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Real Estate Alchemy Turning Empty Retail to Profitable Storage with Clint Harris

• Clark St Capital • Season 3 • Episode 115

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Welcome to The Real Estate Underground Show #115!

In this episode, we take a journey with Clint Harris, a former high-pressure medical salesman turned real estate investor.  This isn't your typical get-rich-quick scheme. Clint dives deep into his personal transformation, revealing the steps he took to transition from single-family homes to dominating the Airbnb market and ultimately, the fascinating world of repurposing big-box stores into self-storage goldmines.

What You'll Learn:

  • From Burnout to Building Wealth: Discover Clint's story of leaving a demanding career and charting a path to financial freedom through strategic real estate investments.
  • The Power of Asset Conversion: Learn the secrets behind transforming a retail wasteland into a self-storage cash cow. Clint unveils the meticulous strategies involved in market analysis and property repositioning, offering a roadmap for aspiring investors.
  • Building Equity Without Selling: Explore the art of strategic refinancing and investor payouts, showcasing how to build lasting wealth without needing to liquidate assets.
  • Real Estate & Legacy: Go beyond the numbers and discover how purpose, mentorship, and building a legacy play a crucial role in achieving real estate success.
  • The Nomad Capital Approach: Learn about Clint's philosophy on sharing knowledge and fostering a community that supports growth.
Connect with Clint Harris:

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  • LinkedIn -> Ed Mathews (President at Clark St and Elevista)

Ed Mathews: Greetings and salutations, Real Estate Undergrounders. It is Ed Mathews again with another really interesting guest today. Clint Harris from Nomad Capital. Thank you so much for joining us today. I had the pleasure of being on your podcast a few weeks ago. And, uh, after, uh, kind of playing the schedule game, we were able to get you on ours.

So welcome to the show and thanks for doing this.

Clint Harris: Thanks Ed. I'm really excited to be here. I really enjoy that last podcast together. So excited for us to connect again. 

Ed Mathews: Yeah, that was a lot of fun. And I, hopefully the audience got a lot out of it. So, you know, for those of us, so you and I have been kind of going back and forth for a while.

So we've kind of gotten to know each other, but for those folks out there that don't know who you are, you know, what's your story. And, and, uh, you know, what is a Nomad Capital all about? 

Clint Harris: Yep. So I'm Clint Harris. I'm a general partner with Nomad Capital. I live in Wilmington, North Carolina with my wife and two little boys.

I had a 16 year career in medical sales, selling and implanting pacemakers and defibrillators. Which is kind of a young man's game. You're on call working nights and weekends. And so I always knew that eventually I wanted an off-ramp from that lifestyle. I believe that the ability to save our way to retirement has been taken away from a lot of us.

And so, uh, with that in mind, I chose real estate as my avenue to try to build that off-ramp. So I got into single-family homes for a while, had nine BRRRRs. That's a very slow way to get ahead. I started getting into, my wife and I relocated to Wilmington in 2017, which is at the beach. And that allowed us to start buying small multifamily properties, duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, and converting them from long-term rental properties into Airbnb properties.

So we've got 14 Airbnbs that we still own that turned into a property management company. And it allowed us to create a level of financial freedom, which was great, but it was a wildly active investment strategy. So in the aggressive pursuit of something more passive, I eventually found storage. And then specifically the strategy that my partners and I use for storage, which is, uh, we're a self-storage syndication with a little bit of a twist.

We don't buy or build self-storage. We specifically focus on buying big box retail buildings like Kmart, grocery stores, warehouses, and textile mills and converting them to storage. 

Ed Mathews: And I want to ask you 35 questions about, I'm absolutely fascinated by that. And it's interesting because, you know, real retail here in the Northeast has really taken a hit as well.

And so there are a lot of big box stores that just gone, right. Including malls that are just empty. In fact, I may have a lead for you. So in terms of. You know, real estate versus, you know, obviously you're a smart guy. You're accomplished, you know, clearly you work hard, given, given your, your corporate job and what you did there, you could have picked any industry.

So why was it real estate that drew you in? 

Clint Harris: Just historical significance, honestly, like throughout thousands of years, real estate. And, you know, originally I thought cashflow, but the reality is that appreciation and appreciation through assets, mainly involving real estate has created more millionaires than anything on the planet.

And the reality is for me, like money's important because it creates choice. But I think most of us believe I certainly do that. It doesn't buy happiness, but it does create a level of freedom. And my job that I had was tied to the number of surgeries that I did in the number of pacemakers that I put in at the end of the day, no matter what I was trading time for money.

And you've only got so many hours that you can trade for money. So ultimately, no matter what you do, no matter. Maybe even it has a high ceiling. It's got a ceiling. Real estate allows you to switch to an asset class where you don't have to trade time for money. And it can give you that financial as well as time and potentially location independence.

