about 130 people with us that are invested right now across those projects. And then we have a fund right now. So within that fund I'm raising $10 million for the purchase of $30 million worth of buildings that we're converting to $80 million worth of storage. So we've closed on the first two properties in there. We've got two more under contract. So if an investor comes along, they see the projects, they get to know us, they know like and trust us and understand our model. Then you put your money into a fund and then it gives you ownership across four different facilities across the Southeast.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Nice. So now you said you used to do people that were not accredited. Do you still do that or do they have to be accredited now?

Clint Harris:

Yeah, we take non-accredited investors. So typically the way that we do it and not a lot of people do it this way but we started off with a lot of non-accredited investors. That's kind of those are our people, right, that's our tribe, so we didn't want to but actually explain that to people Someone's brand new.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

They go. I don't even know what that means. What?

Clint Harris:

does that mean? Yeah, that's a great question. I'm glad you said that. So the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, drew a line in the sand and basically said if you make enough money, that that you're above this line. We think that you're probably a sophisticated investor and you can invest in all these different types of opportunities.

Clint Harris:

If you're below this line, those people are probably not as financially savvy, and so we want to protect those people and keep them from being taken advantage of.

Clint Harris:

And so, if you're below that line, you only have opportunity to invest in certain types of deals and there's a limit as to how many people can be in those deals, basically limited to friends and family, a small group. To how many people can be in those deals, basically limited to friends and family, a small group of people that you already know pooling money together to take on a project. And that limit is as an individual, you're making more than $200,000 a year for the past two years in a row. Or as a couple filing jointly, you're making more than $300,000 a year for the last two years in a row. Or, third option, you have more than a million dollars worth of net worth, not including your primary residence. If you hit any one of those three criteria, you're an accredited investor. If not, you're a non-accredited investor and there's some limits as to what you can invest in Interesting information. 92% of the capital in the country that's out there ready for investment is held by non-accredited investors. There's a lot of people that fall below that limit.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Oh, there are. I'm 65, so I'm a boomer and I'm telling you, between people that are 65, 75, 85, they're sitting on a kajillion dollars. They don't know what to do with it. So now it's like syndication and I know I've been investing 35 years already. I know back even a decade ago, I thought you had to have like X amount of money and it was hedge funds and it was this and this and this and it was unattainable by like a regular person. So I have myself only learned about syndications in the last five to 10 years, learned quite a bit about it. But I know that so many people are sitting out there when you talk to them about like oh no, that's for, like, super rich people. I can't do that, but that's not the case.

Clint Harris:

That's right. In fact, it's a lot more accessible than people realize, because even if you don't have capital to invest in real estate and you don't want to operate on your own, you can still take your retirement funds. I've done this with mine. I had a 16-year career implanting pacemakers and defibrillators. I worked in medical surgery. My wife and I started buying multifamily. Then we started buying Airbnb properties and converting them. Then I started doing storage. That broke me free in 2022. I left medical sales behind and became a full-time real estate investor and at that point on, I no longer have a company match on any of my retirement accounts. So I converted mine to self-directed accounts and I have those invested into other people's syndications. I can't invest them into my deals because it's called commingling and it's illegal since I'm a general partner.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Oh yeah, you can't. That's right you can't.

Clint Harris:

I forgot about that, but I can put it into other people's, and the reality is you can get better returns than you can investing into paper, meaning the stock market and you can invest into anything you want into debt or vineyards, or multifamily or storage or car wash or ATMs. There's unbelievable options out there that people traditionally never really knew about. Just like what you said, it was the really wealthy, it was the family offices and the endowments that were investing into those. The reality is there's unbelievable opportunity. Even if you don't have capital, you can steer your retirement accounts and create a vehicle to help you create some freedom.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I still think a lot of people still think that they still think you have to be super wealthy or it's something that they can't do. But shoot man, there's all these people sitting on so much money. My dad's a great example. He was sitting on a gob of money and he and his wife retired from factory, you know, like a decade ago. They're like we're gonna run out of money. I was like, well, you need to start investing some of that money into real estate. And then they did, and now they're just like, oh, we make such good real estate decisions, we have so much money like y'all called me and said I'm running out of money.

