Harmonie Borden Brings Harmonie to Lending: Try Borrowing from Her!

Are you one of the many busy professionals working in offices day in and day out? Do you wonder how some people grow their wealth fast, retire early and play on work days? Well, you're in luck because Ginny Bolling hosts this show Pivots of Prosperity where she interviews people that can do just that play on work days. Many guests have become financially free. She also interviews people that are on their journey and people that are in support roles like attorneys, contractors, brain brokers and others. Commercial real estate is the common element. She is on a mission to be sure. Busy professionals know they can own substantial commercial properties too, like apartments, self storage facilities and others, and not have to do the work managing them. Passive investing is the key. Syndications are the typical method. Tax write offs are some of the biggest rewards. Ginny and partners find the deals, build a strong team and business plan, then offer the investment opportunities to passive investors. New episodes are released every Tuesday at 12, so watch for new releases. If you want to get involved, let us know. You need to get pre qualified to hear about most deals. See the show notes for contact information.

Hello, Hello. Jenny Bowling here with Pivot to Prosperity brought to you by Pivotal Real Estate Investments, where we help our investors build wealth and income through commercial real estate that also improves communities. Today we have Harmony Borden with us. And Harmony's in Utah, right?

Yes, yes, I am very good.

Well, welcome. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you.

We've been chatting as usual. We always talk before these and so we try to recapture the, the most valued pieces that we've already talked about. But I want Harmony to tell us not only how she ended up with a name like Harmony, but about her journey into real estate.

Well, thank you. Harmony came from my mother with the time heard an Elton John song from Yellow Brick Road, Harmony and Me, and she would sing that to me when she was pregnant and it just stuck. And so that's the song that her and my aunt and they'll sing to me on my birthday and holidays. And it's kind of like our, our thing now and. But it's Harmony with an ie and not a y. So it came from Elton John.

Cool. And how'd you get into real estate?

I got into real estate by the persuasion of my husband three and a half years ago. He was ready to make a big change in his career and I wasn't quite ready because I loved what I did. I was, I finally felt like I found my calling. I was in the medical field for 10 years and then I shifted over to doing casework for the Military, where I was contracted for 13 years. And I loved what I did. Every day it was something different. And I loved serving those that I got to work with and. But he was just, you know, exhausted from his career and wanted to make the change. And I was like, I don't know how I could even go into real estate, not knowing how I can help the individuals I was helping. And he's like, I know there's a way you can help them. There's always a way that you can help them through real estate. So. So I moved to Utah by myself with my. At the time, My son was 11, my youngest, he's now 15. And we lived in a hotel for four months because during COVID Utah was one of the strongest states in the US they were doing wonderful. Got off the plane with my mask and they're all looking at me like, why are you wearing a mask? I lived in a hotel for four months because the market was so good. It was really tough to find a home during that time. I said, okay, I'm sitting in this hotel room. My. We're on Hawaii time because that's where we left Hawaii to Utah. And my son was doing online schooling that didn't start until 11:00 in the afternoon, in the morning. So because he was still in school back home, what was I going to do during this time? We couldn't be out looking at houses. He had school. So I started taking real estate courses, real estate agent courses. And I was like, okay, I'm starting to catch on. And once my husband got here and we got settled, we just dove in and I started to see the value there that I could bring to others and that, you know, creative finance and all of these things, it was just amazing to me. Why didn't more people know about this? It was. I didn't know how to buy a house before, and that's something I talk about in my social media and my stories and, you know, I knew how to find deals. I, you know, come from humble beginnings. I bought a short sale thinking it was a clearance sale and things like that. But, you know, fast forward to learning all of these things that we were doing along the way were some type of creative finance and investing, investing for our next phase in life and. But now to find it on the level we have and to throw ourselves into it, it just made a world of difference. And so to be able to pass that on is huge.

Right, Right. It is. It's a gift. Once you, once you get the big picture and you can share it very, very good.

Yeah.

So yes, you were doing some very interesting things when you're in Hawaii and working with service members. And so yeah, you saw all levels of need, it sounds like.