Ed Mathews: And that's amazing. And you have, you have two little guys and how old are they by the way?

Clint Harris: Four and 11 months, almost a year.

Ed Mathews: Congrats. Oh, yeah. So the second one just got wheels. 

Clint Harris: We're busy, man. We're busy. I'm playing zone defense. 

Ed Mathews: Right? Yeah. So it's funny. So funny. You mentioned that I had dinner with my, uh, my college roommate, Jack, and, uh, we had this talk.

Shoot. It's gotta be 20 years ago at this point. Cause he had We, we ended up having two, we had two little girls and now they're big girls. And, uh, Jack, Jack went, uh, you know, Jack and his wife, Carrie went to the, to the third child and, you know, she's absolutely an amazing kid and I'm so glad she came into this world, but we had that zone versus man to man defense thing conversation way back when about, you know, because the thing is, is that with, with three kids or more, the oldest one is savvy enough, no matter how old they are, at some point, pretty early on, they figure out they have yet, they figure out that they have you outnumbered in the container, right?

Then it's, then it's all the fun stuff, you know, the little one will get into something or the big one, you know, they'll scatter and, you know, you can only chase two of them. So which one, so it's funny. But, um, so, you know, with regard to the, the move to self-storage, which I'm fascinated by, you know, what drew you to the, the whole idea of taking over, you know, failed properties, you know, retail that have, that have gone away versus simply developing 

Clint Harris: new. Sure. So it's a numbers game, but I'll take a step back. When I was wearing myself to the bone, doing short term rentals on the side while doing Cardiology or sales on the side, you know, as the main gig, I was looking around, I was like, what are the three things, like the old successful guys, That I look up to that have plenty of time to go fishing and travel and they have money to do it.

What are they doing? And it was ultimately three things. It was hard money lending and note lending. And I didn't have the seven figures it took to start there. It was mobile home parks, which I was already burned out on tenants because each of my units had eight to 10 tenants per month. And it was just a drag or it was self storage, right?

So that's what led me to self-storage. But then remember what I was doing with my Airbnb properties, I would buy a quadplex. With bad long term tenants in place that chain smoked and the place was a dump, but it was maybe a block from the beach. It was an up and coming small beach town. I would get the tenants out, renovate, and I would convert it to a different asset class.

And when you convert it to a different asset class, it would three and a half to four X the gross rental potential, right? So that, that was ingrained on my brain, the asset class depreciation that could come there. So that gives you exit strategy in terms of refinance and recapitalizing. So that lesson had kind of been taught to me.

Just through that previously, so I connected in the pursuit of self storage of those 3 strategies. That's what I pursued. I wanted to look at. It was just through local networking groups that I met my partners, which are Erik and Levi Hemingway, a father and son team with 30 years of commercial construction projects, and they had built a self-storage from the ground up.

Then they had done an expansion and then they had done 2 warehouse conversions. And like, let's be honest. There's nothing inherently sexy about self-storage, right? You're renting someone a box of air, but when you have an asset class conversion involved, you're buying it as one thing, you change the asset, which means you're changing the formula by which the asset is valued, which gives potential for massive force depreciation that jumped out at me.

Because I had done that before on a very, very small scale. So then you start looking at the numbers. We, we went all in as a joint venture in 2021 and we bought a Kmart building, 87, 000 square feet in Reidsville, North Carolina. And we bought it for 1. 5 million. Well, the replacement cost with the insurance company was 6.

5 million, right? And it appraised for, I think, a million dollars more than we bought it for. Because there's very little appetite. For big box retail, right? So just getting it below the replacement cost. This is a basic real estate investing principle. You don't make money when you flip a house, when you renovate it, and you don't make money when you sell it, you made your money when it smelled like dogs and cats and you bought it dirt cheap.

So those are the properties that we're looking for. At one point in time, the community grew around this building. It has great residential density. In a one, three, five and seven mile radius, great visibility count. And everybody in that town knows where that building is. In fact, at one point in time, it was probably the largest employer in the town.

Well, even though big box retail is dead because Amazon and Walmart have destroyed that space at one point in time, it was still the right location for those people in that community to drive to that store to get their home goods. Even though they don't do that anymore, it still makes it a good location for those same people to sometimes take the same stuff and pay us to come put it back in the same building, right?

In terms of the location, geography of where it is. And then the appetite for big box is just so low that it's basically worth what we're willing to pay for it. 

Ed Mathews:  Something  you just said. Just hit me right between the eyes. They're storing the stuff that they originally bought in the exact same building.

Clint Harris: And people will roll back in and stuff are still in Kmart bags. And there hasn't been a Kmart in that town in 12 or 15 years. It's hilarious, isn't it? 

