What is conscious capitalism, and how can choosing to adhere to this concept create positive social impact in Opportunity Zones?

Travis Steffens is founder and CEO of Denver-based R Investments, a real estate firm focused on full cycle wealth generation through planning, development, construction, rehabilitation, leasing, property management, and brokerage.

Click the play button below to listen to my conversation with Travis.

Episode Highlights

• The definition of conscious capitalism and how it can create positive social impact, particularly in Opportunity Zones.
• Tony Rankins’ story of being a homeless veteran to being honored at the White House and highlighted in the State of the Union Address.
• Travis’ experience of speaking at the Opportunity Now Summit in Charlotte earlier this year.
• How R Academy — a training facility located in an Opportunity Zone — provides workforce training to homeless individuals in downtrodden communities, providing them with construction trade skills and jobs.
• Highlights of some of R Investments’ Opportunity Zone deals to date.
• The benefits of owning a security company as a real estate developer.

Featured on This Episode

• Travis Steffens on LinkedIn
• R Investments
• Tony Rankins
• President Trump’s 2020 State of the Union Address
• Opportunity Now Event in Charlotte NC
• Travis Steffens’ Remarks at Opportunity Now Summit
• Ashley Bell (SBA)
• Scott Turner (White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council)
• R Academy
• Dr. Mary Pardee (Modrn Med)
• Samurai Success

Industry Spotlight: R Investments

Headquartered in Denver, R Investments is the parent company of the R Enterprise family of companies and is the “engine” that acquires real estate assets for rehabilitation, transformation and stabilization by our subsidiaries. R Investments works with private investors and banks to create superior rates of return in short- and long-term investment horizons. They leverage Opportunity Zone legislation to maximize long term financial results for their partners.

Learn more about R Investments

• Visit RInvestments.net

About the Opportunity Zones Podcast

Hosted by OpportunityDb.com founder Jimmy Atkinson, the Opportunity Zones Podcast features guest interviews from fund managers, advisors, policymakers, tax professionals, and other foremost experts in opportunity zones.

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Show Transcript

Jimmy: Welcome to the Opportunity Zones Podcast. I’m your host, Jimmy Atkinson. Opportunity Zones were a big part of President Trump’s State of the Union Address earlier this year. During that part of his address, he highlighted the story of Tony Rankins as part of an effort to promote the positive impact that opportunity zones are having in our nation.

Joining me today on the podcast is Tony Rankins’ employer, Travis Steffens. Travis is the founder of R Investments, a redevelopment specialist focused on distressed, multi-family, and hotel assets located in some of our nation’s roughest neighborhoods. Travis, thanks for joining me today and welcome to the podcast.

Travis: Thank you so much, it’s an honor to be here.

Jimmy: Yeah, you bet. So, today’s episode is titled “Conscious Capitalism in Opportunity Zones,” and that’s a big theme with your firm, R Investments. So, Travis, before we really dive in to today’s episode, could you define for me what do you mean by conscious capitalism? Can you unpack that for us a bit?

Travis: Well, there’s a bunch of definitions of conscious capitalism, and it’s not something we made up but it is something that we want to be leading a new charge across the country with. And our definition of conscious capitalism is choosing to conduct business in such a way that it creates a positive social impact for all parties involved, both voluntary and involuntary. And we’ve been across the country instituting this particular definition and we found a lot of success with it.

What we found in these areas that we work in, and we work in some of the roughest areas of the country, is, being the fact that opportunity zones have been designed by the president to focus on the forgotten areas of the country, they’re tough areas and there are areas that a lot of people don’t really have the understanding of how to bootstrap up in these areas and how to redevelop without coming in and harming the culture that’s in that area. And so, one of the things through conscious capitalism that we wanna shed a lot of light on is the issue with displacement and the issue with gentrification. And I’ve seen tons of investors come into these areas and they’ve got capital and they’ve got some excitement around redevelopment and being part of opportunity zones but they don’t understand their clientele. They really haven’t got down in the trenches and they really haven’t understood what it’s like to walk a day in their shoes.

