In the world of alternative investments, few leaders embody both strategic clarity and relational depth the way Merriah Harkins does. With more than two decades in high-stakes financial sales, she has built a reputation for elevating investor experiences, strengthening capital-raising systems, and guiding teams through complex market cycles with confidence.
Her journey is marked by resilience, authenticity, and a commitment to helping investors make more informed, empowered decisions. Now serving as Chief Sales Officer at Lukrom, Merriah brings that same combination of expertise and heart to a rapidly growing investment platform focused on real estate, private credit, and income-producing opportunities for accredited investors.
Whether she’s training sales teams, advising investors, or building high-trust relationships with partners, Merriah stands out for her ability to translate complex financial strategies into clear, actionable paths that support long-term wealth creation.
In this episode, we explore her leadership journey, her investment philosophy, and the mindset shifts that continue to shape her impact across the alternative investment landscape.
Episode Highlights Here:
Brett
Before we jump into this episode, I want to invite you to join our community to help you become a better steward scale to billions and ultimately give more or all of it away. All I want you to do is to click thesubscribe button right now. I love your support. It’s incredible to see your comments, and we’re just getting started. I can’ wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me. Welcome to the build to billions podcast where we’ve got successful entrepreneurs and investors on the journey from millions to billions. We leave the key to scaling and compounding yourwealth starts every single day with a mindset and practice of stewardship over ownership and applyingbillionaire biblical principles. Our ultimate goal is to help you scale and compound your wealth and life, so you can give more all of it away. My name is Brett Swarts. In every episode, we feature some of the world’s top entrepreneurs, millionaires and billionaires, where they share their insight, wisdom and secrets with us so we can scale and make a bigger impact for MVPs. I’m excited about our next guest. She’s out of California. Company that she’s working with is out of Arizona, and she’s going to help us to worry less with debt investing. In fact, she has a really cool background, and she’s the Chief Sales Officer at Lukrom, which is a company we’re talking about here in a minute. And her role is to lead and expand the company sales team and efforts with the focus on investment professionals and their investors. For the past eight years, she has acted as both the head of retail capital markets and chief service officer and so much more. Please welcome the show with me. Mariah Harkins, Maria, how are you doing?
Merriah
I’m good. I’m good. Thanks for inviting me. Brett,
Brett
absolutely great pleasure to have you on the show for our listeners. Get tonight for the first time, would you give us just a little bit more about your story
Merriah
and your current focus? Yes. So, I have been leading national sales forces and helping to build distribution, which essentially is sales for alternative investment firms, over the past 20 years. So, I have had exposure to lots of different asset backed investing vehicles. You know, I started my career with Vanguard and Schwab and then moved into sales and leading sales organizations in the early 2000sand I’ve had exposure to helping firms raise money for real estate backed investing, venture debt, venture capital, equipment, leasing, oil and gas. So, I have had a lot of exposure to helping investors diversify their asset base into investments that are backed by real assets.
Brett
Excellent. And, you know, growing up, ‘m curious, who was Mariah? Like, what was your superpower, your strength? I believe you’ve all been given certain ones, and these help us to be a blessing and help to help, help to others. What would you say is your number one or number two? Like, hey, Mariah always had this strength.
Merriah
Yeah. So, I would say, like, when I had a tough, very tough childhood, I went to a school for needy children, graduated from there. I was there for 10 years, put myself through college. I’d say my superpower is resilience, persistence, you know, never being in a situation where I can’t take care of myself financially, you know, and that has led me into a lot of focus on my career, focus on helping other people keep the money they have and grow the money they have so that you have financial security,
Brett
love that that’s really great. Thank you for sharing that. With that being said, let’s dive into the topic at hand, which is the worry less debt investing. So, worry less debt investing. Taylor smart, what’s the number one secret to doing just that?
Merriah
Well, I say, you know, I would expand that a little bit. You know, lucrative. What we are raising money for today. We do some development projects, mostly in multifamily, with the Eco focus. So, you know, buildings that have solar panels on them that help to generate the common spaces being generated by the sun. You know, we’re based in Arizona, but right now, we’re, you know, the main focus of our company, and where the experience lies with our executives is we lend money to mostly Arizona based businesses. The Phoenix Metro market is one of the fastest growing markets in the country. So, there’s lot of people that are either building real estate, improving real estate, taking homes and making them better. And so, what our company does is we do short term loans that range from six to 12 months.
Brett
So, if you like this little, short clip of the interview I just did, click over here to watch the full interview, and please don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much, everybody.
Watch the episode here:
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About Merriah Harkins
Merriah Harkins is a seasoned financial sales executive with over 20 years of experience in alternative investments, capital raising, and investor relations. She currently serves as Chief Sales Officer at Lukrom, where she leads the company’s national sales strategy, advisor partnerships, and investor education initiatives across its real estate and private-credit offerings.
Her background spans major financial institutions and alternative asset managers, bringing together deep expertise in structuring investment programs, building high-performing sales teams, and creating investor-centric systems that foster clarity, confidence, and stronger long-term results. She holds FINRA Series 7, 24, and 63 licenses and a degree in Business Administration with a focus in Finance.
Merriah’s leadership style is rooted in authenticity and connection, built from a personal story of overcoming adversity and using those experiences to shape a relationship-driven approach to sales. She is known for blending technical investment knowledge with an ability to guide investors and advisors through complex decisions, making her a trusted voice in the alternative investment field.
Today, she continues to champion investor empowerment, transparent communication, and values-aligned capital growth—principles that have defined her career and drive her mission at Lukrom.
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