Clint Harris:

Yeah, my parents did the same thing. My father was a veterinarian and then then, leading up to his retirement, realized he's like man, I don't know that we've saved enough. We got to do something differently. So we partnered and bought a multifamily property, converted it to an Airbnb multifamily property at the beach, and that's the cash flow that they're living off of in addition to their retirement.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I just don't know. And you know I mean I don't know. I mean younger people. I guess don't really know about a lot of that stuff either, but the older and I shouldn't say older because that's like my decade of people but they were always just taught like get a job, work for the man, retire, live on your retirement, and like that's the safe thing, and they weren't exposed to things.

Clint Harris:

Yes, listen, you just hit on. Something that I'm pretty passionate about is the retirement system originally. First of all, the 401k was never designed to be a vehicle for retirement. It was started by Wall Street executives as a way for them to have tax shelter from their huge bonuses. They're cutting these big, large checks for bonuses and if they put it into a quote unquote retirement vehicle, it saved them the taxes on that. It was years later that a financial advisor kind of unpacked it and was like wait, I think I can turn this into a retirement vehicle.

Clint Harris:

And the government supported it because the pensions were starting to go away and the idea at the time was retirement in America is a three-legged stool. You have a pension, a 401k and social security. Well, we all know pensions are no longer around the way that they were. Social security is not going to be here in a meaningful way in the future and the 401k was never designed by itself to support retirement. It's not going to stand on its own. The reality is, the sooner people realize that and you understand that inflation when inflation shoots up, the value of your dollar in the bank goes down and the value of your dollar in retirement goes down. When inflation comes back down, the cost of goods and services don't come back down.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That's right so people are.

Clint Harris:

we have lost the ability. My parents' generation and my grandparents' generation could save their way to retirement. Yeah, my generation. I'm 41. We can't save our way to it. The vast majority of people cannot save your way to retirement. The sooner you realize that you can't play defense and get where you want to be, that's the day that you realize that you have to play offense, and for most people, the best way to do that and take the biggest steps forward is going to be real estate investing.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, every year, when they put out the list of this many new millionaires this year, they're almost always in the real estate asset class Right, almost always. And, yeah, you're right, like all three of my kids are millennials, but they're investing, they have rentals, they have commercial buildings. We're like listen, you are going to do this, you're not going to work for somebody else, you're going to get in the game because by the time you guys get around, all those things will probably not even exist.

Clint Harris:

That's right, that's right.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

It might not Bad fiscal policy.

Clint Harris:

That's what's going to happen.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I know God, our government spends so much money it's like I can't even think about it. So someone wants to get in and they're not accredited. What's the most amount of money they can put in?

Clint Harris:

There's no limit as to how much they can put in. The minimum for us is $50,000, but we are required to have a pre-existing relationship. So if you're interested in what we have, then like the best thing to do is connect with us. First thing I want to do is know what your goals are and what you're trying to accomplish, and if it doesn't line up with what we're doing, I'll try to be the first person to tell you that you shouldn't do it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't invest and syndication is a great way to do that but there are probably other places that I could steer you that would be a better fit for what your goals are. But I want unpack that.

Clint Harris:

My job is not to sell you or anyone on our deals. My job is to educate. I educate on what our strategy is and how we execute our game plan. If people feel like that's a fit with what they're looking for, that's great and we can pursue a relationship and potentially work together. And if not, that's great too. I'll help you find something that's a better fit. So it usually takes a few phone calls opportunity to build a relationship. I need to understand what you're trying to accomplish. You need to know like and trust us and get an opportunity to connect and read the content, and then it opens up the door for us to potentially being able to work together when we have an offering coming down the pipeline.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I like that so because I know one of the things that, if I understand correctly, is that syndications can't specifically advertise, so people need to sort of find you and come to you. Is that right?

Clint Harris:

Yes. So with a little bit of a caveat as a 506B syndication we can't do any. It's called general solicitation. We can't do general solicitation. We can only connect with people. But we can tell people what we do. We can't advertise any rates or returns or anything like that.

