A Veteran’s Mission to Simplify Home Buying feat. Todd Jones ’23

[00:00]Brian Jackson: Welcome to Owl Have You Know, a podcast from Rice Business. This episode is part of our Flight Path series, where guests share their career journeys and stories of the Rice connections that got them where they are.

Today's guest is Todd Jones, a 2023 graduate of the Rice Business Executive MBA program. Todd's career has taken him from serving in the U.S. Army to spending more than 25 years in the mortgage industry, where he's helped shape lending strategies, build businesses, and expand access to home ownership for veterans.

Now, as the founder of Salute Mortgage, Todd is bringing together his entrepreneurial spirit, commitment to service, and willingness to take on new challenges. Today, we'll talk about the lessons he learned at West Point, his transition from military service to business, what it takes to build a company, and how his experience at Rice helped shape his next chapter.

Hi, Todd. Thank you so much for joining me on Owl Have You Know.

[01:00]Todd Jones: Hey, Brian. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

[01:03]Brian Jackson: Well, I wanted to start really with what I'm going to call the beginning, which is West Point. I feel like when I was at least in high school, the next step was really a traditional college experience. You went, kind of, a different way with the United States Military Academy. What drew you to West Point, and what did you think about when you were signing up at the time?

[01:23]Todd Jones: Yeah. Wow. Well, West Point, obviously, as the United States Military Academy, has a great track record of developing great leaders and individuals who make an impact in the nation both during service and after service. But truth be told, while I was in high school, I was very focused, not only on grades but on playing football.

And so, I also wanted to play football at the highest level, a I-A level. I had a history teacher, Mr. Utz, at Stratford High School, and I think anybody who's gone there back in the day knows Mr. Utz. He was incredibly impactful, and he would do the films for all the football practices and games, and in his history classroom, he would put up pictures of all the Stratford graduates who went to any of the academies.

He'd put up their academy photos in his classroom. So, he was kind of a walking information, draw attention to the academies, and he was very impactful with the football team, to boot. So, I went through a normal recruiting process for football, went to Missouri, Kansas, and SMU, and then I had Army and Navy. Those five schools were recruiting me pretty heavily. It just stuck out to me, and we'd had a good tradition of Stratford Spartans going to the academies. And as I did those visits, it was just… There was just a stark difference in what West Point was compared to everything else.

And so, the weight of the decision certainly sat on me. You know, you're at 18 years old making a decision to go to a four-year school and then serve five or six years in the military afterwards, it seems like a really long time at that age. But it was a very impressive place. And one of the quotes that stuck out to me was, "The history that we teach is often made by those we taught."

It was probably the best academic and leadership program I could get into. It came with some weight associated with it, but I also had the opportunity to play football I-A there, and the number of educational opportunities was expansive. The facilities and the support there are amazing. It's definitely a tough experience. But yeah. So, hopefully I answered your question-

[03:33]Brian Jackson: No, you did.

[03:34]Todd Jones: ... but those were the things that were going through my mind. It wasn't something I'd wanted to do since I was real little, but it really got shaped in the high school years.

[03:41]Brian Jackson: Well, it seemed like at 18 you were trying to grow as a leader, which I think is pretty incredible, to be an 18-year-old and go, "Okay, I need to expand that." You have football, you have the military academy. Were there any leadership lessons that you took out of that period that you still, kind of, lean on today?

[03:58]Todd Jones: Yeah, a lot, for sure. The military academy is a formative leadership experience. But, you know, as a young officer, you have opportunities to lead within the academy with other cadets. You start off as a plebe, and a plebe is, for all intents, a private. They're actually probably treated worse than privates. They are. Plebes are treated worse than privates in the military at West Point. And it's a pretty rigorous setup. But you start by following, and then you have to learn how to follow to be a good leader. And a lot of leaders, people who envision themselves as leaders, don't necessarily understand that point.

But if you don't know what you're looking for, if you don't know what it looks like to follow correctly, then how can you know as a leader if people are executing on your plans correctly? There needs to be humbleness in that regard. Learn how to follow first, and then learn how to lead. And then ultimately, once you get out of the academy and you're a young officer, you're responsible for people who are way older and way more experienced than you.

The rank gives you authority, but it doesn't automatically give you respect. Some of the lessons I still hold on to today is you've got to be willing to get in there and be able to do everything that you're asking your folks to do, and they need to be able to know that if it became upon you to do their job, that you could do it.

That's definitely a leadership lesson that comes out of the military and West Point. Outside of that, its mission is first, but the people are critical and must always be maintained.

