Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Merriah Harkins Chief Sales Officer with Lukrom – investment opportunities designed for accredited investors

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Merriah joined Lukrom in January 2025 as Chief Sales Officer, bringing over two decades of experience in alternative investments and capital raising. She leads Lukrom’s sales strategy, focusing on investment professionals and their investors to drive long-term growth. Merriah’s leadership in alternative investments and sales strategy makes her an integral part of Lukrom’s mission to expand investor access to high-quality opportunities.FINRA Licenses: Series 7, 24, and 63Learn more: https://www.lukrom.com/ – https://www.linkedin.com/in/merriah-harkins-1080294/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-merriah-harkins-chief-sales-officer-with-lukrom-investment-opportunities-designed-for-accredited-investors

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us Mariah Harkins, who's the chief sales officer with Lucrum. Mariah, welcome to the program. Thank you, Mike. I'm happy to be. hear. Hey, so I want to hear all about what you do. And first of all, I love when I read the name of a company or, you know, oh, what is your expert title? What is a lucrum? Yeah, so lucrum is a private credit company. And we mostly lend to businesses in Arizona. We're in different growth markets, but our specialty is Arizona.

and we are a private credit company. So people come to us when they want to either acquire, develop, or improve real estate. And our loans are typically six to 12 months. So it's really someone finds something they really want to do. They want to do it quick. You know, we're someone they come with and partner with. And then usually if it's a longer term project, they'll get permanent financing from a bank. But oftentimes it takes a long time for them to do that.

So there's a big market. You know, Arizona is one of the fastest growing metro markets. I think lots of people that know anything about the Phoenix metro market know that there's so many global technology companies coming in and building giant campuses there. And it just seems like Arizona keeps going further and further out into the desert. My role. At some point, it'll have to stop by that point, right? Yeah, exactly. It'll be so much dirt.

Well, it's true or water. Yeah. I think that's the bigger concern in regard to it. But it's a robust, wonderful place for people to live and also just start businesses and grow. But when you bring in all that industry into an area, you know, there is a need for mostly, you know, families that need to build homes, multifamily, as well as retail and office space. And so, you know, it's a market in which private lenders, you know, I think our problem right now is we've got so much demand for people that would like to have loans. And it's just raising the money in order to try to meet that demand. So my role as Chief Sales Officer is we've mostly raised money through friends and family and high net worth investors and have done a really good job of doing that.

But they brought me in at the beginning of January of this year because my expertise, I've always been in the financial services business since I graduated from college. But my expertise for the last 20 years has been helping firms like glucrum, mostly in the alternative investment type space, raise money. So build distribution teams where you're hiring salespeople. and my specialty is to go mostly through financial advisors. So whether it's a registered investment advisor or it's somebody that works for a broker-dealer, our products are appealing because they are a bit different. And when you've got wealthier investors, you want to diversify them into lots of different asset classes because that protects you, you know, depending on what the market cycles are,

you want to be invested in a lot of different investments. And so in my career, I have led companies to build sales forces to help raise money, to help fuel whatever business they're in. And so I've done a bit of venture capital and venture debt. I raised money for an oil and gas company that did royalties in regard to oil and gas and different kinds of real estate. So I've worked for a few companies over the last 20 years. and bringing that expertise to lucrum to kind of break out from just raising money through high net worth individuals directly.

It makes a lot of sense when a company really wants to expand to build those relationships with financial professional firms because then you have greatest economies of scale. You know, you get a billion-dollar registered investment advisor and they might have. you know, 20 advisors working for them and they like the program and they see it could fit for clients and then all of a sudden you've got 20 people selling your product versus you going out and trying to raise money yourself. So that's kind of, you know, the whole benefit of building your own sales organization and having financial professionals educating them so that they can go and put this into the client's portfolios where it's appropriate and suitable. Yeah, so tell me a little, or tell me the difference between what you guys do and a traditional REIT.

And I'm assuming it's just the same difference, but you guys have a loan products in the portfolio versus actual real estate. You're doing the loan on a real estate, but does your fund act similar to a REIT? You know, it's interesting, Mike, because our fund is actually set up as a read, and that provides some tax advantages. So when people receive income, typically when you raise money in a fund like ours, it pays a monthly income. And so you have a set rate, and your principal is protected. So your principal goes to work for you. It's just say you invest $100,000 and, you know, our payment. is, and it ranges, depending on how much money you put in, let's just say seven and a half percent.