So yeah, there was, you know, being in Hawaii, we have, you know, you're separated by islands, by ocean.

It's slower. Hawaii is how we, how I would say it, Hawaii.

I was specifically in Maui and it was, you know, we're divided by ocean. So every island is very different. The, the way of life is different, the pace is different. So the resources were very different. And that's the casework that I focused on was getting community resources available for service members and their families. I was an advocate for them. I was a part of the yellow ribbon events that's pre and post and during deployments to help them and their families navigate the challenges that they would have and resources that they would need. We also had. So I would teach resiliency, disaster preparedness, which is huge, and suicide awareness and prevention, which that was also huge. And I got to be a part of childbirths for those who were deployed and couldn't be there. I got to go into schools and help the advocates or maybe a grandparent who normally didn't deal with those things because the parents did and the parents are deployed. Just trying to help be that it's almost like being a peace of mind for them to know that they have somebody in their corner for a lot of different things that they had to go through.

Yeah. And I thought it was very interesting. You told me like you don't even think of it like a big sacrifice but, but you volunteered for five years if I understand correctly, so that they would know that you're trustworthy.

I did. It was, it wasn't on purpose. I volunteered for selfish reasons. My brother was young, he was single at the time, so his wife now then girlfriend since high school. They said they needed volunteers and my husband was traveling a lot for work. I was by myself on Maui with my kids. And so in that aspect, I was in the same situation as the women. Right. The wives were left at home with their children. So I got to spend a lot of time with them. Volunteering felt natural. And my sister in law and I decided to split a position. But I did it to be the nosy sister. My brother wasn't going to tell us stuff, so how else would I find out other than to volunteer? And I've always grown up knowing you got to rub elbows with those that are there to understand and get the inside. So that was why I Initially started volunteering for selfish reasons. My mom. I'm one of eight with my mother, and my brother's the only boy, and he's right under me. We're very close. So it was to kind of give ourselves peace of mind. Our mom, peace of mind. And so I started off volunteering during first deployment, after the 2003 deployment. And then when the position came available a few years later, they. I say they. And it was service members who called me and said, hey, this position's open. We come and work, you know, And I'm like, you guys are crazy. I went to high school with you guys. They're my brother's friends. I used to kick you guys out of the house. You guys were. You drove me crazy. And they were like, no, but now you get to get paid to work with us. And then one of the colonels called me and said, you know, they kept hearing my name. So finally I decided, okay, let's see what this is about. And I went and looked into it some more, and it honestly was a great fit. It. It really was who I was. It's. I'm a resourceful person. I love helping others, so it just makes sense.

Yep. People that are service oriented, you know, they. They can spot those. Those positions that are a good match pretty, pretty well usually. I think so.

Right.

I get it. Well, great. Well, so then you were helping them deal with what's going to happen while he's gone and do some planning, which often involves financial planning, which means that there's ways, because we know real estate gets into finances. There's lots of ways that you can still help. Even in Utah.

Yes. So I would bring them in resources to help them understand. And that was a big part of it. Being so far from the US in the islands, resources are very scarce. So in the military in California, you will have triple the amount of resources available to you and military resources for a lot of these things. So finding resources within the communities that could help them. And if we had finances, finding the financial planners. And it was more finding individuals who could help them, not sell them something, help them understand their own, whether it be finances, whether it be, you know, even within their. The medical community, because we only have a small VA over there and it's so inundated. Right. All VAs are very inundated with a ton of traffic. And they don't have the resources, especially now. So finding ways to navigate that. Anything within their day to help them navigate it a little bit better is where I would come in and try to Sit down and understand what their needs were. Because sometimes they thought their needs were this. And after listening to them, it was really not as big. And it was just this over here that made it seem bigger. Just kind of being that ear for them.

Was military life or is military life for them in Hawaii or Maui particularly stressful or are they doing more like defense almost work that's more office? Like.