Clint Harris:

So what we do is we open up our current fund. We open it up as a 506B offering, which means we can't do general solicitation, but we can allow those non-accredited investors to come in. We have a limit of 35 in any offering. So what we did is we opened up the fund. We allowed 35 non-accredited investors that we had an established relationship with invest into our deal. Once we hit that limit of 35, and there's a dozen or two accredited investors that came in as well Once we hit that limit of 35 non-accredited investors, our legal team does the filing with the SEC and converts it over to a 506C offering.

Clint Harris:

From then on we are only allowed to accept investments from accredited investors, but it opens the door and allows us to do general solicitation. So when we did that, we rolled out a nationwide marketing campaign and we've got meta ads rolling right now and 10 to 15 leads per day coming in and calling and talking about our returns and profiles and everything else like that. So we kind of we blur the lines a little bit because we want to. We would rather do the extra work and spend the extra money to make sure that we keep a place for those investors that we started with. We've got 150 million in assets under management because of those people and we don't want to leave anybody behind.

Clint Harris:

So we made a place for them.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I like that and I always tell people that whenever I do interview someone the death syndication I'm like, hey, if you're new to Dwanderful and you're like, hey, I really like this, I'm interested in this I always tell people, listen, just reach out directly, because I think it's a good way to place your money.

Clint Harris:

Sure, yeah, absolutely. I mean again any money that you have sitting in the bank right now. I hate to say this. It's going down in value faster than you can save it. You can't put your dollars away into savings these days faster than the value of those dollars are being eroded by bad fiscal policy. You better put them to work.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So I tell people all the time I mean everyone, even like my kids when they were like 18, I said listen, all of you are going to buy rentals and we didn't give them any money. We're like you're going to go out and find a hard money lender, you're going to do it the way we teach other people to do it. You're going to find them. You're going to get them fixed up, get them rented. You're going to get some money, get some passive income. And then I want all of you to branch out onto bigger things. So I'm pushing my kids down to get into like bigger, like a couple of them have their first commercial buildings. But I think syndication is a great way to place money. So when someone comes in, let's just say I put in $100,000. How long does my money stay in there?

Clint Harris:

So typically let me throw this out there Every syndication is going to be different, so every structure is going to be different. There's a lot of different options, so ours are. You have to think about it like a quasi-development deal, so from the day that your money goes in you start earning a return. However, if we think about an individual Kmart building, from the day we buy that building it's going to take us about a year to build it out, usually 12 to 15 months. So during year one there's no cashflow because we're building out a nasty old Kmart that's been empty for a decade. Year two the building is worth way more than we paid for it. However, it's empty right. So it's going to take us a year or so to fill it up to the point of being cashflow positive. Cashflow positive for us is about 40% occupancy. Most self-storage is between 60 to 65%. But once we hit that 40% occupancy we're about two years in on a lot of our projects.

Clint Harris:

Then all of the cashflow that starts coming out of the property goes back to the investors to pay you your return for the first two years.

Clint Harris:

Typically they're getting either a six or an 8% preferred return just from the day you put your money in. After that's caught up. Then you start getting cash flow moving forward, quarterly distributions, and then at or before year five, we'll refinance the property. You would get your $100,000 back, plus another $60,000 to $70,000 on top of that, which is going to be non-taxable because it's a refinance. You should have already gotten 30 to 40,000 through the preferred return in the cashflow, which is going to be non-taxable. It's taxable income but we're going to give you a K-1 that shows that we did a cost segregation study and that we've harvested the accelerated depreciation off the property. So our goal is we try to double our investors' money in five years or less tax-free, and after that everybody stays in. We hold the property, everybody keeps their same percentage of equity it's a long-term hold and after that it just turns into an unlimited return and you're getting quarterly distributions.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I love it. Yeah, I love it. I've talked to a few people that do syndications, but I can't think of anyone that does storage units. And I'm like a really big fan of storage units because everybody, they downsize, they get a smaller house, they get a little older, but they don't want to get rid of their stuff. They put it in storage which they never actually go, probably get it back out, but they know where it's at, they're paying for it. It sits there for 40 years and then you know when they're gone, their kids get it. They just go and then like, get rid of everything.