So, you've got to have a clear definition of what your mission is. You need to make sure that the people have been delegated appropriately to accomplish that mission, and that they're in good shape to do so. They have the tools necessary to do so. And then you need to be adaptable, because in the military, you will plan meticulously, and then as soon as the mission starts, everything changes.

And so, you need to have backup plans and be adaptable and know, generally, that you're going to have to make changes on the fly, and you have to be confident. In those cases, a bad decision executed well is better than the best decision not executed. So, you've just got to, execution is extraordinarily powerful, and those moments you just have to go and execute, and you will have a better outcome than if you... In a time of change or chaos, if you just don't execute on something, you're not going to accomplish anything.

Not to summarize them all, but those are some of the lessons that I learned in the military that certainly stay with me and shape how I lead in the business world.

[06:34]Brian Jackson: And I mean, those skills would certainly translate into post-Army life, into civilian life. And when you left the Army, you went... And I know you worked in oil and gas, fintech, but then now you're in the mortgage industry, and you've been working with the top VA lending platforms in the country.

What's this drive and experience about serving veterans? And I guess, are there opportunities that you're seeing that are different because of your experience in the Army and how you help serve this specific client?

[07:06]Todd Jones: Yeah, so it all fits together. Well, first of all, I am a veteran, and I have my own experiences to lean on, right? And when I bought my first home, I actually went to a mortgage lender who was my classmate, actually, from West Point. And he was a knowledgeable mortgage loan originator, but like many folks out there, there are a lot of misconceptions about the VA loan program in general.

In this case, I ended up buying a townhouse in Chicago, and it was a jumbo level, so it was a higher loan amount. And his misconception was that you couldn't do a jumbo loan on VA. And so, the effective outcome of that was I had to put a significantly larger chunk of money down out of my savings to buy the house. And then I was on an adjustable-rate mortgage to have the type of rate that would associate with a payment that was affordable for my budget.

Great that it got done, but if you can imagine coming out of the military, first job, you know, you're not sitting on a ton of cash. That money that I put down was money that we could've used to decorate the place, et cetera. Had he known the guidelines for the VA loan program, I would've been in a situation where I put much less down, would've had the same interest rate on a 30-year fixed without the interest rate risk, and my wife would've been a lot happier because we would've outfitted the house particularly well. She would've gotten much better furniture in the house.

So, that was a learning lesson for me, and I realized that it wasn't really unusual that he or anybody else didn't understand the exact guidelines. There are misconceptions all throughout the industry. So, that stuck with me early on.

I have dabbled in all those spaces, but I have always been in mortgage and real estate. My very first gig was a rotational management training program with Household International, and like 80% of their profits came from their full-service mortgage and lending business.

So, I moved up into growing roles in different organizations on both independent mortgage banks and banking platforms, and then the fintech thing you're talking about, the role that I had before with Salute was with SoFi, running their home loans business, and that was... What I learned a ton about there, and it really sparked a lot of energy in me, is taking the technology-first culture and matching that with the highly regulated bank culture, and then across multiple product types, but mortgages being one of those.

That really fascinated me and opened my eyes to how not only could we serve veterans better, but what we could do for the overall transaction. Everybody stays in their lane within homebuying. You've got your realtor, you've got... It's very fragmented. You've got your mortgage, you've got your title insurance, you've got your inspections, and multiple other participants.

And through technology, I have a vision of putting that transaction management together to make a much smoother process and to really come out with better outcomes for veterans, but also all homebuyers.

[10:18]Brian Jackson: One thing I wanted to ask, and this is probably more for me, but I guess full disclosure for everyone listening, Todd and I are actually cousins. It's really first cousins once removed. 

But your dad, Larry, he spent his career in oil and gas exploration, and something I've always thought about is in that industry, in that business, you drill a lot of dry wells, you know, and like, you take a lot of risk. And growing up around that mentality and someone with that drive, like your dad, what did you learn from him, and I guess how has that impacted the way you approach entrepreneurship?

[10:54]Todd Jones: Man, that's a deep question. First of all, love being part of this family and love that we're cousins. Yeah, my father is probably the most impactful role model in my life for a lot of reasons, and I think your question touches on a piece of it that I didn't really understand until later in life about the risk appetite.

So, yeah, my father, Larry Jones, also a football player for Nebraska, went into the military. He was a colonel in his ROTC program. He was the president of his fraternity. He went and served in the military right after Korea. Came out, got his master's in geology, and went and worked for some big boys and then decided to start his own company very entrepreneurially.