No. So at the time my brother was deployed with an infantry, so it wasn't. Was not office whatsoever. I mean you have your full time staff that do office work. But no, they, when they were being deployed, they were being deployed to Iraq right after 9, 11. And so it was very stressful not understanding. And remember there were National Guard and reserves reservists who are going and active duty is. Wasn't what they were. They trained, but they weren't prepared for initially for the everyday service members were more prepared than their families. More definitely they were ready to serve. The families were like, wait a second, we didn't sign up for this. And the service members reminded them, yes, we did. It's just not what we do every day because were in the guard or in the Reserve. So getting them to get past that phase of understanding and I would myself started off volunteering, definitely understood where the families were coming from. But our biggest was to find ways to help them. You know, I was trying to find ways to help my brother through that. Not stress about what was going on at home. The little things that maybe, you know, our mom, single mom most of the time, and our sisters were always something and he, we didn't want him to have to worry about things. And at the same time they were doing that with us. Right. And my youngest by my oldest son, he was, he was eight, I think at the time, maybe even younger. And he really took it hard. When my brother was deployed and he envisioned Rambo, he's gonna go in there and he's gonna be in the jungle and he's like, that was, you know, a little kid. So when I talk to my brother, I'm like, you need a put it in perspective for him. Be very open and honest. Like you have a pool there, you're behind, you know, Gates. You guys, you guys have your own little thing going on there. You're not always out there in the field every single day and just help him understand that you do have a place to go back and it's not in action like Rambo, where you're living in the jungle. Just trying to help him understand that it wasn't I mean, it's still so dangerous. You're just trying to help the kid, not worry about it every second of the day. And that was what we eventually, when I went into my full time position, was just trying to help put it in perspective for the families and helping them identify the different resources available to them so that they didn't feel the stresses. Because no matter what, you're gonna stress about them being away. So something like not watching the news every day. A lot of the news that we were seeing was already old news. And so it was things that they were trying, you know, they were concerning themselves about and worrying about, but it was something that happened a week or two ago and it wasn't in their area, things like that. Just helping the families understand and helping them with the resources because the less stress they had with dealing with the other things, the less stress that would give them because then it didn't feel as heavy.

So my kids give me crap about my corny jokes. But you gave them harmony.

Well, I hope so.

That never came up. Nobody else thought of that?

No, no, that's what you did because.

You care so deeply about it, obviously.

Oh yeah, yeah.

And harmony is peace and harmony. Anyway, maybe you can use that now. Anyway, so tell us what you're doing now. You've got a few things that are cooking, exciting stuff. So why don't you talk about that?

Yes. So few things. I have a lot of things going on. We have our fund rise, capital investments and you know, three and a half years ago we started investing. My husband and I were primarily doing our own, you know, hard money ourselves. We came to Utah to do, to retire. Our kids, our older kids were already out here in the mainland. Our oldest was in Arizona and our daughter was just finished college in Oregon. And we needed somewhere be in the middle of the two. Neither one of them wanted to come back home. And my husband's career was huge and it took him away. He lived on another island for 20 years. I refused to move there. Being originally from Los Angeles, I did not want to move to Oahu, where it's smaller, more people and surrounded by water. You have nowhere to go. So we moved to Utah. We chose Utah and decided to do some real estate investing in our retirement phase. And then that's when I started to realize retirement isn't just what you think. Right. Retirement isn't just stopping and being on a beach or on a mountain or anything, or in a river, just with the umbrella and your drink and relaxing every day. It's whatever you want it to be. And my husband is very much a workaholic. I'm definitely a community person and so stopping didn't make sense. So, so finding something that could help us and that was within real estate. So he initially wanted to do fix and flips and buy and holds. I did not want to do fix and flips unless I could be Joanna Gaines because on the show she's just pointing to things and we'll do one or two projects. But we quickly decided we didn't want to do that. And we went to a local RIA Real Estate Investors association meeting and we met a gentleman who was like, well, if you guys don't know what you want to do yet and you have capital, I need capital, would you loan it to me? And that's how we got into lending, started doing hard money lending. We did about 14 million of our own for the first year and a half, two years. And we just kind of dove into real estate and educate ourselves as much as we could. My husband really navigated to commercial because of his prior career. It was something he already was familiar, familiar with and it was just easier for him on that aspect. I was diving into creative finance. I loved helping first time home buyers veterans, helping them understand what they were looking at to see the home more than just a home, but as an asset. You know, people work so hard for their money finding ways to help their money work for them and your home can do that for you. So, so I was diving into that and you know, fast forward. Here we are with the fund where we found a way to. We have an evergreen fund. We do debt and equity. Right now we're heavily focusing on debt. We already have a lot of investors we had previously been working with and it just, it's worked out nicely for our investors. So our investors can make 10 to 12%. Our, our terms are six months, 10 to a 12 APY and our term is for six months. So it's, it's an easy, comfortable place to be investing your money. While they're trying to navigate what else they want to do next, our equity, we are, you know, navigating it the way the rest of us in commercial real estate are waiting for something to change so we can find some good deals out there. We do JV and some other deals as well. So we have a lot that we've been a part of. I think we have, we started off already before we got into commercial real estate and investing. We were already LPs in some syndications and then worked our way quickly. I Think we only did one or two deals as LPs and then quickly navigated over to GPS and probably six other deals. And that's around the time that we started the fund and the fund we own an RV park in Texas that does great. And the community there is amazing. I love it. When we go visit, they are the most family oriented, humbling group of people. They're fun. I always tell them, I'm going to record you guys. So you guys are like watching an episode of some kind of series of sorts there. It's pretty funny. And they fish all day. A lot of them fish every day. We're on a lake, then we JV on some townhomes in Texas as well. So we have a lot that we do on the commercial side within the fund, outside our fund. We just try to find what works, what's going to get us some good returns and be a win win for those bringing us the deal, for the people we're bringing into the deal, and for ourselves.