Clint Harris:

It's a sticky asset class. People typically stay a lot longer than they think. There are quite a few self-storage syndication operations out there. I think what's unique about what we're doing is that we're not building self-storage. We're buying nasty buildings. Nobody wants them. We're converting it to storage, so I think, you would probably agree with this.

Clint Harris:

It's very likely that any real estate deal is probably a good deal if you get it for half price. That's what we're doing we're building out storage for half the cost of ground up development and in less than half the time. So for us, that's the key. The key is to land at a low enough loan to value that we can refinance, recapitalize, pay everybody out and keep it, because if we're fixing assets up and then selling them, that's great. I'm not knocking anybody's strategy, but we're basically a glorified house flipper and that means the day you stop working is the day that you stop getting paid.

Clint Harris:

We want to keep assets, because one thing that I learned through the Airbnb properties that we have is like the goal should not be financial independence, at least not alone. Excuse me, I think in my opinion, that's a shallow goal. The goal should be financial, time and location independence, because those three things together create an independence of purpose. You go where you want, when you want, do what you want. If you're a house flipper, or if you have an occupation and you have a job and you get a paycheck because you're trading time for money. Eventually, if you stop working, you stop getting paid. That's right. Our goals should be bigger than that.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I agree. I could not agree with you more. I'm just like I'm a big fan, you know, because I started out wholesaling houses and back then wholesaling was getting it under contract, selling it to a rehabber. All this HGTV has changed the terminology that people use. So get it under contract, sell them, make an assignment fee, and I'm done. But you know, when you do that which I've done it almost 2,000 times I've done a ton of deals, but when you stop doing that, there's no income coming in, because you did make a job for yourself so you've got to start putting it someplace. So when you want to take off a year or six months or whatever you want to do, there's still money that's coming in, which is why I am a fan of the syndications. Now, what were you doing before that? What made you decide I want to be a syndicator?

Clint Harris:

So I kind of fell into it. So I was for 16 years. I was working in cardiology, I was implanting pacemakers into fibrillators.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So I worked in heart surgery.

Clint Harris:

You are a heart surgeon. I was the rep for the company. So I would go into surgery with the physician and I would carry the pacemakers, the leads, the wires, the defibrillators that go into the heart, all that. So I would help with the procedure putting it into place, testing it, making sure that it works, shock people's hearts, all that kind of stuff. So I did that for 16 years. It's a little bit of a young man's game because I'm sure you can imagine, heart problems are not Monday through Friday, nine to five. It's around the clock. You're on call nights, weekends, getting called two to three hours away at three in the morning. It's kind of a young man's game. And so I always knew that eventually I loved my job, I was blessed to be pretty good at it, but eventually I needed an off-ramp from that lifestyle. So for us that was going to come by way of real estate investing. So we built a small portfolio of nine single family houses before I realized it's a very slow way to try to get ahead. So we 1031 those and started buying small multifamily properties.

Clint Harris:

At the beach where I relocated, took a promotion to Wilmington, north Carolina, started buying small multifamily properties, duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes, converting them to Airbnb properties, still have 14 of those that turn into a property management company with some partners that manages my properties and another 80 properties, and that was all well and good and it replaced my income, but it was laborious, there was a lot to it, and so that's when I started the aggressive pursuit towards a more passive strategy. That's how I settled on self-storage. It's a box of air. There's no kitchens, there's no bathrooms. You're renting someone a box of air.

Clint Harris:

So I settled on storage and then, the same way that I was buying those little quadplexes and converting them to Airbnbs, it was 3.5 to 4X the gross potential rents. It's the same thing when you buy a Kmart and convert it to storage. It's an asset class conversion. It's the same lesson. So in 2020, some partners and I bought an old Kmart building. They had a background in storage. We converted it to self-storage. We bought the building for $1.5 million. We put $2.5 million into it. The empty building appraised for $9.1 million when we were done.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

And I was like, oh, this is great, I love that. I love that and I like the fact that you're taking some of these older buildings. There's a lot of those big kmarts and sears and just big, big, big stores that just sit there and they just dilapidate and unless somebody wants to build something new, they don't even get torn down, they're just sitting there baking there was over 1200 kmarts at one point in time and they're all closed.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

When we started this came on the blue light special and everybody goes running over to the area that's doing the blue light special. I was like I remember all that stuff. But yeah, they're just, and you know, little by little they're just gone. I think they're probably all gone now, aren't they?

