Modeling the Business of Affordable Housing: Wth Travis Duckworth of Sol Tiny

In this episode of the Less House More Moola podcast, Travis Duckworth discusses his journey in community building through the lens of tiny homes and sustainable practices. He emphasizes the importance of local relationships, navigating challenges such as NIMBYism, and the role of community in economic growth. Travis shares insights on sustainability in construction and the impact of his work with Sol Tiny and Sol Learning Institute, aiming to inspire others to take action in their own communities.

Travis Duckworth's Links

https://www.soltiny.com/

https://www.sollearning.com/mission

Go to thetinyhouseadviser.com

Transcript

Less House More Moola Podcast (00:41)
Well, Travis Duckworth, welcome to Less House More Moola podcast. You and I came together through Ellen Stone. Ellen, sent me your contact information and said, hey, you got to talk to Travis. He's doing such great stuff up there in Nevada County. And I'm super excited to explore this because you've really been able to lead the way within your community in terms of legalization. And this is something that so many people need like a

roadmap for like how to make it happen in my town or in my county. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Travis (Sol Tiny) (01:16)
Yeah, it's awesome to be here, Laura. And thanks for creating this community and this venue for just talking about big important issues. It's really good to be here.

Less House More Moola Podcast (01:24)
Yeah,

everybody out there in the tiny world right now has a lot on their mind. There's a lot going on. So ⁓ it's good to hear from people who have had success. So please introduce yourself and your business.

Travis (Sol Tiny) (01:38)
Yeah, so I'm Travis Duckworth, as you said. ⁓ I am really a teacher. ⁓ I have a, had a different company since 2011 and we were writing curriculum for trade schools, really bringing sustainability into workforce development. So we wrote electrical trade programs, welding programs, HVAC programs for high schools, colleges, and trade schools. And, the long story kind of to not to be so long is

When I moved to Nevada County, I wanted to be actively involved in this. I threw out some chairs and set up a tea cart and we served self-serve chai and we just got to know people in the community. And that has been a huge factor in just creating that center of influence, we like to say, or I like to say for building community. ⁓ When I...

landed here, I taught high school here, so I got to know the community in that way and got to know my community members. And during that little stint, I realized, you know, obviously the housing crisis is real. The housing crisis in California is very real. And the housing crisis, I taught a whole semester on homeless and those most vulnerable in our community. The housing crisis extends into more than just our most vulnerable. It also extends into our middle class and our lower middle class. It extends to teachers that can't afford to buy in this community and et cetera.

And then I had an opportunity to teach a workshop with students, empowering them how to build their own homes. We did tiny houses. My first tiny house program was in 2015 in El Paso, Texas. And things have really changed since then in terms of what's recommended, what you can build, the sizes and et cetera. And that high school ish to young adult is 15 to 25 year olds went really well. And then we launched a.

Adult workshop and we taught adults 18 to 65 how to build their own tiny homes. Um, and that went really well. And then I had motivation and support from the community to launch a for-profit business. And I wanted to see what was it like to create a business within the current paradigm that is for-profit, that generated income, that gave jobs and operate it with and for and by the community and do it in a really kind, conscious way. And so that's the goal. The whole business is built around that. And so.

When we launched, I raised a quarter of a million bucks through micro loans from community members. We had everything from people giving me 500 bucks to 10,000 bucks. And then we built two tiny homes. sold those and we gave everybody back their money plus 10 % in that first year. Recently, we just raised 300 grand in eight days to raise capital for a showroom model that we launched. And it's a kind of modular build of three tiny houses. And you can start with a starter home and go up to three.

And in that, it gave me an opportunity to showcase what it would look like for families. And we can get into the details of that. But the point is, is it allowed me to, again, raise a bunch of capital. And the numbers come down to about 100 grand of interest that now go to just regular people in the community. And so we wanted to see, what does it look like for this business to source materials locally as much as possible, give jobs locally as possible, operate sustainably and fiscally so that it can actually stay alive, and just, again, just be kind. And it's been an amazing journey.

We can get into all the details of what that entails. But that's kind of where we are now.

Less House More Moola Podcast (04:57)
that local focus is something that we often hear a lot about and yet don't exactly know always how to implement that, how to build coalition, how to build community, how to raise funds within a community. And it seems like that there was a lot of maybe pre-work that you did in terms of that, know, chai tea stand and like just sitting down with people. And so would you say that some of that early relationship building was an important key?

Travis (Sol Tiny) (05:19)
Right.

Less House More Moola Podcast (05:27)
to the progress that you made on the legalization front.