So you're not tied to any particular geographic region or what's your criteria to help with.

Typically we're along the Sunbelt states, but we're not opposed to hearing or seeing things elsewhere. You know, these days you just never know where you might find a good deal in these small towns that pop up that are quietly growing. You know, there's a lot out there. We pretty. We're very agnostic. We want to see what works and what our investors want too. And then we help them understand it. My husband does the underwriting. I'm definitely not the underwriter. He does the underwriting and he's very conservative with it. We want our investors to feel comfortable that, you know, this is a comfortable place. You know, he believes highly, and we all do, in being diverse. So having your money being somewhere comfortable while you're doing something with a smaller percentage of it being a little bit more risky. And it depends on where they are at what phase in their life. Right. Where their journey is taking them on what that looks like for each one of them. Right.

Well, so. And then do you have a minimum and maximum that you're looking to deploy?

So the entry level for our fund is 50,000. And in any deal they bring on our debt deals, if they bring in 200,000 per deal, they'll make the 12%. Anything under that will be at 10%. So a lot of our investors have gotten very comfortable. They'll start off with a smaller amount, you know, maybe a hundred thousand to maybe eventually we have them working up to A million where they just keep my money working. This is comfortable and it's making me good returns. It's secure. They feel comfortable. We all of our fix and flips that we invest in with our investors that come to us for capital, we are going to do it in states that we have eyes on the ground. So Hawaii, Idaho, Texas, Utah, things like that. And we're going to be where we can easily access it with flippers who we've been comfortable with. They have a good track record. We're not opposed to working with anyone who's never worked with us before. But we want to vet them. We take it very seriously. So we're doing a lot of due diligence on that side of it as well for you.

Right. And so you said entry of 50,000, then you said that 200,000. But that's you're talking to lend. Right.

So if they bring in 200,000 on the debt side, they will earn 12% per deal. If they bring in the 200 per deal.

Okay, but so. Oh, so you have it per deal. Okay. So you have a customizable fund.

Pretty much. Yeah. It's an evergreen, so it's.

Yeah.

To help them. And so with our equity, of course you have to look at it as an investor and they have to choose what they want to invest it in. On our debt side they can say, you know, just keep it working for me and they just sign the papers and we just keep that working. They don't look at, at the deal, but we do provide in our platform. They will go on there and see everything about that deal if they ever wanted to. All of our underwriting.

So. But there's no lien position.

We are, we only sit in first lien position, you guys.

As the fund.

As the fund.

Right.