Clint Harris:

Yeah, the last three shut down about two years ago, but you still have buildings that are getting paid out through the bankruptcy, like the Kmart bankruptcy is still paying rent, sometimes for another five to 10 years into the future. So there's still buildings that they're sitting empty because the owner of that building is still getting $300,000 a year in rent and if they sold it to somebody else, that goes away. So they'll sit there and just let that bankruptcy lease run for years and years and years and then finally, when it runs out, they'll just sell the building for whatever they can get for it. And that's when we step in.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I did not know that. I know that I'm from Ohio and I know last time I was up there I went to eat at one of my little favorite pizza places and there's a Kmart that was still there a couple of years ago and it's just sitting there vacant and it's like, ah, so many people used to shop at all. I guess Walmart replaced Kmart, I guess right.

Clint Harris:

Yeah, and Amazon took a big chunk of it as well over time. But, yeah, walmart really kind of ate their lunch in terms of big box retail, but within that community they were a fixture and they were a big employer and a lot of times that community grew around that location and that's why it makes a great spot to have an adaptive reuse and convert it to a different asset class.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I don't know, I'm an Amazon fan. I got lazy. I like stuff delivered to my door. Yep, I buy most of my clothes online. Now it's like I don't know yeah same.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I'm one of the people that helps Amazon. It's like if I have to go into a store to buy something, I'm just like I don't even go. I have to go into a store to buy something, I'm just like I don't even go. I have an Instagram for being gross. I don't even go in the grocery store anymore. I just like everything delivered. I am a creature of comfort.

Clint Harris:

Yeah, same, you're seeing that across the whole spectrum, you know, and one thing that's because of that people aren't out and about a lot. But one of the things that we're also seeing is that the millennials, which are now 34% of the population they're the largest population segment they're using 38% of storage, because you, I'm sure, have at least one house you probably have multiple, from your background, I would guess but the millennials aren't buying houses, they're renting.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

And when you rent.

Clint Harris:

You're renting based upon the square footage that you get Rent. You're renting based upon the square footage that you get. So instead of renting a two-bedroom condo for $1,800, they'll rent a one-bedroom condo for $1,300 and then get a storage unit for $150.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Oh yeah.

Clint Harris:

And use it as an extension of the closet extension of the garage winter clothes, kayaks, snowboards type stuff.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, yeah, yeah that in Colorado, especially like my kids do, that they rent and in the winter they'll go get out their skis and their whatever. Then they put it away. Then, like you said, they get the other things out and they go in and out and switch out their clothes. I'm like just live in a bigger place.

Clint Harris:

Easier said than done sometimes.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

They don't want to, and the rent is crazy expensive, so I totally get it Okay. So let's switch gears. I'm going to learn more about you. What's your favorite band of all time years?

Clint Harris:

What's your favorite? I want to learn more about you. What's your favorite band of all time? Favorite band of all time? Wow, Great question. I would say probably right now.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

no-transcript okay, I do not know the movement, so after we're done I'm gonna listen to them on youtube, because I hardly ever, hardly ever, have someone give me a band I don't already know, because I'm a huge music lover, going all the way back, like from the 50s forward. I love all the music and I love reggae and at the beach it's like, oh, my heart and my heart and soul lives at the beach yep, I'll be out on the boat all weekend going to an island called Masonboro Island with wife and the boys.

Clint Harris:

We'll pull up there with a bunch of friends and we'll be listening to the movement and enjoying a nice sunny weekend.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So check it out, you'll like it. I love it, I love it. What's your favorite food?

Clint Harris:

So I love to cook and because of that and also because of where we live, I'm really big, I'm a fisherman, I do a lot of offshore fishing, I do a lot of scuba diving, spearfishing, shooting grouper lobster, hogfish and stuff like that. So because of that I would say seafood. But specifically I like to go catch fresh mahi and wahoo and things like that and then I like to cook, have a group of friends over and cook it for my friends. It's kind of my love language.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So I would say seafood, I love that. Well, next time I get my butt down there in that area, I'm going to call you and say hey, I want you to cook me some fish.