So every month you're going to receive the same payment. And at the end of the day, when you're ready to take your money out, you're going to take your $100,000 out. So the difference between, you know, it's complicated a little bit simply because we are a private credit fund, and that's the way it works. You receive a nice, steady, predictable income that is the same every single month. And then your principal, when you're ready to take your money out, whatever you put in, you get to take out. And, you know, you have options to reinvest your monthly income.

And so, you know, at the end of the day, it could be more that you're taking your money out. But it's just only because you're reinvesting your payments that you're getting every month. Yeah. A reet, on the other hand, a traditional reed. you know, what we're doing is, you know, if someone comes to us, they want to acquire a piece of real estate or they want to improve a piece of real estate, they will come to us. And typically, our loans are only six to 12 months. So they'll come to private lenders because private lenders can act very quickly. So you come to us, you find a piece of property, or you want to get in and you want to improve that. property to sell it, you know, in six to 12 months. If you went to a traditional lender, a bank, it could take you months in order to get through the process of being able to secure that loan. And that makes total sense if you've got time. So if you've got time and you find a piece of

property and you don't need to close on it for two months, you may be able to go to a traditional lender and you have that time period. But people that traditionally come to private lenders, they want to have a loan that can be funded in a week. And so that's the benefit of coming to a private lender. So what we do is we're lending to a business, mostly businesses. Sometimes there are individuals that are coming in to fix up, you know, a nice expensive house that they want to put a bunch of improvements into to sell it.

But they'll come to a company like ours. And if it's a short-term project or they just need the time to bridge between when they can go to a bank and get permanent financing, they'll go to firms like us because we can act quickly. So the difference is our fund is made up of a bunch of bars. So there's loans that are secured by the real estate. So the fund is in a first lien position, which simply means if something were to happen with the borrower and they couldn't make their monthly payments, the company is in a good position because they've got the real estate backing that investment. And they can foreclose. You know, we prefer not to do that because we want to work with the lenders.

And so it's very, very rare in a short-term loan situation, especially when you're conservatively underwriting that you would have a foreclosure. But our fund, we've got a conservative focus of loan to value. And so our loan to value typically is somewhere in the mid-50s. So if you've got a million-dollar property, you come to Lucrum. You've gotten a loan for $550,000 on that million-dollar property. you're placing lucrum in the first position. So if something happens and you can't pay your loan payments,

then lucrum can take that property. And now we have a million dollar property, but we only had a $550,000 loan. So you can imagine if you had to go out and sell that property, lucrum's in a really good position because the property is worth a lot more than we lended for it. You know, you can see private, credit funds that will range, you know, private credit's an interesting term. I think a lot of people

hear private credit. You know, a lot of private credit companies are lending to companies. So a company needs funding, and so they're lending to operating businesses. And that's just a totally different risk profile. And then the other thing you look at is the longer term, the loan, the potential that things could go wrong. You know, that's a bit higher. But then you also see funds that pay higher interest rates, but they're also having a loan to value that might be 90. You know, so now you've got a $900,000 loan on a million dollar property. And if something goes wrong, when you've got a foreclosure, you're not able to use that money because you're, you've got that property and you've got to sell that property in the marketplace, plus you've got fees. And

If the market changes, you know, we know real estate goes through cycles, you then are in a tough position because if the market, you know, is going through some sort of dip and now real estate has gone down 10 or 20 percent in value in that time period where you've got this property, then all of a sudden you're in a tight position when you've got the higher loan to value. So, you know, with a fund like ours, because we're doing loans and we're in a first position, you're really protected and we're keeping our loan to value lower. Typically, those kind of funds will take your money to go to work. We'll use your money to do those loans. We'll pay you, you know, a really good interest rate.

It'll be the same every month. And then at the end of the day, whatever you invested is what you're going to get back out of it. for a reet, like a traditional reed, they are acquiring properties. So it's not a loan against a property. And so you've got a portfolio and they're great investments as well. You know, you've got a portfolio of a bunch of different properties. It's almost like your portfolio is, if you're thinking of a timeline, it seems to me like your portfolio is before a REIT's portfolio because you need the loan to get the property.

you know, built and constructed and finished up, then you get your permanent financing. And then that property could go into an actual reet where then it's going to be an investment. Maybe it's a large apartment complex. So it just seems like that would be the natural progression. Yes, exactly. And either the reed would take over the financing or they would pay it off. But yes, you're right. So you improve a piece of real estate.

You know, another company can come in and buy it. They want to use it for themselves. Someone wants to buy a house. Or a reet could come in and put it in the portfolio. And then they act as, you know, the leasee. So someone might lease out that property if it's an office building or retail. And they will acquire a bunch of different types of properties, you know, depending on how big the reed is and what they specialize in. And you'll often see reits that are very specialized.