And so, when we come into these areas then and with good intention to pour a bunch of money in and to make a good return, we have to be conscious about how we do it. We have to be conscious about the lives that we’re now stewards over in those neighborhoods. And we have to understand how coming in and renovating these projects and doubling the rent will displace these people who are on fixed incomes or who’ve been there their entire lives.

And so, through the efforts of conducting business in a conscious manner, hence conscious capitalism, we encourage people to get on the ground, meet their residents, we call it Resident Meet & Greet, meet the residents and really get to know what’s going on in their lives and do their best to purchase properties and projects in such a way that they can make a phenomenal return without doubling the rent and without gentrifying the area. And we understand, gentrification is gonna happen but it needs to happen organically over time because you can’t break homeostasis with human nature and human biology overnight without harming those individuals and without harming cultures and harming neighborhoods. And it’s definitely an epidemic in the country that we would like to head up and teach people how to do things differently.

Jimmy: Right. And you guys are doing things differently. And that’s one of the biggest criticisms of the opportunity zone incentive is its potential to cause more harm than good if it’s not implemented properly. So, it’s important to highlight the work that firms like you are doing that you’re actually conscious of this and you’re taking steps to really address that issue and make sure that you’re going about your development the right way. And R Investments, from what I’ve read and heard and what we’ve talked about before going on the show today, Travis, is that you guys are really doing some really incredible work in your hub, in Cincinnati, and elsewhere around the country with respect to workforce training and catalyzing social impact through your real-estate development projects. And I wanna highlight that work that you’re doing a little bit later in the show, but first, I wanna back up a little bit and dive into that State of the Union Address and the subsequent Opportunity Now conference that you spoke at with President Trump earlier this year in Charlotte. I’m sure that was quite a wild ride for you. How did that all transpire? Can you tell me the story about how the president picked up on Tony Rankin’s story and ended up highlighting him during his State of the Union Address, and then how you got chosen to speak at the Opportunity Now event?

Travis: Yeah, absolutely. It was a complete surprise and I was asked to be on an opportunity-zone panel in Mesa, Florida. And through that subsequent venture, Ashley Bell who’s with Scott Turner and they’re constantly working on opportunity-zone initiatives were at the right hand of the president often. And so, when they heard about what we were doing in opportunity zones and what R Investments was doing for positive social impact across the country, the president liked what he heard. And when they asked if we had somebody that we could represent our investment at the State of the Union to show that opportunity zones are truly making a difference across the country, we said, “Of course we can.”

So, Tony had always been near and dear to my heart, he had a beautiful story and he was one of the hardest working individuals that we had taken off the streets. And Tony was homeless when we met him, he was…it’s kind of funny because there’s some controversy around whether Tony was taking in an opportunity zone or not but he was sleeping in his car across the street at…I believe it was Motel 6, either Motel 6 or Days Inn, he was sleeping in his car in that parking lot, which truly is an opportunity zone. And he saw us working across the street at another hotel that we were renovating into an extended stay hotel and he woke up and he said he just heard a voice inside of him that said, “You need to get up and go over there and talk to those guys.” And Tony talked about how he told himself he’s like, “No, I’m not gonna do it again, I can’t take another rejection.” And Tony had been in and out of prison, he had been on and off drugs, and he was currently on drugs, and he just didn’t wanna take another rejection. So, he said he just started to fall back asleep and he heard it again, “You need to go over there and talk to those guys.”

So, he gets up and he goes over. And we caught him walking across the parking lot, and one of our verticals within our company is a security company and one of the guys caught him and came up and talked to him. And we had a very sensible, again, conscious way of approaching people. And we approached him with that conscious care and realized that he was just looking for a job and we told him, “We’d love to hire.”