Clint Harris:

There we go, a little Wahoo, saltimbocca or something like that.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, I love that, I love that and I love anything. We, I love anything. We have a house in Delray Beach, florida, that's about a mile from the beach. I just love being around the beach, on the beach, just anything to do with the water. I am a hundred percent of a water person. What's your favorite part of the day? Where's your happy spot?

Clint Harris:

So the favorite part of the day for me is I have a group of guys that I work out with.

Clint Harris:

So I had a career change in 2022 when I switched to being a full-time real estate investor and I lost about 30 pounds that year. Because when you're at the hospital, you're kind of grabbing fast food and getting whatever you can or else you're likely not to eat that day. So because of that, I have a group of guys that I work out with at six in the morning and just get it done, knock it out. Sometimes we're running on the beach, sometimes we're paddle boarding, usually we're lifting or biking or something like that, and when I've gotten that done and I feel like I've got to jump on the day and I'm pulling back into my house and I know that my two little boys are going to be, probably in their underwear, dancing on the couch and jumping up and down when I walk in and after that I'm kissing my wife and then I'm going to get changed and I'm going to go to a job that I love. That's my best part of my days looking forward to it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I love that. That sounds really great. So what is your biggest goal right now, Clint, that you're working on that, the people at D'Wonderful, the D'Wonderful world. What can we help you with? What's your biggest goal that you're trying to accomplish right now?

Clint Harris:

In the short term I've got to raise $5.5 million in the next 90 days to close out this fund with the last two projects that we have under contract.

Clint Harris:

The bigger goal for that is that we've got to get to a billion dollars in assets in a 10-year period, which is about seven more years on that timeline.

Clint Harris:

And the more important goal than that is with my two young sons.

Clint Harris:

We have some beehives out on a farm and my four-year-old has gone with me all year taking care of the bees and he started a business selling honey.

Clint Harris:

He's got a business right now where we've taken a bunch of seawater off the end of the pier where we live and filtered it and we've run it through solar distillation to create gourmet sea salt and he's selling sea salt and the bigger, the more important goal for me is to teach my boys how to create value in the world and to be good people and not to raise a couple of little snots when we live in an area.

Clint Harris:

It's not the richest place in the world, but it's a very nice community on an island off of Wilmington and one of my biggest concerns is that they're going to be they grow up surrounded by money in a way that I wasn't, and I want to make sure that I balance that with a lot of world travel and opportunity for our family to do charity, so that they get to see. I want them to be well-rounded in terms of people and understanding the blessings that they have, so that they grow up first of all to have a sense of gratitude. And first of all, to have a sense of gratitude and second of all to have a sense of empathy.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I love it. Yeah, I made all my kids do charity stuff when they were little too, because, like I don't, I don't want to raise a bunch of bratty, rich kids that like don't appreciate, because it's like, listen, I worked my butt off. So you're not going to get everything handed to you on a silver spoon, you also, but you're going to learn and be good to people and and yeah, when my kids were really little, I had them doing charity work and stuff.

Clint Harris:

so and it's important.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

You gotta, you know. I mean everyone's like, oh, we're raising kids. It's like, no, you're not, you're raising adults.

Clint Harris:

Yeah I love that yeah you raise them now.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

that's who they're going to be in the world when they are the mom, the dad, the whatever. And so I, from day one, have always thought I'm not raising kids, I'm raising adults. And there's a lot of adults out there who are, you know, less than just very low quality people. It's like I'm not raising any low quality people coming out of this household.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

We're going to be high quality, fit into society. Yeah, I tell all people I'm like, oh, what's your advice? And like, honestly, just look at it like you're raising adults. Whatever you do is how they're going to be and if you like that bratty screaming, throwing yourself on the floor and getting what you want, that's the adult that you're going to raise.