Travis (Sol Tiny) (05:31)
Yeah. And I think it's really important to mention, you know, I do drop those little things like the T card or teaching high school or, know, going to the local farmers market and just talking with people about what I'm passionate about. Um, I think, you know, going to Potlucks, you know, just getting involved in your community is a huge, huge part to then now giving me a platform within my community. When we legalize this in Nevada County back in January, it hasn't been very long. that was a year long process and it started with the County having their annual workshop.

and being incentivized to create affordable housing options, I didn't reach out to them, they came to me. And that's really special for a government agency to come to a for-profit business and say, hey, will you help us figure this out? And not the other way. I wasn't lobbying, I wasn't trying to get this to legalize for me. ⁓ It's been a wonderful benefit for us as a business, but it was motivated by the county because they knew me through those different little places that we've plugged into getting to know people.

And so yeah, think that I always call it a center of influence, like get excited about something, be passionate about whatever it is, and then share that with people in a healthy way.

Less House More Moola Podcast (06:38)
It sounds like that too, that you had other folks within the community that were on board and that were backing up your voice. How did the community sort of coalesce around the idea of affordable housing and tiny homes and legalization? How did that play out?

Travis (Sol Tiny) (06:56)
Yeah. My main builder here, I'll just name drop a little bit is Tony Unger. And if you're into music, he's an amazing guitarist. plays like Flamingo inspired guitar music. He's our general contractor on staff. And he always laughs at me because I am always speaking in the plural. I, when I said I was jumping on a podcast, said, we're going to go jump on a podcast because it's a collective thing. And we joke that it's a little mouse in my pocket, but it's really, it's

anything that I'm doing has so many ties to other people in the community that are either supporting it, that help motivate it, that are pushing for it, that are doing their own thing. Like there's nothing that I'm doing in isolation. And I think that that's really important to keep bringing up. And so I often speak in the plural because I want to remember and remind anyone I'm talking with that this is a community effort in whatever I'm doing. And I think that we've seen, you know, everything from the first, you know,

Guy that I met at the farmers market started one of our nonprofits for comparing ⁓ local young farmers with, you know, wealthy landowners to grow food in the community and be part of the food, you know, economy. You know, he's a huge, huge advocate for us and a huge voice in the community. He's been here for decades. And so I could never build decades worth of, you know, rapport with the community in a short amount of time, but I can through other people that I can get inspired about what we're doing. And so, yeah, you know, in terms of affordable housing,

It's a pretty known thing of how big of an issue it is here. And so, you know, we have a motivation to do that. We have our local building director who was just hired a couple of years ago. I swear it was for PR. He's just the sweetest, kindest person. And he's come to most of our open houses on a Saturday on his day off, spent four or five hours hanging out, just talking to people. And, you know, I think he said it well, is like the tiny houses used to teach all different types of construction, you know, from cob and straw bale to hempcrete to everything.

And the tiny houses aren't the only answer for affordable housing, but they're definitely part of it. They're one tool in the tool belt. And so it was an easy thing to pass to allow for at least some part of our demographic to be able to be served.

Less House More Moola Podcast (09:06)
So you obviously as all communities have probably have some NIMBYs out there. ⁓ How do you approach that?

Travis (Sol Tiny) (09:11)
⁓

Yeah, you know, we get more and more polarization happening in our country, which is tough. ⁓ And that trickles into our communities for sure. But it's always been in opening up and trying to get to see other people's perspectives. One of the biggest ways that we did that and for good and bad, we just passed this legislation to allow for tiny houses on wheels to be permanent dwellings, main dwellings, accessory dwellings and cluster dwellings in high density and medium density areas. We did not allow RVs.

or vans or anything on wheels, which there was a big push for, especially to address our lowest, most vulnerable community members, economic-wise. And we did that because we would have had the whole thing shut down. We have some really large HOAs in this community. We have like Wildwood, we have Chucky Donner, which is one of the biggest communities in the country. And if we said,

everything on wheels would be allowed, which would give so many people homes. There's such a great motivation for that. ⁓ We would have gotten nothing done. And so the two things that we did was limit it to just the tiny houses on wheels that are built and inspected and certified and constructed like a home. ⁓ And we invited the community over and over again over the year to come out and see what we do. We do pretty high end locally sourced, beautiful redwood and Sequoia and cedar and, you know, gorgeous buildings.

