ACKNOWLEDGING what is lacking in the hospitality industry and supporting a cause for change is one of her biggest career accomplishments, says Tracy L. Prigmore, a leading realty-hotelier.
Founder of TLTsolutions, a real estate investment and development firm, and an award-winning executive, Tracy aims to empower people to build generational wealth with passive income realized through investing in residential, multifamily, and hotel projects.
Tracy is the creator of She Has a Deal, a real-estate investment program that creates new pathways to commercial real estate ownership and development for women and people of color.
Speaking to Women of Color Power List 2025, Tracy talked about her life’s struggle, values and her objective behind establishing She Has a Deal.
“Our platform is an accelerator,” she explains. “It accelerates one’s knowledge, helps to build competencies and the right connections.
“She Has a Deal is everything that I wish I had when I was in pursuit on my own journey. From everything that I wish I knew, everything that I have learned and everything that I continue to learn, I have poured into this platform. I wanted the young women to know that dealing in commercial real estate can also be a good career option.
“I had created this framework (that I call the nine-stage hotel investment roadmap) for my own team. I thought this framework could be built out into a larger education-technology platform that would help these women know where to start and give them the right connections that I wish I had and to warn them not to make the mistakes that I made.”
Today, She Has a Deal’s renowned Hotel Investment Pitch Competition, SHaDPitch, is creating a pipeline of women owners and developers by preparing them to become sponsors and lead hotel investment projects.
TLTsolutions recently established SHaD Prosperity Fund I and is raising capital to fund the women-led projects originating from the pitch competition and the She Has a Deal Ed-Tech platform.
Despite experiencing many highs on the business side, Tracy sees being able to empower women through She Has A Deal as her biggest win.
“For me, accomplishment is actually seeing an issue and doing something about it, putting aside personal requirements,” she says.
“She Has A Deal has taken a lot of time away from my family and even sometimes puts a little stress on me and the growth in my own business, but I feel like God has given me the assignment. I would say the biggest accomplishment is being able to hear the assignment of God and do it right regardless of its complexity.”
Prior to entering real estate development, Tracy spent 25 years in health care, working initially as an executive before rising to senior leadership roles.
“I started investing in real estate while I was still in my health-care career. I was buying single family homes, fixing them up and then renting them out to have passive income, just to build wealth for the future. Then I read the book ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ and that kind of prompted the understanding of passive income and building generational wealth.”
At the time, commercial real estate was totally an alien subject for Tracy.
“I wanted to get into commercial real estate, but I didn't understand how it worked. Around the time, I was working for a national health-care system and I traveled a lot for work. I was once staying at a Hampton Inn, which I was unfamiliar with. I remember going to bed thinking, ‘How, this is really good value at this hotel?’ since they had free breakfast, free Wi Fi, etc. So, I woke up with the epiphany that I should buy a hotel.
“From that point on, I started the journey of researching and understanding how to acquire hotels. I attended lots of conferences and meet-ups. While they were inspirational, they didn't address where to start from scratch. I needed a more in-depth framework.”
Not having enough capital proved to be a big hindrance for Tracy. Around that time, the Great Recession hit and getting loan approvals became trickier.
Soon after having her child, Tracy decided to give commercial real estate another try as she “didn't want to regret not having tried.” It took her about six years before she was able to close a deal.
Over the years, Tracy has built a sterling record of bringing real estate ventures to life and maximizing their financial performance through sound asset management, as well as disciplined investment and renovation strategies.
Currently, TLTsolutions has a multi-million-dollar portfolio of real estate assets under management in four states. With the firm’s launch of its first fund focused on hotel properties, TLTsolutions is actively pursuing acquisitions that will more than double its portfolio.
Tracy feels her leadership style leans toward educating others. “I don't like to micromanage. I like to establish objectives and outcomes.”
She says there is a long way to go to make the industry inclusive in the real sense. “Diversity is beyond skin color and gender. Diversity is more about thought and experiences. So, I constantly try to get people to put forward their perspective. I try to set an environment to lift up everyone regardless of what they look like.”
Raising capital is still the biggest hindrance for women entrepreneurs, Tracy says. “Due to systemic racism for generations, women aren't at the same level of net worth as men. If we don't have people willing to put in the time to do something different to assess whether this new person (who does not look like them) can be successful, then we're not going to get high numbers of women coming in.
“Acceleration of the growth for women like we want to see is only going to happen over time. Now the question is: Do we want to wait for the growth to happen organically or are we going to do something to facilitate and accelerate it? I'm looking at the industry to help and accelerate it.”