Clint Harris:

That.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Like my son. His wife calls me every year. She's like I just want to thank you for doing such a good job with Will. He's such a good man, he's such a good dad, he's such a good this, this, this, this, this. He's the man you are because of everything you did for him. I'm like, listen, that boy was very challenging and I whipped him into shape because I kept saying you're going to be somebody's dad and you're not going to be this guy, you're going to be this guy. And so, yeah, my kid, my kids, are great. I'm really proud of my kids, but they was not an easy feat?

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

yeah, of course I'm living that right now it is not an easy feat, and I may learn how to work for everything, because I don't want them to think that things just get handed over that's right I work for every dollar I ever made, so it's like y'all to get nothing free, like nothing, nothing. They had to pay for everything. So okay, one more time, just tell people how you want them, the number one way you want them to reach you.

Clint Harris:

The best way to reach me is just connect with me through email clint at nomadcapitalus. You can go to our website, nomadcapitalus, and we have some videos on there about the team, the story behind how we were founded and things like that. And then I'm also happy to connect with people on either Facebook or LinkedIn. Clint Harris.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

And I put my stamp of approval on this guy. So if you're looking in syndication, this is where I suggest you go. So, first of all, I have one more question for you, but I want to thank you for being on with me today and sharing time. I also want to thank all of you for sharing your time with me, because you know I tell you every week, time is our most valuable asset, because when you're out of time, you know we're basically all coming to your funeral. So use your time wisely, and investing with me or any of my guests and working with us is always going to be a good use of your time and your money. And don't forget to go to DwanDurful D-W-A-N-D-E-R-F-U-Lcom.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I've got free eBooks and training and webinars and all kinds of things, but nothing about syndication. So you got to go over to somebody else if you want to learn about that, because I'm not your girl when it comes to that stuff. Also, I want you to do me a favor. If you had fun today, you learned something, you laughed just anything at all. I want you to subscribe to the podcast. Leave a five-star review. Podcasts are a labor of love. They're a lot of work and your reviews and your subscription and listening help all of us grow in the efforts that we're making to teach, because everyone that does a podcast is teaching you something, so do that back for us, okay. So last thing is, I want you to give us a parting word of wisdom, but just one single word oh wow, um community oh, I like it I think that the value wait don't tell me what it means.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Hold on a minute, I have to say something first. Okay, so everyone that listens knows that after we hear the word of wisdom, which is community, I tell everyone to write it on a little sticky note, put it up on your bathroom for one week and every day the word community is your word of the week. But now we want to know what it means to you. What does it mean to you?

Clint Harris:

So all of the success that I've had replacing my income or getting into different asset classes and basically I feel like I'm retired.

Clint Harris:

I'm just pursuing the things that I'm passionate about came from connecting in a community of people that are more intelligent than I am and having more success.

Clint Harris:

And I think that who I was 10 years ago is the same person that I would be today and the same person that I will be 10 years from now, with the exception of the places I go, the people I meet and the books and content that I consume and the ideas that come from other people.

Clint Harris:

And I think that the local community, in terms of an investor community or friend community and bigger than that, the community of podcasts and free education in a way that the world has never had before, is extremely powerful. I know that I host a podcast specifically because I want to find the 52 sharpest people a year that I can and get you know 45 minutes of their condensed life experience, shared with me in a way that they probably wouldn't do if I just asked them to go to lunch. And that is what I attribute most of my success to moving forward, and I think the value of people and relationships is something that cannot be overstated, and I encourage people to lean into your community, not just for what you can get, but also for what you can give, because that's going to create an attitude of abundance that creates some beautiful relationships.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Amen, that is about what it means to me too. So I always like to hear your thoughts on what it means. So we all have a word of the week, we like to hear what it means to you, and then everyone adds your own take on that too. But, honestly, you can't really grow big in any industry, I don't believe, without community, like I wouldn't be where I'm at today if it wasn't for all the people I've met along the way that helped me or worked with me or, you know, lifted me up. So community really is everything.

Clint Harris:

I'm glad you agree. Yeah, I think we have a lot of synergy there and I'm glad that you're part of my community, so thank, you.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, me too. I'm so happy to know you now and have you on my team. So all right, everyone. We'll be back next week, same bat time, same bat channel. And remember that the truth is in the red letter. All right, everybody. Ciao, and Clinton, thank you for being on the show today. I love it, and you guys go make it a great week.