This is all trimmed and local walnut. Nobody does that. so having a really high quality thing that looked better than most of the houses around here and inviting people out and limiting it. So unfortunately, we are not giving as many homes as I would love to people, but we got the success. We got the first win and then we can do it again. And I'm very transparent with our motivations. We'll get into it possibly, but we're trying to build a co-housing community right now of tiny houses. It's going to be about a hundred homes.

of 4 to 1,200 square feet with two to three tiny houses connected. That's going to be for middle income people. That's going to be for teachers and carpenters and plumbers and things like that. It's going to be extremely high end looking. They're gorgeous homes, but they're going to be really affordable because they're small. When that's successful, because we're able to get that through because of the aesthetics, then I can then turn around and do a low income version.

And then it's going to be harder for the NIMBYs to say, we don't want that because we can turn and say, what do you mean you just did it? And so, you know, finding the successes that you can find, you know, when I was in El Paso, you know, bringing a bunch of kids, I'm an old teacher, like we did some amazing things there, including the zoo poo program where we got the zoo to compost all their poop. We did that by bringing students to the city hall when we bring teachers and

Firefighters were a huge fire zone area. When we bring them in front of city and county officials and say, we want this done, and we bring that in front of the community, it's hard for the people to say no to that. It's hard to say, don't want to give homes to the firefighters.

Less House More Moola Podcast (12:11)
Yeah.

I love that you are, finding those common, those common needs and those common values within your community and, starting there and then maybe expanding the radius out to, you know, serve maybe the margins after you've served the core. That seems like a really smart strategy.

Travis (Sol Tiny) (12:36)
Yeah, I mean, it is not always. have a wonderful human being in this community who fights for the just the end goal all the time and unfortunately rarely gets anything done because it's so extreme from where we are. And I think it's really important to you. can't get lost in the system, but you have to work with what's the current reality in front of you. And I think, you know, taking that first step and then taking the next step and having a little bit of patience, but always pushing forward is ⁓ has been extremely successful for me.

and it's because people can see, you know what, I don't know if I can go for that big, big, big, long thing, that hail mary, but I think I can take those first couple of steps.

Less House More Moola Podcast (13:17)
So you are working on a community and ⁓ what, yeah, like a lot of progress in the last few hours on that point. ⁓ Tell us what other like pans in the fire that you have going on.

Travis (Sol Tiny) (13:21)
Yeah, we'll see.

Yeah.

Yeah, so like I said, you know, when we launched this, I wanted to be a model for what a community based for profit business looked like. We again, source our materials as much as local as possible. This walnut is all from our fruit orchards down in the valley that are getting ripped out. When we had the first round of tariffs in 2017 and then we had COVID and we had walnuts sitting in port, the price of walnuts plummeted. And we saw a lot of walnut farmers go out of business. And so those beautiful

fruit trees, not furniture trees, were ripped out and they're getting chipped. And they're gorgeous. in this wood, can see, I might have a piece over here. You can see this gorgeous, like super dark to like light wood. And you can see the graph lines in a lot of this from fruit to root stock. And so for me, you know, it's a combination of helping environmentally take that wood and use it for a purpose instead of just chipping it. and also, ⁓ the story, and ensuring that. So we do that.

We obviously, you know, support by providing jobs and growing in that way. ⁓ We highlight a lot of artists. The table I'm sitting at was made by just this rock star Mexican-American, just woman, just artist in the community. And it's this beautiful walnut slab. I don't know if I can really show you, it's beautiful. ⁓ And, you know, when people come to our open houses, we have, you know, we're a smaller community. have 40 to 100 people come to our open houses. 95 % of them don't buy a big hundred and something thousand dollar tiny house.

but they might buy a table from Marie. They might hire our electrician to do a little renovation project on their job. might get one of our local artists. This is being staged as a tea room. We'll be highlighting our local ceramic artists. So they might buy some tea cups from somebody in the community. And so just like always looking for ways to connect to others is both really cool and helps spread the love, so to speak, and it's also selfless. Like it's more marketing. It's more people talking about us.

We just launched another microloan initiative to raise money to build these showroom models. We raised 300 grand. We're giving back 10 % a year over three years. That's 30 grand times three years, 90 grand of interest. And we have everything from a local judge that wrote the paperwork to tie it to my assets so that if I die on the way home today, I didn't screw my community, down to a local high school kid winning an essay contest and through her mom giving me the winnings. And we got to sit down at our co-op and have a cup of tea and talk about what does it mean to invest locally.

And there is again, a ton of people that are talking about our business and spreading the word. And there's a hundred grand that stays in our local economy. So, you know, those kinds of things, we're launching a co-housing community. My goal is at the end of it is to say, we raised the capital to do that with and for the community. That community was built for people in the community and it was built by people in the community. And so my goal is to raise those millions of dollars through a ton of people here locally. And I think we can do it. And then again, it's more of a motivation. It's more of an inspiration to share that.

and how to ripple out.