So we only sit and that's that what, that's what gives them the sense of security. Right, Right. Yeah.

But so say somebody wants to borrow from that fund, they approach you and that still needs to be that criteria. You already said so what is the minimum you want to loan and the maximum to loan?

So we try to stay, we stay away from the luxury. They take longer to move. Yeah. And so we will typically stay first time home buyer. Right above that level, we will loan 60 to 70% LTV. And we do, we also do the construction draws. So we will help them do the purchase and the construction. Then they're not having to go out and find, you know, any kind of gap funding for anything. We, and we do it in draws. So it's comfortable for our investors, our capital investors, our partners that will come in because they're seeing the work as it's being done. The flipper will send us pictures, videos. We even go with some of our investors to the properties and walk them if they want so they can see the work firsthand if they want. And it just gives them more sense of security.

Right? Yeah, yeah. Good, good. Okay. And is there a maximum amount on the loans? Are you doing multifamily or is it strictly single family?

We concentrate more on, on single family, multi family. We haven't had too many come to us. I won't say that there's a maximum, but I would say that anything up to a million is going to be probably as close as we're going to get to a maximum on a multi family. And it just really depends. Here in Utah, it's very hard to find a multi family that's gonna give you some good returns right now. So.

Yeah, yeah, it can be challenging, especially with all these big, big disasters we've had the last few years. Insurance is killer.

Yes, insurance has been big.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well that's good to know. All right. And then your syndication world is really behind the. Are you really putting more time into the debt fund for now?

Yes, we put more into the debt side. We are open to hearing from syndicators and sponsors. If they just we have in our website they can bring us and you know, enter all other information there and then we'll just do a high level overview of it. If it's something that looks interesting enough, then we'll do a little deeper dive, look at the pitch deck and if it's something that looks really good, then we will definitely take a deep dive into that and then see what our investors think. They're going to make the ultimate decision whether or not we truly partner with them. Because if it's not something that intrigues them, then it's not something that we're going to go and try to raise for if it's not intriguing to our investors.

Right, right. So if somebody that's listening to this wants to go ahead and say apply for some kind of a loan from you, what would they do?

So you would go onto our website, partner with rise and at the top of there it should be, there's an invest with us for potential investors who want to come in and bring their capital to us. And then we also have another area that people who want to bring us their deals, they can go and click there and submit their information.

Okay. Okay, good. All Right, and all right then. So that's been very insightful. Like I told you, I hadn't talked with anybody yet that had a debt fund in any depth. We, we ended up not really going into it for one reason or another. So this has probably been a little illuminating maybe for, for some people, and I hope so. But now I'm going to ask you that big question I ask everybody. A pivotal person or event that brought you to where you are now or that's pushing you forward to some particular goal.

Definitely it's my husband. He, like I said, the pivotal event was he was a CEO of a large retail chain back home and he didn't live at home. Monday through Friday he was living on another island. And then he missed out on a lot with our kids, our older two, you know, he wasn't around for all of their events and activities and I was always volunteering and as at everything I could be and he would try his best to be available, but there were times where he just really couldn't. And then during co, he didn't come home for months, couldn't really travel, so there was a lot there. So when he needed to go through his change, it took me a minute to be as understanding as he would have hoped I would have been. At first I was like, wait a minute, you've done this career for nearly 30 years and all of a sudden now you're just like, I'm done. And you know, it was, it wasn't fulfilling him anymore. It wasn't, he's, you know, we get older, you start to reflect on things and it was really hitting him hard on how much he had missed. We still have our youngest son and that's when I was like, okay, it's really time for him to, to look at something different. And we were hit with a lot of challenges before we moved. You know, his father passed away and they were going to move with us. My mother in law is here with us. However, it's almost like every roadblock kind of just gets thrown at you before you make a change. And it's you sometimes thinking the universe is telling you or something. Some kind of sign is saying, don't do it. But he was feeling those golden handcuffs and we were like, we need to push through this. We will be stronger together always. And I've always believed in him. And you know, the things that we can accomplish together could only be even bigger than what we were doing individually. So to try to find a way to make that happen and that's what we've done. Which is now coming forward. And fast forward, three and a half years later, we have Elevate Cote d', Ivoire, our nonprofit. And he knows, you know, serving community is always something we've all been passionate about, but he knows how passionate about it I am. And. And it's. It's been. It's been amazing to be able to do the things that we love. Real estate has become fun. I mean, it's hard work. People make it sound like you're just. You're retired and you have nothing else to do, and it's just this fun life. And there's a lot that goes into it, but then there's a lot of fun that it brings you. Right. It brings you a lot of time. Freedom. I can choose when I want to do it, and I can do it from anywhere. So it gives me the freedom to concentrate on the things that we're passionate about. And he has more family time. Actually, my kids are like, this is weird. We see dad all the time now. So our daughter has, since she's been here with us in Utah, and our oldest son brings our grandson up to visit us multiple times a year. So we get to see the family a lot more. A lot more family time. So nice. That was the big pivotal for. For me was him going through his change that kind of forced us all into a change which wasn't bad at all.