Ed Mathews: That brings it home. Okay, so, you know, repositioning is, is a classic strategy. You know, and if you're, if you're, Figuring out if you can figure out a dormant building has a highest and best use in a different asset class, you're setting yourself up to succeed more times than not.

So, so with regard to how you are figuring out the business, right? Because I know that in self-storage. A huge piece of this is the unit mix, right? And so, you know, what's the process that you and your guys go through to determine, you know, which ones are 10 by tens? Which one, how many, uh, you know, of this unit and that unit?

I'm not even gonna mention the, the dimensions 'cause I don't know. 

Clint Harris: What you're talking about is a feasibility study, right? You, first of all, the feasibility study of making sure there's demand in the market. Not, not that there's gonna be, not speculative, but it, it's an underserved market. Right now what we're seeing across the southeast is a lot of people are getting pushed outta these larger urban markets.

The Charlotte’s and the Greensboro and Raleigh. into the smaller secondary and tertiary markets, which traditionally are underserved for housing and especially underserved for storage. So within that mix, we'll do an in house feasibility study. And we also use a third party company. It's kind of the gold standard to look at everything from what's the population.

Is it rising or is it falling? What's the percentage of renters versus owners? What's the number of people per household age. Make sure not everybody works for one company that could close down and shut the town down. All the things, right. Residential density in a one, three, five, seven mile. That's going to determine what the average consumer needs and what they're looking for.

We get paid more for the smaller units, right? A 5x5 is going to be more expensive per square foot than a 10x30 unit. So we try to meet the demand of the market by having larger units, maybe closer to the edges or a roll up window that a contractor could get to. But the vast majority of it is hopefully smaller units.

So we use a third party and in house feasibility study to determine what that mix is going to be. We're pretty conservative. We'll go into a market and we look at the average price per square foot for net rentable storage in that market existing, and then make sure typically all the facilities are full and there's a wait list in the markets that we move into.

We'll take the average price per square foot blended across all those units. We'll shave 15 percent off of that number. And that's where we underwrite our facility. That's not where we price it. That's just where we underwrite to set ourselves up for good surprises and not bad ones. 

Ed Mathews: Okay. And so that's when you're talking, you know, a 15 percent haircut that's for your investors.

So if, you know, the number makes sense at that, you know, and you've already done all the stress testing and sensitivity analysis, then, you know, when you actually deliver and you're delivering at 95 to 105 percent of. Of your internal projections, you're, uh, you're setting yourself up to succeed, right? The promise little deliver much.

Clint Harris: There's always surprises. Your job is to set yourself up for good ones and not bad ones. Here's the real secret sauce of the whole deal. If you and I, Ed, we want to go build self-storage right now. We're going to spend around 110 to 120 bucks a square foot for the construction plus the cost of the land.

Our last six conversions that we did, which was two K marts, three warehouses, and a grocery store. When we are done standing at the front door with the Chamber of Commerce and we're cutting the yellow ribbon and we're opening up the doors, we are all in at 63. 50 a square foot for the building, the construction, the parking lot, which we typically don't need and can out parcel everything.

So we're about half the cost of construction, not including the land. Now, the reason that is, is because we have, this is what I think is a strategic advantage and something that's going to make it difficult for a lot of other people to compete at least for a few years until they have these key components.

And I'll just be honest about what they are. It's full vertical integration from, we have an in house acquisition team that's finding either really good deals on the market. Or off market deals. I handle investor education and capital raising. And so we're not paying retail costs for private money. We're raising money from our group of investors in our fund.

We do construction in house through my partners, Erik and Levi Hemingway, who are the founders and owners of Nomad. We build at cost plus 12 percent and we have in house property management and asset management at 5%. So the end result of all of that. The initial low purchase price and the full vertical integration, which means that at stabilization on one of our facilities, we're usually sitting [at 30 to 35 percent loan to value.

We'll buy a building for maybe 2 million. We'll put maybe 2 million into it. And it's going to appraise somewhere in the 13 to 17 million range when it's completely full, which creates some very unique exit strategies. It typically, if you're buying an apartment complex, you're going to buy it. Fix it up, make it nice, increase the rents, increase the net operating income.

Value is going to go up 30, 35 percent. And for everybody to get a nice payday, you liquidate the asset. Well, no offense to anybody's strategy, but if you have to do that to get a big payday, at the end of the day, you're trading time for money, right? And I don't care if you're wholesaling or you're a real estate agent or you're house flipping.

The day you stop working, is the day you stop getting paid unless you hold it and allow it to cashflow by landing at a really low LTV through the conversion strategy. It means we can go from 30 to 35 percent LTV. We can refi to 55 or 60. We don't want to stress the asset, but we'll refinance to 55 or 60%.