And they operated and invested and ultimately consulted over many years. And I recall growing up, and he's a man of great integrity, but very strict. And that's good, too. He was also like our coach all the time growing up in Little League ball.

But so he made a huge impact as far as just how a young man should conduct himself and that your word should matter. But there was this sense in the house where we would go through, you could tell things had changed from a financial perspective, up and down, on a relatively regular basis.

I think that it has educated me, or taught me, and did teach me that everybody needs to figure out a way to be happy in their current conditions, right? Like, the current outcome of the next accomplishment that you do should not be what dictates your happiness. You need to figure out a way to find happiness around the things that actually matter, like faith, family, and community.

So, life goes on outside of the risks that you take and the outcomes of those risks. And he taught me that, because he was disciplined, and we were consistent in how we cared for our family. We were consistent in how we participated in community, and we were consistent in just, kind of, that ethical nature of how we did business or dealt with others, regardless if a well hit or if it was a dry hole, or if it was better economic times or worse economic times. Deep question. Thank you for asking it. I hope I answered it effectively.

[13:16]Brian Jackson: No, you did. And I mean, I've always had great respect for Uncle Larry, and he's an incredible leader, has always been. But that lesson, too, of smelling the roses while you're trying to achieve all these great things is something I think everyone can try to pause and do.

Applying that to what you've done, I would say your career was going fine, then all of a sudden you decide to have this entrepreneurial moment and take a big swing and found Salute Mortgage. Why was this the right moment to take the risk to drill the well? And what were you looking to offer that wasn't already out there?

[13:48]Todd Jones: Great question. I basically spent decades helping other organizations build and grow their businesses, and I learned about myself that I wanted to combine the missions that were important to me, that I deeply cared about, and I wanted to build something myself.

And I felt like, with my experience across independent lenders and depository bank platforms, that I had a very specific set of knowledge about how this business could be made better. It was just fundamentally time. And it had been something I'd been thinking about for a long time.

I actually formed Salute Mortgage in the state of Delaware like six years before I actually launched it. And in that timeframe, I had always been a hired gun, and another bank came and presented me a really nice opportunity that directed me back toward it. But in the back of my mind, I knew what I wanted to do at the end of the day.

But the timing was great in the sense that technology that will ultimately differentiate Salute and the larger real estate ecosystem that we are striving to build became more accessible, more developed, and God's got a plan, I guess.

I didn't know that certain technologies were going to bust out and make building this ecosystem more of a reality, but I knew that I wanted to do it for myself. And I didn't really go back to school or to Rice because I felt like I needed another credential or to learn something.

I felt like I needed to learn how to look at things differently and make sure that I wasn't so siloed in my assurance of my knowledge in the industry that I'd been in for 20 years, that I could look at things with a different viewpoint across industries, understand how technologies were changing, that's basically what took me to being an entrepreneur, and something that I'd wanted to do for a long time, and the timing was right.

[15:51]Brian Jackson: Yeah, so timeline-wise, you did your Executive MBA, and then I think shortly thereafter launched Salute? Going back to business school after 25 years of experience, what were you looking for? 

[16:04]Todd Jones: Well, first of all, I had great role models around me. I think you had gone to Rice already, and other people that I knew from West Point, et cetera, had gone there and had great experiences and were doing good things in business.

You know, friends from high school had made their way to Rice and told me about it. So, it was very interesting. The university itself was very interesting to me from a reputation and network perspective. But really, I felt like I needed to make sure I had a broader perspective on business because I had been doing the same industry since I had gotten out of the military.

Rice had gotten a lot of accolades around entrepreneurship. I knew that I needed a framework for what entrepreneurship was and, kind of, validate that I knew how to put everything together to start up Salute.

I definitely understood that technologies were changing, and I wanted to be exposed to some of the more emerging technologies, and I felt like an institution like Rice could provide that. And then everybody that I had ever talked to about MBA programs had leaned on the high value, if you will, of the network, right? And I already knew a bunch of people that had graduated from Rice, and so that felt very natural to me.

So, it was those components, I think, that drove me to go get the MBA.

[17:23]Brian Jackson: And you talked about technology a few times. I'm curious, are you using agentic AI in how you're developing Salute? You know, is that what popped up and all of a sudden made things a little more, I guess, possible or probable?

[17:37]Todd Jones: Two technologies, I think, have emerged that are being utilized within Salute and will be utilized more. So, I'm the CEO and founder of Salute. I got into entrepreneurship through acquisition a number of years earlier when a partner of mine and I acquired a company that operates under the name of Homebird, which is a real estate network company.