So we brought him in and part of our process is that, when we hire a homeless individual, we give them housing, then we give them the tools of the trade, and then, we train them, and then, we implement them into the workflow process. And so, Tony was always one of my favorites and he was always one of the hardest workers just in every manner and just so grateful for the opportunity.

So, we told Tony’s story and they said they would love to have him at the State of the Union and represent to the rest of the country what a real-life hero coming from the military and then finding himself in the streets and then addicted to drugs and lost his family, and then getting back on his feet, got his family back and was back in the workforce and back to being a progressive asset to society again. And so, next thing I know we get a call that says, “Well, you guys are in,” and we just couldn’t believe it. Still can’t, on some level.

And so, Tony went to Washington. And it was pretty funny, one of the first meetings we had in Washington was at the White House and you have to show your ID to get in. And somehow he made it all the way to this appointment with the ID that was expired. I don’t even know how he got on the plane. But they caught it there at the White House and we, obviously, couldn’t fix it and the president had to send escorts to escort Tony in without his ID. So, it was eventful all the way to the State of the Union. And then, obviously, he was at the State of the Union Address, and we’re so proud of how he did. And he represented R Investments and conscious capitalism and positive social impact just tremendously well across the board.

And he’s still working today, we had multiple dentists that stepped up and asked if they could take care of his teeth because he had some teeth issues. And now he’s got a brand new smile on his face and he’s happier than ever and he’s working harder than ever with us.

Jimmy: No, that’s incredible. That’s a really heartwarming story. And yeah, you’re absolutely right, I mean it absolutely does highlight…it’s a great story, it highlights the positive social impact that the type of work that you’re doing can have on the country and the type of positive social impact that opportunity zones can catalyze throughout our country. And then, tell me about what happened next. Because then you got invited kind of on the speaking circuit with President Trump for a little while. I know you spoke at the event in Charlotte not too long after the State of the Union, you were introduced as a Tony Rankin’s employer. What was that like and what transpired after that? What was the effect on your firm after going through all this?

Travis: Well, great question. Because, while we were at the State of the Union, Ashley said, “Hey, the president wants to see if you guys would come to Charlotte and sit up on stage with him in Charlotte,” and i said, “Of course.” So we drove to Charlotte and Tony was on stage with them. And they had placed me in the crowd and I didn’t think I was gonna have any part to do with it. And so, I’m sitting in the crowd and they asked Tony to stand up and they honored him again on stage. And then, next thing I know, the president starts talking about R Investments and his employer and asked Travis Steffens to come up on stage. And so, I had nothing prepared, I was not under any assumption whatsoever that he was gonna call me upon stage. And apparently President Trump likes to surprise people like that. And so, Ashley laughed, after the whole thing, and said, “Man, I couldn’t tell you. My job would’ve been on the line if I’d have told you.” And so, he asked me to come up on stage, and I was greatly honored by it, and I have no idea how I actually did but i wasn’t prepared for it in any manner. But I think I did okay.

Jimmy: That’s great. No, I watched, I watched it, I thought you did great, I didn’t realize you hadn’t prepared anything, I thought you were a natural up there. Maybe that’s part of it, right? He didn’t want you stressing over too much so you didn’t have a chance to really think about and get in your own head about it too much. I thought you did great though.

Travis: Thank you. Yeah, I definitely was not in my head. I got up there and the lights were so bright I couldn’t see anybody and all I could see were teleprompters. And obviously I wasn’t speaking off the teleprompter, and so, I just had to do my best. So it was a lot of fun, super honored by it. My LinkedIn definitely blew up. I had no social media to speak of and we were flying under the radar for a long time, and then, this hit us. And so, super honor by it, it’s still helping just bring momentum to the workspace. And again, we’re more about pushing the conscious capitalism efforts, and that’s what I’m excited for that we got out from under the radar with.