We can pay out all of our investors with the large chunk of that coming by way of refinance, which means it's not a capital gain because we didn't sell anything. So it's non-taxable. We can pull out a couple million for nomad, keep the lights on here. And then we keep the asset. And all the investors continue to keep their same percentage of equity.

We hold the assets and we continue to roll forward. That's the idea behind the name Nomad Capital is you go where you want, when you want and do what you want. We all want that financial independence, but in order to get it along with time and location independence, which gives you a potential for independence of purpose, you can't be trading time for money.

So our goal is to, obviously there's some assets, everybody wants to see you go full cycle. And there's some that we're going to sell, but our overall strategy is we want to use that vertical integration to land at a really low LTV refinance, pay everybody out, but allow everybody to stay in and keep on rolling.

Ed Mathews: So, how does that work when, let's say for instance, you and I are just for mathematics, simplicity, you and I are the partners on this. And, uh, Nomad comes in as the company, buys the asset, rehabs, rehabs it, gets it to market. We're at 35%, we then go, we pull 30 percent of it out to get to, call it 55 per.

No, let's say 25 percent to get it at a 60%, right? Yeah. And you know, which is a nice conservative loan to value. Uh, you're returning capital. So 50, 50, you and I get our, our 1 back each. Um, and, and then we continue on. So that doesn't constitute return of capital. That's simply, obviously you have to pay attention to that as an investor, because when you ultimately sell, that is, that becomes a taxable gain.

Clint Harris: Yeah. It could. So here's how it works during the first year, say we're building a project out. We offer preferred return typically for the first two years or so, right? So there's a, there's a backhoe prep. Let's take one building. For example, we buy Kmart. It's going to take us a year to build it out.

Hopefully 10 months. Cause we're working inside under a roof and we don't have to worry as much about elements, but, uh, I'm going to tell you it's going to take a year. Then after that it's done and it's worth a lot more than we paid for it. As a newly converted class, a climate-controlled cell storage facility.

But it's empty, right? So now we got to fill it up. We have to hit that for us about 40 percent occupancy to become cashflow positive. Once we become cashflow positive, we build up a small interest reserve. And after that, we start distributions and all of the capital that comes out of the building goes straight back to the investors to pay that back owed prep.

The first two years, once that's caught up, everybody gets quarterly distributions of cashflow equal to their percentage of equity. And then at or before year five, let's say you put in a hundred grand at year five, you're getting back your 100 grand plus another lump sum on top. Usually probably about 70 to 80 grand, something like that.

Our goal is that that amount plus the pref and the cashflow that you got is doing the best we can to double your money in five years, our overall 10-year return is the most important thing to us in our current fund. But we want to do the best we can to get you a really strong short-term return, because we think there's a really good chance you're probably going to reinvest with us again, if we do that, but you're going to get taxable income, obviously, is the preferred return and the cash flow.

So we do cost seg and accelerated depreciation. And our goal is, if you're getting 30, 000 worth of taxable income. We want to give you a K 1 with 30, 000 worth of depreciation. And then you get your return of capital plus another lump sum on top. Like, as you mentioned, that's coming by way of refinance, so it's non-taxable.

For now, if we sell down the road, obviously there could be implications. But that gets to the point where we do the best we can to try to double our investors money in five years or less, and then allow everyone to stay in, keep their same percentage of equity and continue to cashflow moving forward.

And obviously there's, there's room for future cash events as well. So like within our current fund, we had to portfolio five self-storage facilities across the Southeast. So at the end of the 10 years. Everybody's getting another large cash event, which could happen with another refinance. Best case scenario is that we probably are picking the three or four properties that we like the best and selling one or maybe two of those to give everybody a nice cash event there as well.

And then keep the rest of them and. Just let allow them to continue to cashflow. And as that principle gets paid down, maybe 10 years down the road, when the market's right in the mortgage rates, again, we could refinance again and everybody gets another bump as well. And it just continues to cashflow in that point.

Yeah, it can come to you. You can put it into trust, give it to your kids, do whatever you want. But the idea is to get away from trading time for money. We hit. Our two year goal was a hundred million in assets under management. We beat that goal by just a couple of weeks. It was very tight, but we're sitting around 150 million in assets under management at stabilization right now.

We have a five year goal of 500 million and a 10 year goal of a billion. And that doesn't mean that we want to buy and sell billion dollars worth of assets. We want a portfolio that's continuing to carry forward. And, you know, we all want the life. That we want, you want the financial freedom to get there, but then we want to make sure that we continue to have the freedom to fuel that so that you have the decision to make choices. What's best for you and your family. 

