Welcome to The Purpose Driven Investor, where we build more than portfolios. We build communities. I'm your host, Robert Howell, a real estate investor and founder of Define Communities. Each week, we'll explore how purpose and profit connect through affordable housing, land home packages, and impact-driven investing. If you're a lender, land seller, or a partner who believes money should move with meaning, you're in the right place. Hey, y'all, welcome to the first episode of the Purpose Driven Investor podcast. Wanted to go through episode one here and talk about defining moments and why this podcast exists and what has driven me to start this podcast. Um, well, first I want to welcome everybody as, as a listener, uh, appreciate you joining and appreciate you being here with me. I want to talk a bit about the mission and really as a business person and as an investor, I've always been purpose-driven. And whether that is early on in my days when I was doing experiential marketing or event marketing, as some of you may know it for Coca-Cola or Delta Airlines or the Olympics, and how we could make a difference in people's lives through the work that I did at Ignition or Havas Sports Entertainment. or at my mobile home parks, where we try to make a difference in the tenants and in the residents life and try to drive a different experience really for those residents than they've ever had before. One that is of a caring nature and ultimately with my goal of how can we show people God's love through housing and through specifically affordable housing. And of course, we need to make a profit while we do that. And so it's always a balance of how do we blend profit and how do we blend purpose in what we do through affordable housing. So we start really with my story and kind of where I came from, um, grew up in a great family, uh, great mom and dad, dad worked for Coca-Cola, which drew me to event marketing. And so my junior year of college, I took off from Clemson university and traveled around the country, uh, on the Olympic torch relay for the salt lake, uh, 2002 Olympics. We went for 65 days and visited 45 States. And really that was the start of event marketing for me. continued through that career with different entrepreneurial activities throughout, whether it was starting a website to sell event supplies online or buying a rental house, whatever it may be, but really always had a draw towards affordable housing and really rental properties as a whole. And with that, COVID hit, I said, hey, well, this is a perfect time. I need to really focus on housing because at the end of the day, I wasn't sure whether there was going to be another event ever again. And so what I did, we said, hey, let's put the event marketing on a hold and let's start buying and selling real estate. Well, when I started that, I started looking at affordable housing and buying and selling houses here in South Carolina, ran across the mobile home part, started to get into mobile homes, realized that, hey, I could make an impact on folks that live in mobile homes and really help to provide a better housing situation for them. And so I started to do that here in South Carolina and then continue to expand into more mobile home parts, which led me into land home investing. And now that's what I exclusively focus on is buying land and putting new manufactured housing on that and addressing the affordable housing crisis that we have here in America. So let's talk about the purpose behind the podcast and why I've decided to launch the Purpose Driven Investor Podcast. Well, number one, I'd like to connect with like-minded partners and investors. There's a lot of people out there that are purpose-driven, whether it be in affordable housing or be maybe in another niche of real estate or even another niche and just being an entrepreneur or entrepreneurial investor. I'd like to connect with you through this podcast, whether that be as a listener or be as a guest. I'd like to showcase real-world stories of impactful investing. As we continue to have new episodes released, we'll have other investors on board on the podcast and we'll talk about their stories of impact investing. And then I also like to talk and invite lenders and land sellers and other investors to join the movement. And again, that could be through partnering together, could be through selling land to me or to my partners, or maybe joining our education program to learn more about what we do through the Land Home League. So what can you expect each week? We're going to have some solo episodes. So that'll be just me talking about the different strategies for funding and for partnerships or for development of affordable housing. And I think those will be great opportunities for me to share some of the education and some of the knowledge that we've developed over the last several years in this space. We'll have interviews with investors. So we'll talk with people that are doing land home packages or investing in affordable housing or just purpose driven investors across the country. Talk with lenders that could potentially be partners in lending on affordable housing projects. We'll also talk with some educators that are in this space and can help to educate others on how to invest in affordable housing and how to make an impact. And then we'll look, um, weekly on how can we, uh, collaborate and how can we educate, uh, each other? Um, not only just not one way necessarily, but how can we educate, uh, two ways, right? I can learn from you. You can learn from me. So on. So with that being said, I encourage you to listen along, join along the journey here, subscribe. If you'll do me a favor, subscribe, share, and give me a great review. You can also visit my website and you can learn more there. It's howellandsons.com. That's H-O-W-E-L-L and sons.com. You can learn more there. I'll have a link to the podcast there. And then we'd love for you to come in and join us on episode two. We're going to break down how can affordable housing outperform traditional flips if you know where to look. So join me there and look forward to seeing you then. Make it a great day. Thanks for listening to The Purpose Driven Investor. If today's episode sparked an idea or inspired you to make an impact, connect with me at howellandsons.com. Join our community of purpose-driven investors who are helping families find stable homes while building real returns. Because when