Jimmy: Right. So now, turning gears to what you’re actually executing on on the ground with your real-estate developments, your projects, your hub in Cincinnati, i wanna turn our attention now to R Academy, which is an academy that’s currently being built in an opportunity zone. And I love this concept, Travis, because i feel like, you know, the opportunity zones incentive is great but it doesn’t require any workforce training, the incentive doesn’t, and I think that that’s a key part of this is…or it could be a key part of this, so the success in this program is some degree of workforce training. And you’re providing that through R Academy. Can you talk a little bit about what R Academy is and the work that you’ve done in workforce training? You told us a little bit about Tony’s story already but maybe you can dive in a little more on what R Academy is and why it exists and what its purpose is?

Travis: Yeah, absolutely. Often when we talk about R Investments, we talk about our enterprise because there are six companies that make up the entire vertical. We’ve got R Investments, which is the umbrella company that purchases the assets, we have R Restoration, formerly known as RTB Construction, that hires the homeless individuals. And that’s our internal construction company. We have R Communities, which is our property-management company. We have Archangels, which is our security company. We have R Funds. And then, we have R Teknologies, which is our tech company, we’ve built our own software to streamline the renovation construction industry. And then, we have R Academy, which was the final piece of the puzzle.

All of those companies were born out of necessity And R Academy was always an excited piece of the puzzle that was near and dear to my heart because, when we take a homeless individual off the street, we’re totally understanding that this is a commitment for long term. There’s a lot of programs out there that are good intentions with helping the homeless but they’re not putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. And this is another piece of awareness that we wanna bring to the country is we can help people like this but, A, we have to be in it for long term, we have to be committed, B, we’ve gotta have all the pieces of the puzzle at the same time. So we take them off the street, we house them, we give them the tools of the trade, we train them, and then, we give them constant loving accountability.

And through those four efforts, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of success. We have an 80% success on our throughput with making these guys successful in breaking the old way of life. So R Academy was born out of a desire to be able to do more distressed real estate across the country, train these individuals on our very proprietary systematic process as to how we renovate these projects and how our software works. And so, R Academy is in an opportunity zone, in Cincinnati, it’s in the Camp Washington area. It will be roughly a 100,000-square-foot building and we will be taking 50 homeless individuals a quarter off the streets, placing them into the academy. They will have housing, they will have…so the housing has small kitchens in each unit, but then they will have cooking classes with private chefs that are professional chefs signing up for this venture. They’ll learn how to cook from farm to table, shop at Whole Foods in the academy where they will learn how to shop in the small store. And it’ll actually be priced at the same price as the local whole foods so that they understand that they can shop on a budget and eat healthy organic foods on a budget, so teach them the science behind all of that as well and why their cells and how their body reacts and responds to certain health plans.

And that comes to their health plans. So we have a naturopath doctor out of Los Angeles called Modrn Med. Dr. Mary Pardee is putting a clinic in every one of the academies and she’ll be building health plans for each of the individuals based on their current health status.

And then, we have taekwondo for the mind-body-connection piece, helping them understand controlling emotions. And then, we have Final Move Fitness that’s doing the fitness regime for them and teaching them how to stay in a state of fitness and the science behind the fitness. And then, we also have yoga, we have meditation classes, we have breathwork classes in which I’ll be teaching the meditation and breathwork on many cases and building that curriculum.

And then, we have other activities that they’ll perform as well. We’ll have Samurai Success, we’ll be doing the process coaching and the software coaching, teaching them how to fit within the process and fit within the software, how to utilize the software and how to flow within a process workflow.

And then, when they’re not doing the mind-body-spirit piece, they’re going to be building a tiny home, each one of them, from the ground up. So they’ll be learning all 31 foundational construction trades that we’ve identified as foundational to complete a tiny home. And by the time they graduate, they will have, in the academy, like a boot camp that, once they come in, they can’t leave, will have to leave the past behind, fall in love with the future self, and then let the entire cellular regeneration of their body understand that they are a new person stepping into their new future self.