So, like, we lend on all different kinds of properties. Mostly multifamily is the sweet spot because so many businesses are coming into the Phoenix metro area that housing has become an issue. And that housing, you know, you bring in a company that's going to, you know, employ 30,000 people. And they're going out further into the desert. You need to make sure you've got housing around where their work is. But, you know, a reet itself, then what happens is they have to distribute income. And there are certain rules that you have to follow in regard to a reed. So you'll get dividends.

And those dividends could actually fluctuate. So it's not going to be, you know, the same dividend every single year. You might have some fluctuation there. And that at the end of the day, when you are taking your money out, it could be more than you invest it. could be less. So it just depends on how the properties performed inside the, you know, the, the structure. So, you know, it's because we are working through financial professionals and really building that business, that makes total sense when you're raising money for a REIT or you're raising money for a private credit fund, whether you're investing in businesses or you have real

estate backing the investment. There's all different kinds of private credit. that you can invest in. But usually, you know, they'll look at it and they'll say, okay, I might do a private credit fund that invest in businesses. And that's a completely different asset class than if I go to Lucrum and Lucrum's lending against properties. So that's typically one of the most conservative ways in which you can go because you've got hard assets backing your investment that are quicker to get out of if you

have issues in the portfolio. But they might say, you know, I've got 20 different investments that I've got my, you know, client that's got $2 million. They need to invest in 20 different types of things because at any given time, the market's changed, you know, there's cycles that you go through in every type of business. And even in real estate, you know, you may go through cycles in retail where, yeah, I mean, I mean, we all know, you know, when COVID hit and businesses had all this real estate and everyone was staying home and working. And now, you know, businesses are having trouble getting their employees to want to come back into an office.

So we went through a cycle of, you know, a lot of empty office buildings. And so then that impacts, you know, how much is that office building worth? because office buildings are worth a lot more if you've got tenants in them. So, you know, you go through cycles like that where you might even in real estate, you know, it might be a great time to be investing in multifamily, not so great in businesses. You know, retail, I think retail suffered a bit, you know, and that goes through cycles too. People get used to buying stuff online. And then it goes to another cycle where people actually like going into business.

So that diversification across lots of different products and companies and industries really protects investors. And the wealthiest investors are probably the most diversified. And they, you know, if you look at there's a publication, it's called Tiger 21, and it analyzes the wealthiest people in the country and how they invest. And it's really interesting because they are not. not heavily invested in the traded markets. Because even if you're in like a traded reet, let's talk about that, the traded reits, while you would think they should move with the real estate cycles, they get caught up in moving with the markets. So you have, you know, a major down day in the market.

You know, if there's a threat of tariffs, then you've got a big giant, you know, decrease in the markets and everything goes down. And then, you know, the threat of tariffs gets lifted or delayed and then the markets go way up. So that volatility in the traded markets can impact investments where you would think, okay, well, these are the stocks of a company. It will impact almost everything in the traded markets. So just that volatility in the traded markets, things move more similarly than when you've got non-traded investments. like a private credit fund or a non-traded reed, where you've got more stability there. You're not seeing that up and down. And I think for a lot of folks, especially the wealthier individuals, you see them invested in

a lot of non-traded alternative investments for that stability. So they kind of like to, they've got these businesses or whatever they're running. They want their investments to sort of quietly grow for them without them being really worried and anxious about, you know, big giant swings in their portfolios. Yeah, nobody likes risk and everybody likes real estate. And so you're blending those two together to come up with a nice opportunity for some alternative investments. So if an RIA or some accredited investors are interested in learning a little bit more

and exploring this opportunity, what's the best way that they can learn more and reach out and connect with you, Maria. Yeah. So the best way is to visit our website. You know, our contact information is on there. So it's lucrum.com. So it's L-U-K-R-O-M dot com. And you can, you know, learn more about what Lucram does, you know, learn about our executives.

You know, there's some varied backgrounds. We've got, you know, a gentleman that is our chief cooperative. officer Matt Campbell who, you know, he funded or started a business. He actually got funded by Shark Tank, which is interesting and successfully sold that business, retired for probably a couple of months and got bored. And then came in and joined our CEO who has a really deep experience in private credit, really, which is great. But we've got a really great management team. And I'm excited to be there. I mean, I'm excited to be there. just started in January. But you can also reach me. My name is spelled a little bit different. So it's

Maria, but it's M-E-R-R-I-A-H at lucrum.com. So I, you know, I would be happy to provide education and, you know, answer any questions that anybody may have. And I just really appreciate being on the show today, Mike. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It was a pleasure learning more about what you're doing. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you. Have a great day. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes,

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