 

Ed Mathews: That is amazing. So I assume you have a group of active investors right now, and I don't necessarily need to ask any money, any interest, any information about them, because I know you probably want to keep as much of that confidential as possible, but. I am curious when you were just starting out and starting beginning to raise capital, you know, what were some of the strategies you use to create awareness, build that rapport and trust and ultimately.

You know, earn the right to do business with the folks that you work with today.

Clint Harris: Well, I had no idea what I was doing, but what I did have was a sales background and worked in the white coat community. I spent 16 years doing heart surgery. So when we bought our first Kmart as a joint venture, our investors on that, there was nine of us and it was mostly doctors that I worked with.

Cardiologists, Interventionalists, Electrophysiologists, Surgeons, and ER doctors. So it was a network. In fact, our average raise is pretty small. We're buying these buildings for so cheap that we get them for so little that the average raise is only a couple million bucks, 1. 5 to 3 million. So on average, we started off as a 506B syndication and we would have 10 to 15 investors on a deal.

It was small. So we went through. You know, a series of projects, I think by now 2 Kmarts, five warehouses, a couple of textile warehouses and, and a grocery store. Um, but we've kind of gotten to the point of we've outgrown 506B. So we did just, we launched a fund a while back. We're about almost halfway through a 10 million fund, and we just converted our 506B fund to a 506C.

So we kind of outgrew the ability to network with the community that we had, even though they're high earning individuals, eventually, you know, That trust transfers when you're in your circle, but as you expand out of that, kind of outgrew that. So we just converted to 506 C. We're starting a marketing campaign and, and kind of going larger to cast a wider net because deal flow is not a problem.

There's, there's still plenty of these larger buildings out there. And frankly, for a lot of people to try to go in and take them down, it doesn't make sense. If you're paying retail costs for the building, retail costs for the construction and the capital, you're taking on millions and millions of dollars worth of risk.

And if you can't control some of that risk in terms of construction and management, it can eat you alive. So because of that, we have an advantage at least for now. So for us, the market is telling us it's still full on acquisition mode. So we're going 506 C continuing to scale to try to hit those long term goals.

Ed Mathews: Okay. So I want to unpack, just a little bit. So the outgrowing of 506 B to 506 C, did that have to do with. The 35 slots, the 35 people? 

Clint Harris: That's, that's a great question. So on an individual deal level, no, once we converted to a fund and we knew we wanted to do that, and there's a few reasons why, like we just saved almost 150, 000 in doors and panels and screws by buying it for multiple facilities at the same time.

Right. So you get some significant advantages of being able to do one deal or more than one deal at a time. So there's a lot of advantages. They are also a portfolio bump. It's worth more to the bank as a portfolio properties than as an individual. So when you switch to the fund model, you're right. We have a limit as to 35 non accredited investors as a 506B syndication.

We could have gone straight to 506C. But we started with these people, like a lot of the non-accredited investors, including employer employees in our company or in Erik and Levi's company, we want to bring those people with us. Like, that's the whole idea of like the rich have plenty of opportunity. The people that need opportunity, the people that need to be part of a tribe of real estate nomads.

Are the people that don't traditionally have access to that. So because of that, we, we started as a 506B until we got to our 35 limit threshold of non-accredited investors. Then we convert over that no longer can accept non-accredited investors in this fund, but it allows us to do general solicitation and build up.

Once we close this fund, we have to wait 60 days for a cooling off period. We're going to the SEC. So the plan is 61 days later, we're opening up a new fund. We're taking 35 non accredited investors. We're allowing them to get into the fund and then we'll convert and keep on going. 

Ed Mathews: Wow. That's fantastic. So now that you've gotten into the other thing I wanted to unpack was the marketing.

So I'm curious how you are creating that mark. You know, what does that marketing campaign look like? 

Clint Harris: Step one, hire people smarter than me. Which is not hard to do. We have a fantastic marketing director that came on board. Her husband is actually one of our director of construction, and she came on running national marketing for, for large brands, vodka brands, and things like that.

Spent a lot of money on marketing. And she came on and is, uh, is really pushing things with that endeavor. Obviously a lot of social media, a lot of education involved with what we're doing. Like storage is not new. Self-storage conversions for most people is fairly new. And then the unique exit strategy that that brings about.

So that's one of the hurdles is we've got to educate and the, we're doing that through a lot of different ways. Obviously I have a podcast and we go on other people's podcasts. We host a local mastermind meetup. And then besides that, we're going to the conferences and rolling out, you know, meta marketing and things like that.

Ed Mathews: Gotcha. And so, you know, where you, obviously investors come from the medical community. I, I assume. And, and friends of friends, so, you know, I'm sure their friends are doctors, lawyers, business owners, whatever. And so that's how you diversify. But when you're, when you're marketing, and I want to get specific into this, so are you looking at the, obviously the podcast is a tremendous, to my surprise, podcasts are a great way to raise money in a, in a non sales way. Right? Um, are you also doing webinars and, and, you know, speaking engagements or is that not part of it? 