And then we are developing a technology called NestGuide AI, which is, kind of, the glue that sets this all off. And so, Salute today… So blockchain and AI are the two technologies that have emerged that are critical to what we're doing today and will be critical in the future moving forward.

And the AI in particular, from an integrating the entire transaction concept, is most powerful, I have to say. So, we use AI today within Salute in a way that most organizations are probably envisioning it. But the NestGuide AI is a little bit different. So, today, if I have a customer come into our CRM or whatever, we're going to have, just like people have for years, automated communications with them.

The difference is that we have an AI behind that, that is tailoring the communications with them, and listening to the phone calls that we have with them, reading all the emails and storing all that under each, you know, user, and then helping make recommendations to our loan officers on what the next email, phone call, and/or text should be, and saving them time in how they go about utilizing that.

That's one way that we use AI today. We use AI in marketing, of course, very effective in that regard. And then, just to dumb it down, Salute takes care of the mortgage. People don't come looking for a mortgage, they want to buy a house, right? So, when you buy a house, there are multiple things that go along with it. Mortgage is just one piece of that.

So, somebody wants to buy a house, Salute takes care of the mortgage. Homebird makes sure that you get with the right realtor and helps coordinate the transaction with multiple products. Corporate relocation is a good way to think about it, you're going to need to line up multiple services.

Homebird provides that aspect of it. NestGuide provides an AI intelligence layer that touches multiple parts of that transaction, so that NestGuide can make better recommendations and better-educated product placement for consumers who are going through these purchasing transactions.

So, that's how we look at the overall opportunity. And we are working with tech-smart investors who understand the opportunities that are there today to bring that all to reality.

[20:26]Brian Jackson: I imagine you got a whiteboard and you're trying to map out the transaction, and all of a sudden you're like, "Okay, we can put things here, here, here." The first time it all, kind of, worked together and you saw each part get used and a deal optimized, what did that feel like? Like, "Oh, wow," "Here we go. We're onto something.?”

[20:42]Todd Jones: So, Homebird became a reality of necessity, like most good ideas. So, to really bring it down to its core level, when we understood that these parts, you know, improve the consumer experience and increase conversion and economics for all parties involved, if Salute Mortgage gets a customer that we pre-approve first, right? Distribution customer comes in, and we pre-approve them, and then we just say, "Hey, go out there, work with any realtor that you want, we're here when you want to make an offer."

There is a 70% chance that that realtor who builds all the trust and maintains all that relationship with the customer while they're showing them homes is going to steer that customer away to a mortgage lender that they like to do business with.

And so, there's a significant fallout for a consumer-direct mortgage lender. You put in a lot of work, a lot of cost to get people pre-approved, and then the conversion rate is significantly less than what you would like it to be because you're not maintaining that trust and relationship as much as the realtor.

So, fundamentally, Homebird came around as a solution for that. So, Homebird has a network of 8,200 realtors around the nation, and what they agree to do is update our technology so that we can feed shopping intelligence to the mortgage lender so they can improve their overall communications.

Things that an MLO would not know, "Hey, we're going to look at a house today." "Hey, we're going to make an offer tomorrow." All these things that an MLO, a mortgage loan originator, just don't have the time to do. They have time to do it, but they have a pipeline of business, so they're not making those calls regularly. The realtor knows it.

So, that informs the lender's strategy, and then ultimately there's a common business courtesy that if I refer you a buyer, please don't go send it to somebody else. And so, our realtors try to stay true to that concept as well, to that common business courtesy. The net effect for the lender is it doubles the conversion from pre-approval to fund, versus if you don't use it.

Like, I could talk on this for hours, so I don't want to be too boring, but that was the first time we're like, "Ah, these pieces need to work together." And then it becomes natural that when you have all these other fragmented participants in the transaction, and they're all working on their own systems, and they're all trying to optimize for their piece of the pie, they're still collecting the same information the customer has done before.

So, instead of the customer having to provide this information seven times, let's figure out how to bring all of this together so the customer has a streamlined, tech-enabled experience that's more efficient for all parties involved, much less headache for the customer, ultimately, a better cost structure for the customer. All other parties involved participate in a higher conversion rate.

And then so distribution then becomes the key. And today, it's been proven that one of the most looked-at things online is real estate. People love to look at homes online. And so, NestGuide effectively is a real estate platform, a viewing platform, but it's based off of affordability.