And so, through that process, they’ve finished all the platform, constructed an entire tiny home, and now they’re ready to deploy. So it’s guaranteed job placement after they leave the academy. So they’ll deploy from the academy to a project across the country much like the military would deploy. And they’ll go from an environment where they learned a specific trade, a specific way, straight into the field with the same type of training. And so, we’re excited about being able to implement workforce training in such a manner that they’re not just being kicked out of the school and saying, “Hey, good luck,” you know, “don’t let the door hit you in the butt,” and, “we hope you find a job,” we’re actually deploying them to the same type of employment, same type of environment with the same type of people so they can sustain that particular way of life for an extended period of time and step into that future self.

And so, the tiny homes that will be built in these academies across the country will be placed on opportunity-zone plots of land. We’re gonna go in and do the horizontal work and each academy will be creating 120 tiny homes a year. And those 120 tiny homes will go for quality affordable tiny villages in those cities. So, Cincinnati has agreed to work with us on many of their plots of opportunity-zone land to be able to build these tiny villages. And so, these tiny villages will bring back a sense of community, it takes people out of the apartment high-rise living and puts them back into a communal living. There’ll be little grocery stores in the middle of each one, coffee shop, stuff like that. And they’ll be typically around 120 units apiece.

And so, we’re doing those in opportunity zones, we’ll be building each academy just like we’re doing right now, in Cincinnati, in opportunity zones, and we’ll be spreading across the country. Our goal is to build 50 of these in the next 10 years.

Jimmy: No, that’s incredible. That’s really impactful. So you said “50 homeless individuals per quarter” you’re gonna run through this program. That’s a lot of lives that you’re transforming, giving second chances to a lot of struggling individuals. Well, and I think that was actually supposed to be up and running by now but the coronavirus pandemic hit and delayed things a little bit. What’s the new ETA on when R Academy actually gets off the ground and running do you think?

Travis: Yeah, we would’ve been coming out of the ground by now but with the banks switching their focus to the PPP and EIDLs and everything, we got pushed to the back burner. So we’re hoping to close that loan in the next 60 days and break ground on the demolition and get going. So I still am very hopeful that we’ll have this up and running by first quarter of next year.

Jimmy: Okay, good. Well, I wish you luck with that, I hope you do, it’s desperately needed of course. I wanna dive into your investment thesis, so your opportunity-zone investment strategy, what types of properties that you’re developing, what you’re specializing in exactly.

Travis: Yeah, absolutely. So we have a couple opportunity-zone businesses and we put our tech company in an opportunity zone in New Orleans, and we also put our construction company in an opportunity zone in New Orleans. And we’ve got a property that we’re closing in Charlotte next week actually in an opportunity zone. And so, we’ve been focused in these troubled areas for 14 years before they were opportunity zones. And now we’re excited that the president has put into effect the opportunity-zone bill. And it just so happens that it falls within the areas that we’ve been working in all this time. And so, that’s why we’re targeting putting the academies and opportunity zones across the country, as well as the tiny villages across the country.

And so, we, on R Funds, we don’t have a big fund that we work within because we’re a deal-by-deal company. And so, every time we go into a project that we are going to deem as an opportunity-zone project, we’re just creating a fund for that project on a one-off basis. And then, we have high-networth individuals, then we’ll bring in one to two people per fund per property. And that’s how we structured everything to this point, except for the opportunity-zone businesses, those are all funded within the company and solely owned by myself.

Jimmy: Got it. But in terms of capital raising, you’re not going after the retail investor typically, you’re going after high networth within your own network it sounds like?

Travis: We are, yeah. We’re typically looking for the person that’s gonna bring in a minimum of seven figures. It’s pretty tough in our world, with the size of the projects we’re doing, to deal with people that have less than a million to invest. Our typical equity call is somewhere between a million and a half and three and a half million. The gentlemen that’s bringing in the money for the deal in Charlotte are coming in with eight million. So we’ve been down the road of syndicating smaller amounts and we just like to stick to the higher networth individuals on these deals.