Clint Harris: Yeah, I do a decent amount of speaking, not as much as I need to be doing. We need to branch out into that. Cause I do find that it has a significantly higher conversion rate. So to me, that's always what I want to look at, like a one to one conversation with someone that I already know, or people that know them as the highest conversion rate.

Speaking has a very high conversion rate, especially if it's in person, but typically a lower, you know, it's a smaller, smaller group of people versus obviously a lower conversion rate. If you're just putting things out there, like a webinar or a podcast, but people still get to know, like, and trust you and understand what your core values are.

So when you do get a chance to connect and engage with them, there's common ground there. There's something already that they're looking for. And, and I honestly believe that. Most people are looking for the types of opportunities that you offer and that we offer and that other operators do and just haven't always known where to look for it or where to find it.

So the way I look at it is my job is not to sell our deals to anyone. My job is to educate on what our strategy is. And the first thing I want to do is ask people what their goals are. And if they don't know what they are, I don't want them to listen to what we're doing and then be like, Oh, that's my goal.

I'd like for them to put some thought into what it needs to look like for their life and then decide if it's a fit or not. Because the thing about our strategy is people are interviewing us and they need to know, like, and trust us. But the reality is we need to know, like, and trust them too, because we are talking about being in business together for a very long time.

This is not a three or a five year deal. This is something that has very long-term repercussions for your family and for mine. And if it's not going to work, I'd rather know about it right now. And if it doesn't line up with your goals, I'd like to be the first person to tell you that, to save your time and to save ours, because there's plenty of opportunity for you to find something that does fit with your goals.

And there's plenty of capital and investors for us to find to help us get to where we want to be as well. So I think that the number one thing is. Connecting with people in a meaningful way and not sell the deal, explain what we're doing and educate. And the thing I love about that is that I always learn in the process, right?

This is not my background. Originally, I worked in, in a lab for 16 years. So any opportunity I get to connect with anybody, even if they're not doing as much in the investing space, they're going to ask questions. I haven't thought of before. That's going to force me to think about things in a different way.

And that's going to bring value to me and hopefully bring value to the other people that I run into. Down the road, life is about relationships and that's, that's where the value is. 

Ed Mathews: You know,  it's interesting that you say that because I, I originally, we wrote a book here called the 75 questions you should ask a syndicator before investing.

Now, 112 questions. Somebody will ask a question and go, that's a really good question. Okay. I'm going to make a note of that. Uh, here's the answer and excellent question. I'm going to steal that and put it in our book. And we've been creating this book, you know, different iterations.

Clint Harris: Wow. That's powerful.

That's an, honestly, that's a book that's never going to stop writing itself. But that's going to keep on going.

Ed Mathews: Because you know, I'm, the goal is like you, I, the goal is to put myself in touch with people who are smarter than I am. It's possible. So, all right, let's get to the final four. I've taken, uh, you and I, uh, had to kind of joke before we hit the record button that we can both go on and on and on forever.

And we have fulfilled that promise. Uh, so let's talk about, uh, the final four. So finish this sentence for me, Clint. My purpose is….

Clint Harris: I think that my purpose is to live a life. That leaves a positive legacy on my children and an impact on the people around me where I don't get pigeonholed as having made my decisions based upon selfishness or greed or needing money or anything else.

I'd like to make my decisions in life. Coming from a place of love and relationships and my purpose being to push other people to the same end where your decisions that you make for yourself and for your family are based upon truly caring about what's best for them and not forced to make decisions, sacrificing time away from the people you love or doing things that you don't want. 

Ed Mathews: Right on. That’s a heck of a purpose. Uh, all right. So. Along those lines, you know, we, we always have, you know, guys like you and me and people that run businesses and, and, uh, you know, companies like ours, we always usually have coaches and mentors. And so I'm curious about. The, the best advice you ever got and who gave it to you?

Clint Harris: Man, there's so many people that have, that I owe gratitude that kind of formulated, I guess, where I am right now.

And I always thought that kind of I've reached, or at first it was Airbnbs and then it was storage and that was going to be the destination, right? And I've just come to terms and realized that at 41, that everything is a stepping stone. To what comes next and, and you're a reflection of the people that you've been around, right?

I am who I was 10 years ago and who I'm going to be 10 years from now, except for the places I go, the people I meet and all the information that I consume from the people around me. I think the biggest influence on me right now is my partner, Eric Hemingway. Who says he's just taking these big, bold moves, conversions and buying a Kmart and just taking swings.