Oh, that sounds like a very good change. Right? Very nice.

Yeah.

All right. And you said something. You just briefly mentioned you're nonprofit, but I want you to give a chance to talk about it, so why don't you explain it?

Yeah, yeah. Elevate Cote. It's1elevate.org we do a variety of things there, but. And essentially it's to bring a better life to those in the Ivory Coast. It's West Africa. Our. The founder and our partner is from there. We met him at a real estate meetup and asked him what his whys are. And that's big for us, Right. For those identifying their whys, rather than somebody just saying, oh, I'm just getting into real estate because I want to make money. I. If you really understand what this is about, you know, you're wise. And he knew his wise right away. I am here so that I can set myself up with passive income so I can go back home and serve my community. And that really resonated with us. We had him over for dinner, and then that night we established our virtual assistants. So we have a virtual assistance program that you can hire a Virtual assistant with us to help you with your social media, any kind of administrative things like that. We have one virtual assistant that helps manage our RV park. I have another. Well, same one who actually helps me with my town homes. They answer the phones. Their English is a little bit harder to get through sometimes, but you know, they can easily do text messages and emails. They understand our rent rolls and things like that, which is really big. It takes away from the, you know, those $10 tasks in your day, things like that. So it's really helpful. We have VAs that help us within our VA business and our nonprofit. So on the ground we're getting into agriculture, real estate. We're looking to open up a university. So we're going to. And we have in this last month received our official 501C3. And that's been huge for us. So we can officially raise for the university. We also teach. So if you want to learn tribal dances, French cooking classes, we have artwork. This is one of the art pieces behind me. And it's. We just find any way to help them. We went, we've been there, we're going again this year and just we talk to a lot of entrepreneurs and they are all entrepreneurs there. Unless you work for the government or a large organization that brings their business there from other countries, you are an entrepreneur. They have multiple jobs, so we try to help them so they're not hustling and working three jobs that are barely making them $10 a day. So we're just trying to find any way we can help. And I would say if anybody wants to help and you're not sure you don't have the time, we definitely have our nonprofit you can donate to. However, you can also buy some amazing art pieces. You can sign up for some, some great cooking classes, especially if you like spicy food. And if not, you can hire a virtual assistant or if you have time you want to teach something, you know, definitely reach out. That's something that we'd love to hear from people.

Great. Great. Well, we'll put all that information in the show notes too, but go ahead and tell people your preferred way to get contacted too.

Well, you can find me on LinkedIn. All of my social media is with my first and last name, Harmony Borden, and my email is in there. I also have partnerwithrise.com and yeah, I'm. I hope you can reach out if there's anything that I can help someone along their journey, even if. If it's not something that we do. We're passionate about helping you find the right connection, and that's what it's all about.

Terrific. Okay. And Borden is spelled B O R D E, N. B, like O R, D E, N. Yes. Because sometimes some people will only be listening. It goes on itunes and stuff.

Yeah. So it's harmony with an ie, not a Y.

And that too, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Great. Very good. Well, thank you so much for coming on, and we'll be talking soon.

Thank you so much, Jenny.