And in the process of demonstrating the affordability, we will gather all the information on the houses that are out there in the market, all the information on the owning households, all the information on the financial opportunities that are available to either the buy side or the sell side, and then ultimately, lifetime customer life value, future opportunities of consumer behavior, both from a credit perspective and from a tracking perspective, to bring all this together to educate the model more with real outcomes from these operating companies, that will make the model provide better affordability recommendations and better product recommendations in the future.

[24:46]Brian Jackson: That's too close to reality, I feel like. I love to go look at the $10 million houses in River Oaks and dream a little, Todd.

[24:53]Todd Jones: Absolutely. And NestGuide, unfortunately, would say, "Here, look at the $10 million house, but Brian, you're going to need another six months before you can afford that. And here are the things that we could do."

[25:05]Brian Jackson: I like that. Wow. So, you've pinpointed key constraints, and how do you convert a looky-loo to a customer? That's incredible. I'm curious, it's been a few years with Salute. Do you have a wall-of-fame moment, a loan that you think of like, "Wow, I can't believe we got it through," and they're in their home, and they're happy?

[25:25]Todd Jones: I hope you're asking this for a specific reason, because we just closed something that... We've had a couple, but literally Monday we funded an $8.75 million, 0%-down VA loan. And it's hard to validate because I've searched HMDA data, I've talked to investors, but it's likely the largest 0%-down VA loan done ever made.

And it was a complicated transaction. It's a beautiful property for a veteran who has 100% disability. He's clearly done very well. We were able to get him a very preferable interest rate. It's on a beautiful lake here in Texas. I'm not going to get too specific just to protect, anybody who knows me who's listening to this probably knows who this loan is for.

And we did it all in about 30 days. And you can imagine the teamwork that had to go together from the Salute team, but also from him and his team, to make sure that the documentation of his assets and income were sufficient. And what's most special about that to me, not only is it a record number, which is always, kind of, fun for a competitive person, but it proves something that I've been trying to communicate through marketing to a lot of people out there, that there are misunderstandings about the VA loan program.

It's very often treated like an entry-level program, and many times it is, first house at a base, PCSing, which is a military transition to a base. You have an opportunity to use your military housing allowance to actually buy an asset, and we love doing those loans all day long.

But it's also, you never really outgrow, because you become too successful, the opportunity to look at this product. And the difference for him was 30% down or zero, and so this is several million dollars that this individual was able to do something else with. It gives you freedom to use those funds in a different way. And the interest rate we got him was favorable enough that it made a ton of sense to do so. So, just an absolute home-run deal.

My team, the MLO on it, Jackie Leach, and Desirae Wiles and Naylam Torres, like, they all did... The team that worked on that file just absolutely crushed it. And his realtor did a great job. Just kudos all the way through. Thanks for asking that question. We just had probably our largest highlight.

I have another highlight for a Rice grad that we're helping him with a challenging situation in a building single-families-to-rent development, and we're getting him out of his construction loans and putting him into a much more favorable financing situation. That's also a big moment for us as well, too.

[28:15]Brian Jackson: Well, I love the story. I mean, Todd, I could see it, and our listeners can't see you, but I can see there's a lot of pride, and I think for me, my read was the way you were describing it, too, is you're happy that you were able to put this client, who's 100% disabled, a veteran, into a beautiful home with his family. And I think that's really nice.

[28:35]Todd Jones: Yeah. Thanks for asking that question, though.

[28:37]Brian Jackson: Yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of deals that don't always make it to the end, but the ones that do want... Especially that one, it's worth talking about, so I'm happy you got to share the story. When you picture Salute five, 10 years from now, what do you want it to have become? Like, where do you hope it's growing?

[28:54]Todd Jones: So, Salute is intended to be part of a larger real estate ecosystem. I want to make sure that we continue to stay true to the mission, to educate veterans about the extraordinary benefit that the VA loan program actually is. I want to make sure that the VA core stays central to our mission, but that we are bringing the same passion that we have for excellence in the VA loan program and to serve veterans to serving every one of our borrowers, and having the same passion and expertise in every loan program that's out there.

But I see Salute being part of a larger real estate ecosystem that is tech-enabled, that will ultimately allow consumers to cut down on the frustration and red tape that goes into buying and/or refinancing, but mostly buying a property, and doing that across not only mortgage, but multiple participants in that transaction.

The mortgage piece of it is just so important because these transactions can't happen if the money doesn't show up.