And he says that, that risk is a muscle and it's something that inert, you know, it's innate in all of us that it's there, but it's painful to work that muscle. But the more you, you work it and understanding the difference in risk and calculated risk, but that, that risk is a muscle. And the more you work that muscle, the stronger it gets and the bigger things you're willing to take on.

And the reality is like the same lessons I was learning from single families and then small multifamily and then storage. It's the same lessons. I'm just working with someone who has a stronger wrist muscle than me. And it's the same thing. You just add a few more zeros. So I think that's had a big impact on me as to how far I'm willing to push myself and what I'm willing to take on to create a better life for my family.

Friends and family and the people around me is based upon how much I'm willing to stretch and work that risk muscle and put myself through some temporary discomfort when the reality is that that's just the growing pains of a broader perspective. 

Ed Mathews: That's awesome. All right. How about, uh, you know, how you consume information?

So leaders tend to be readers almost universally from my experience. And so I'm curious about two specific things. One is, you know, How do you consume information? Physical books, audio books, podcasts, YouTube videos, whatever. And then who are you paying attention to? What authors and creators? 

Clint Harris: So growing up, I was a reader.

Uh, I'm also an 11 on the extrovert scale and I make myself busy because every time I'm around people, I get excited and I, you know, I'm the guy that goes to the Christmas party and he goes home and I'm ready to go. I'm bouncing off the walls. So I've found that as I'm out and about in my daily life now, it's hard for me to sit down and relax and read, especially with two young boys at home.

So I listen to audio books. I do listen to podcasts. I listen to podcasts almost more as a break because they're smaller chunks that I can consume. But outside of that, I listen to audio books, especially I don't have as much windshield time as I used to. I used to drive all the time. When I was in the medical field, right?

So I could go through books like crazy and I did now it takes me a lot longer to consume information. So more and more, I'm getting little clips of things through short form video and things like that, that resonate or that people sent to me. But if I had my choice, audio books is the way that I consume information.

The books that have been really meaningful for me is, is in the development of Nomad. We all together read the book traction, which fantastic in terms of putting systems in place and your rocks and establishing like clearly defined goals and meetings and objectives, it creates some accountability. So from a team building standpoint, I think traction is incredible.

Um, the book that's had the biggest impact on me, there's a lot of earlier ones, of course, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and The Millionaire Next Door and The Richest Man in Babylon. And those that I read as a younger man, that, that certainly influenced me. Um, but Dan Sullivan's Who Not How book, I read that while I was building out our property management company to try to get to the point that I could walk away from managing our properties.

And I did, it took two years to do it and I was struggling. Like I was, how do I do this? How do I do this? How do I do this? And I read that book and the question was like, that's not the question. The question is, who do I know that can do this better than I can? And the, the idea of plugging in people that are better at their job than I am at their job had a huge impact on me building that company and then moving into.

A capital raising role and all the things that come along with how I organize my busy brain about the processes that we need that book comes up in conversation with me probably twice a week, like, you know what? I don't know how to do this. This is a Who Not How situation by Dan Sullivan.

Ed Mathews: Right. So it's interesting.

You mentioned those two books, right? Gino Wickman's book and, and, uh, or his, you know, EOS, uh, traction and all the books that he's written around that and Dan Sullivan, right? Because, you know, you take, you look at Wickman and, you know, one of the big things I took away from that, that, uh, set of that, his information was, you know, you have creators and you have integrators, right?

And, uh, you need to figure out who you are as the person. Like for me, I'm an, I'm a, I'm a creator, right? I'm, I am adequate at being an integrator, but I'm nowhere near as good as my partners are. And so then you go through the process of Who Not How, and it's kind of, it's a, it's a, at least a two path conversation or consideration in that.

Do you hire somebody or do you partner with somebody? And, uh, you know, in some cases I've in, in previous experiences, I've hired people and that's worked out fine, but, uh, you know, where I've seen really explosive growth. And it's only been in the last year and a half, two years that I've kind of gotten my head around it is bringing on partners who are, they're, They're born integrators, right?

You know, I tried to talk to my wife who's a classic type A personality. She's an integrators integrator and, you know, bring her into this business. And you know, this was like five, six years ago when we were going, when I was going full time and, uh, and you know, God bless her. She, she said, uh, I think you and I vividly remember, I think you and I work very differently together and I would much rather be married to you than work with you.

I appreciate that. I'm going to take that advice and I'm going to go find somebody else because I also enjoy being married to you.

Clint Harris: One of these two things is going to change if we keep this up.

I hear you. Good for you. Good man. 

Ed Mathews: So, uh, last of the final four. So success means what?

Clint Harris: I'm going to make this a little bit personal. This is something that I said a few years ago that I didn't think was ever really going to come true.