Jimmy: Sure, yeah. Yeah, you briefly mentioned the project in Charlotte, can you walk us through what some of these deals are specifically? Maybe you can tell us a little more about the project you’re working on in Charlotte and elsewhere? Maybe you can highlight a few of your opportunity-zone deals, either that you’ve recently closed on or that you’ve wrapped up, just so we can have a better sense of what types of properties you’re working on.

Travis: Yeah, absolutely. As we talked about earlier, we closed on the opportunity-zone fund for the academy in Cincinnati, and that’s underway. This one that’s coming up in Charlotte will be closing on next week, it’s an old hotel on East Independence, 176 units, that has been well cared for but it’s in a rundown part of the city, a rougher part of the city. And we come into these hotels like this, put in kitchens, and turn them into more of an extended-stay living situation, to be able to help the people who need transitional housing to go from a hotel to an apartment building. And we’ve got programs to help people do that.

And we’re also hoping to work with HUD-VASH in this particular instance and be able to house homeless veterans. There’s 25 formerly homeless veterans that live there now and there’s 216 registered homeless veterans in Charlotte, and we’re hoping to take a bunch of them off the street and put them in our program and into the hotel and get them back to a healthy state of being again. So, we’re pinpointing this property to be a help to Charlotte in that manner.

So, as far as what we’ve kind of closed out, we haven’t sold anything yet, everything that we’re taking on in the last 2 years we plan on keeping those projects. Where we’ve historically been a buy, fix up, hold for 2 to 3 years, and then, sell, we’ve changed our model in the last 2 to 3 years because we were coming in and empowering the residents in our properties and in these neighborhoods through our programs. R Empowerment is one of the verticals that I did not mention when I was talking about how many companies we have. And we have a very strong focus on solving the eviction issue in the country. And so, we have one particular program that would stop 95% of all evictions that we touch. And it’s not through socialism, it’s through empowerment.

And when we get these programs in place and we sell these properties, every single person that’s purchased a property from us has wiped these programs out and just kicked those individuals out. The last property we sold, there’s 46 people in the program, they were all current on their rent and this individual, it cost them nothing but they x out our program and they just went ahead and let those people go because they had back balances that we were working to pay down. So it’s heartbreaking, so we’re just gonna stop selling at this point, you know, for the foreseeable future and continue moving forward with opportunity-zone projects just like this one in Charlotte.

Jimmy: Yeah, and with your opportunity-zone projects, you’re trying to achieve at least a 10-year hold so that your investors are able to take advantage of the tax benefits anyway. Is that right?

Travis: Yeah, minimum 10-year. Yeah, it wouldn’t make any sense otherwise, in my opinion.

Jimmy: Right, right, and that makes sense. You know, one thing that we touched upon briefly but I want you to go into in more detail, if you could, is a differentiator, I think, for you and for your redevelopment company is that you actually own your own security company. Could you tell us a little bit about how valuable that is and talk a little bit about how that security officer approached Tony the first time. But tell us a little bit more about how valuable that is for you when you’re going into some of these really rough neighborhoods across our country in Cincinnati, and Indianapolis, and Lexington, and elsewhere, and what the security company does and how it allows you to thrive in these communities when you’re doing your redevelopments.

Travis: Thanks for asking that question. And as I said, each company was born from a place of necessity. And we were going into these tough areas and we’d hire a security company. And I’m a very active CEO and I would dress up in what you would consider conspicuous clothes, if you will, and I’d go out from 11 til 3 in the morning and I would traipse all around my properties to see if I would get stopped, or I would basically spying on our security. Because there was constant security issues. And I saw everything you could possibly imagine from guys clocking in, they would literally come on the property, clock in, and drive away and never come back that night, to people walking around for an hour, and then, falling asleep in their car for the rest of the night. I’ve even caught guys sleeping underneath a blanket in the back of their suburban after they had been there a couple of hours.

