Bout Her Business; Dabrielle Goodwin of Eluvial Enterprise
Who is Dabrielle Goodwin?
Dabrielle Goodwin runs a real estate development firm, Eluvial Enterprise, in the DMV area and is licensed in all three (DC, MD, VA). She is the youngest African American female broker in Washington DC. On the real estate side, she runs a small staff of about seven agents. Also, she runs a small construction company in DC where there is a staff of 12.
How did Eluvial come to be?
Dabrielle started by flipping trailers in Florida. Next, she was a Virginia real estate agent for about 4–5 years but found out that most clients couldn’t afford to buy in the DMV. The average homes were about 350K, so most clients were okay with getting fixer uppers. Dabrielle looked into a renovation loan (a 203k). She was able to walk her clients through this entire loan process step by step. She helped find contractors, HVAC, everybody. This took so much time to get them through all of this, which did not generate the additional revenue BOOM she had anticipated. So, she added the construction leg to be able to do full service real estate and renovation. That resulted in adding to their motto “they can fix the property for you.”
In 2018, she did a project on the Postal Museum and on one of her next huge projects she will be renovating the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. She will also be starting the first shipping container townhomes in the DC area. Its an eco-friendly approach to development. This will be the pilot for container townhome communities in the US, there will be 26 more after these go well.
What was her inspiration?
Dabrielle said she looked at how Asian family wealth has, for the first time in three years, superseded white wealth in America. Asian family wealth grew by capitalizing on the largest consumers in America, which is African Americans. African Americans spend 96 percent of their disposable income in the Asian communities and then they capitalize on insurance policies. She also explained how the younger generations would take out a million dollar policy on the elders, and when the elder passes they open a new soul food spot, or seafood joint, or hair store.
Dabrielle broke it down stating; when we can get to a point where we can engineer communities that we can control, everything else will fall into place from better education, to policing us properly, to our health. We won’t have to ask for better schools because we would have control of the coin. Build one home, one turns to two, two turns to an apartment building, eventually that’s a community(She’s about to break ground on a 121 unit apartment building). Once you figure out the system, you can actually figure out how to engineer your own community in a way that is economically sustainable for long term growth.
Where do you see your business in one year, five years, and 10 years?
1 year: Growth
This year, Eluvial will be the second black owned real estate investment trust in the United States and the first that allows you to invest in real estate with cryptocurrency. She states that they will be focusing on the development piece of things with 78 townhomes, 1001 apartment buildings, and 572 condos. They will also be focusing on solidifying the crew as they grow so quickly.
5 years: International Presence
Really building that international presence is the goal. She plans on building a development presence overseas since there is no hotel chain that is made for African Americans, by African Americans, that caters to African American travel.
10 years: Scalable Systems
Dabrielle hopes to have systematic structure for us to be able to create communities so that there’s not just one thriving African American community, but you have them everywhere. She wants to create a system for black owned business that can be franchised where they have a home and they can really have a core group of people who look like them who are buying their products. Being able to create the market on something that is scalable is something we can do all over the United States and internationally.
Any advice for our followers on pushing through and following your dreams?
Dabrielle’s Advice; “Ignore the doubters, especially people who are not where you want to be. People will hate and cause you to question yourself. Keep pushing. God gave you the vision, not someone else. He gave it to you for a reason. Work through it all. Trust that and keep it moving.”