When I was, when my youngest son, oldest son was born, I was in the hospital and it was a rough birth, emergency c-section, things didn't go well for wife or the baby. And the day that he was born, as soon as they both became stable, which was touch and go for a little while, I was running to the other end of the hospital and I did three surgeries that day, implanting defibrillators and pacemakers.

And between cases, I'm running back and forth and everyone down there's like, dude, what are you doing here? And I'm like, dude, there's nobody else to do it. This can't wait. That's stable. And I was going back and forth. And then the year after that, my wife is staying home and I'm running to the hospital.

And I was not present in the meaningful way that I wish that I was because heart surgery is not nine to five Monday through Friday. I made the transition to full time real estate investor in 2022 when my wife was 24 weeks pregnant. And when my second son was born, I was present in a significantly more meaningful way and still am.

I'm usually home a couple of days a week, helping out with letting her go do her thing, close real estate properties or whatever. She's a real estate agent. And I, I said before I, when we first found out we were pregnant, I said, if If I do this right, I will be successful if my boys never remember that I sold pacemakers and defibrillators.

If they don't remember that I was on call, that I was at the hospital at 6:30 in the morning, you know, leaving the house well before they woke up, oftentimes coming home after they would have gone to bed. If I was successful in doing what I wanted to do to navigate to a life of stopping trading time for money, they would never remember that I did that.

And now I'm to the point that like, I've got a bunch of demo devices laying around and some surgical equipment, but besides those things, they'll probably never remember that. So on a personal level, that's a small level of success. Because to me, it's a representation of a significant portion of their life that I'm going to be a lot more present.

So that's probably the first step towards meaningful success. That's really personal to me. Outside of that, I'll go back to a core belief that I honestly believe is the independence of purpose of going where you want, when you want, and do what you want, because you're legitimately trying to make decisions.

That are going to be the best for you and your family. You're going to travel because it's going to create well rounded individuals that have empathy and compassion and can see the world, the good and the bad and have global perspective, or, you know, you're going to go spend your time doing this thing because a servant's heart is really important to instill in children.

And things like that, like that's the level of success is when I get to make decisions based upon trying to create a child that's going to have a positive effect on the world long after I'm gone. And now we're talking about things that can affect their kids and their kids, right? Best case scenario between you and me, the luckiest person we know maybe going to get a hundred years in this world.

So a hundred years is the best anybody can hope for. And a hundred years after that, for most of us, people have probably said our name for the last time, but you still have generations of people moving forward and you can have a good life or a bad life. And that can instill characteristics in your children that have implications for multiple generations long after nobody said your name anymore.

So for me, success is. Having the time and ability to do things that I think have eternal significance in the lives of people that I care about that I haven't even met. 

Ed Mathews: And, uh, yeah. So, thank you for that. I'm not even gonna, I'm not even gonna try and comment on it. It's, it's, it's beautiful the way it sits.

Alright, so, when you're not talking about real estate, I think I kinda know the answer based on your last answer, but, uh, when you're not Talking about real estate, what do you do for fun?

Clint Harris: I avoid my kids as much as possible. No, I, we, listen, we, we live at the beach. And so obviously we spend family time.

We go on walks. We, we live at the beach and I, my, my son's name are Fisher and Finn. I am a fanatic on the ocean. I like to go offshore fishing. I like to scuba dive and spearfish. I don't do it as much as I did because it's a little bit of a risk factor. But we, we raise beach babies and we want to, we live on an island.

We, you know, we have a boat, we do the things we walk on the beach, we find the shark's teeth and, and that's what we want to do. So yeah, we, we try to enjoy where we live as much as possible and I'm having more fun than I've ever had. I love the guys I work with. I love the company and I love what we do. I like creating things out of nothing.

I have that in common with you. So I, I enjoy that. And besides that, I, I love being a part of creation and where we live. 

Ed Mathews: All right. Yeah, that's a good life, man. That's a good life. 

Clint Harris: It's better than I deserve. 

Ed Mathews: No, you create what you deserve. I'm going to challenge you on that. Yeah. So if people want to learn more about Nomad or get to know you or get in touch.

Clint Harris: What's the best way to do that? The easiest way to do that is you can email me directly. I'm clint@nomadcaoital.us. I talk to investors and operators all day, every day, and I love it. And that's something that I always learn. And, and hopefully I can help other people's learn as well. So connect with me directly there, or you can go to nomadcapital.us and schedule a call, or you can find me on Facebook or LinkedIn. 

Ed Mathews: Clint Harris. Thank you so much for joining us. Uh, again, my friend, it's good to see you and, uh, I'm really glad we had this conversation. So thank you. 

Clint Harris: Same, Ed. Thanks, man. I appreciate the time.

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Ed Mathews

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