And so, we just decided to take matters into our hands, as we did with all the other companies. My little sister and I come from a very tactical background, we’ve had a tremendous amount of tactical training and we’re actually the first ones to suit up when we have a problem. We have a whole program of companies called archangels. So the archangels is a team of five that is led by my sister and I, when it’s imperative. And we’ll actually deploy, get to the property, do our own surveillance, find out where the trafficking is happening, whether it’s human trafficking or drug trafficking. And it’s usually only two to three bad apples that is corrupting the whole property. But we’ve purchased some of the roughest properties in the country, there’s stories of them being called Alcatraz and all kinds of stuff because they’re housing so many criminals. And the cops just can’t do anything about it. And so, because I own the properties, I have more jurisdiction in many cases than the police and I can maintain the integrity of these assets it’ll cost.

And so, we go in after surveillance and we catch these individuals in the act, and I can enter the unit, and then, we take them down, cuff them up, drag them out, and the police come get them and we show them the evidence of what had happened so we can get them out of the property right away. And so, within 4 to 6 months, we typically take a property from 1,200 to…we’ve had some as high as 2,200 police calls a year, down to about 50 to 60 police calls a year on average. And so, we’re reducing crime by a gigantic percentage within the first 4 to 6 months.

And again, it comes back to conscious capitalism. And there’s a common mistake made amongst individuals in the country where knowledge is the book on a bookshelf and people will go read a book about real-estate investing and they think, all of a sudden, they’re a real-estate investor. HGTV, in my opinion, has been the biggest detriment of real-estate investing ever to hit the planet. And everybody who goes to an investor course now wants to just go pick up and start wholesaling and doing all this investing stuff without any wisdom. And wisdom is the ability to use knowledge. And there’s a gap between wisdom and knowledge and that gap is called experience.

And so, one of the greatest gifts that I was ever given was to be on my properties 24/7, living on them in many cases, being on the projects, running the construction crews, running the guys, being in the lives of the individuals that live in the unit. And that’s why I started R Empowerment was because I got to see how a lot of these individuals were living. I got to see the challenges that these kids face on a daily basis. And I got to see them all over the country and in thousands and thousands and thousands of units.

And as I stated earlier, we have a process where we go in and do Resident meet and greets the second we purchase property. And I’m part of all of that. And the reason why I love doing that is because it gives me insight into how I can become even more of a conscious capitalist. And so, through the security efforts, we’re able to clean these projects up in a very rapid rate. And we rely very little on government help when it comes to these types of things.

Jimmy: Oh, that’s great. Yeah. And that is a big differentiator for you. And you’re absolutely right, it’s one thing to know real-estate investment, it’s a whole other thing to actually do it, I believe. I think you’re right about that. Well, Travis, this has been great. I wanna thank you for coming on today. Before we go, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and R Investments?

Travis: So, rinvestments.net is our website. And if you go to rinvestments.net, you’ll see on there that you can navigate to all the other companies. R Empowerment is our non-profit that is focused on stopping evictions across the country. And R Academy, you’ll see that on the website as well. And you can click through all of that, we’ve got many different ways people can get involved. We’re always looking for people that are called to do this sort of work, those are our favorite types of employees. So, any way that anyone can get involved. Or, if somebody just wants to understand conscious capitalism on a greater level where…this isn’t proprietary information that we’re not willing to give out, I want to see this expansion across the country. And if somebody wants to understand how we do things so that they can make a difference in their neighborhood, we’re happy to help out and share that information as well.

Jimmy: Fantastic. And that’s the letter rinvestments.net. And for our listeners out there today, I will have show notes on the Opportunity Zones database website for today’s episode. You can find those show notes at opportunitydb.com/podcast, and there you’ll find links to all of the resources that Travis and I discussed on today’s show. Travis, again, thank you for joining us today. I appreciate it.

Travis: You’re so welcome. It’s my honor. Thank you.