So, Salute is, kind of, the flagpole of this larger real estate ecosystem, and we will expand that into other asset classes as well. Outside of just the purchase transaction vertical, it's going to provide us opportunities, of course, in HELOCs and refinances, but down the road, other asset classes, personal loans, credit cards, auto loans, this ecosystem will grow in that regard.

[30:27]Brian Jackson: That's great. I'm going to pivot a little bit. There's one pattern that I think even our listeners will have noticed, you know, just like I think it was Mr. Utz and his wall of fame, you tend to try to go for the hard things in life. You've done triathlons, Spartan races, you've climbed Kilimanjaro. What's driving you to choose those challenges?

[30:48]Todd Jones: Oh, man. That's a really interesting question. I mean, I'll be vulnerable and just give you the real answer. So, you know the makeup of my family. So, I come from a family that, kind of, resembles the Brady Bunch. My father had four children, my mother had four children. They got married, and then they had me. I didn't recognize this until later in life, but there was a tension growing up where, if you can imagine, from my siblings, all half-siblings, but I don't look at them that way, they're my siblings. But each of them, one half had a different mom, and one half had a different dad. So, I felt like I needed to earn my siblings' respect constantly. And I didn't recognize that until much later what that feeling actually was.

So, the culture of our family is competitive to begin with. All athletes, all athletes across the board, everybody cared about their grades, et cetera. So, it's not a situation where you could just easily impress your siblings. So, I think that that was foundational to what drove me to seek large challenges. And those types of family experiences are formative. And that was it, I wanted to impress my siblings.

[32:04]Brian Jackson: Well, I think you have. I think they're all very proud of you, Todd. I know I'm proud to be your cousin, so thank you for being vulnerable with me. Looking to the horizon, what's the next challenge? What's the next trophy we get to hang on the wall?

[32:17]Todd Jones: Yeah, the next challenge is... Well, there are two challenges. I want to use this opportunity. So, like you, Brian, I very much respect what you do to continue to support Rice and to show up and volunteer for the institution. So, we are working on a Rice Business and West Point Entrepreneurs, Veterans & Ventures events on November 11th.

So, shameless plug, if you are associated with any of the academies, with Rice, any veterans, we're going to be doing a charity poker event and an entrepreneurship combined evening. It's going to be at Hotel ZaZa on November 11th. We're going to open the doors at 4:00. There'll be an open bar, rolled cigars. We're going to have an "AI for Entrepreneurs" panel where Mercury Fund will be there.

Jordan Speaker, who's in real estate and AI, he's done a great job. Shawn Olds, who's an AI consultant and started BoodleBox, which is an AI company, now works for a private equity firm in that space.

We're going to have co-founder of Voyager, Matt Kuta, who's the president of Voyager. They're the ones who have the commercial contract for travel to the International Space Station, he's going to be our keynote. We're going to have Patrick Flood if you're interested in acquiring a business or selling a business. He's going to be doing a piece on that.

Then we're going to kick off the poker, and we're going to have some just really high-quality networking. So, Rice community, please, you know, if you want to celebrate veterans, the two organizations that are going to benefit from the proceeds are Career Gear, which is right here in Houston. They outfit veterans and prepare them for transition into civilian life with interview training and, like, actual suits to wear to their interviews. And then we have Combined Arms, which is a Houston-based, kind of, portal, a foot in technology that provides for 300 vetted military services to fulfill a holistic group of needs that some of our veterans have.

So, two very worthy missions.

Outside of that, what's next is combining or thinking significantly about the structure to combine the capabilities of Salute, Homebird, and NestGuide. And we are working with strategic investors who have an interest in vertical AI and some expertise in that space to see how we can grow that larger tech-enabled real estate ecosystem most efficiently.

That is what is next for me from a business perspective. We've built the operating rails. And how we put that all together to create the larger real estate ecosystem is what the next move is for me.

[35:01]Brian Jackson: Well, fantastic. Well, I'm excited to hear how it all goes, and hopefully I'll see you on November 11th.

[35:08]Todd Jones: Brian, I can't thank you enough for giving me the opportunity to be on here. It's great to see you. Thanks for all you do for Rice and Rice Business, and thanks for producing a really interesting series of shows.

[35:19]Brian Jackson: Well, thank you, Todd. I appreciate it.

Thanks for listening. This has been Owl Have You Know, a production of Rice Business. You can find more information about our guests, hosts, and announcements on our website, business.rice.edu. Please subscribe and leave a rating wherever you find your favorite podcast. We'd love to hear what you think. The hosts of Owl Have You Know are myself, Brian Jackson, and Maya Pomroy.