Less House More Moola Podcast (17:16)
The community-minded thing seems to be something that,

is inherent in a community or maybe isn't. Like I just heard a whole long segment, multi-day segment on Marketplace about a town in Utah and the way that they just are so community and entrepreneurial minded and everybody has their small business and everybody supports everybody's small business. And I wonder, have you shifted the community away from thinking,

Travis (Sol Tiny) (17:41)
it.

Less House More Moola Podcast (17:49)
I'm gonna buy everything you know through e-commerce or big box or whatever. Have you, do think you've changed the mindset of the people in the community?

Travis (Sol Tiny) (17:59)
That's a really complicated question. It's a really interesting one as you look across different communities in this country, especially. I used to say when I was in El Paso that what I was doing was right under the surface and all I was doing was helping to bring it up because it was there, but nobody or very few people saw like.

the potential to just bring it up to the surface. Whereas I moved from Berkeley, California and everybody walked around with a, know, went to the farmer's market and drove a Prius because it was the cool thing to do. And every nonprofit was already done and it was hard to do anything new and revolutionary because it was all happening. I think that in the view of community, especially when you get into commerce, it gets tricky. You know, I'm a storyteller in a lot of ways. One of the quick stories is,

the little tiny quintessential cobblestone street that I grew up in Southern, in Georgia and the South, ⁓ all these mom and pop stores went out of business within a very short amount of time when a Walmart went in about 20 minutes in the middle of nowhere out in the wilderness. And so it got to the point and it is still the point here where I try to get as much as I possibly can locally and I still buy things from Amazon. I still buy things from big box stores because it's no longer available locally. And so when we see

you know, this shift into, you global realization of the market, it becomes challenging to support local. And so you just have to see where can you, and then hopefully that starts to both financially and, ⁓ practice wise, you know, socially change behaviors and say, you know what, I am going to spend that a little extra to buy that locally because that's going to help provide another job, which may have another business start and things like that. ⁓ I don't think that anything that's done single-handedly is I mentioned the we.

I think that one of the big things that we've been able to do is show some examples of ways to bring money home. And besides like spending money, the other one is that local economic piece. When we raise hundreds of thousands and now millions of dollars through just community members, and mean high school kids giving a couple hundred bucks to ⁓ wealthy people in the community giving quite a bit more. ⁓ Those are ways to, we've documented and we're sharing with our nonprofits that work with other businesses.

to inspire people that, the next time you want to take a leap or launch a product or start a new business, maybe raise that capital here. And so I think there's examples that can help push that, but yeah, nothing is done in isolation.

Less House More Moola Podcast (20:22)
And there has to be a certain amount of means to, feel like, when you start to zero your radius, right? Because you're gonna pay your farmers that are making your, they're growing your Swiss chart in your community a lot more than you are when you buy something at Walmart. And so there's a little bit of maybe privilege in that shopping locally. ⁓ But yet it is so important to, from an environmental standpoint, from a community and enrich-ness standpoint,

Travis (Sol Tiny) (20:41)
Right.

Less House More Moola Podcast (20:51)
point,

I talk to clients all the time about, thinking about their wealth in a more holistic way. And then when you invest in your community, you're creating resources and wealth in your community that feeds you in return. And so it's not just about, hey, let's, globalize our, all of our financials, but let's look at our community for opportunities to enrich others and ourselves in ways that maybe it's not just about our stock and bond portfolio.

but very beautiful way to implement your focus on local. Let's talk about sustainability a little bit.

Travis (Sol Tiny) (21:22)
Thank guys.

Sure. And thank you for that. think that's a really good point. And I think we can get into the privilege space pretty quickly. So thank you for that. It's, you know, I think you do whatever you can. And even if it's just inspiring, you know, people that are with means to bring that money home. Yeah, let's talk about sustainability. Where do you want to go with it? There's so many places.

Less House More Moola Podcast (21:50)
Yeah,

so talk about it first from the homes that you build.

Travis (Sol Tiny) (21:55)
So yeah. So, you know, again, we are in California. We are not building over borders. We are not building. We're building with really high quality. My goal as a builder again was to

Less House More Moola Podcast (21:56)
Yeah.

Travis (Sol Tiny) (22:10)
And why I got into tiny houses was first as a teacher, I can show basically all the parts of construction to students. I can teach somebody who's never picked up a hammer before how to do everything from framing to finished carpentry to cabinets to stairs to all of it, except for foundation work. That's where it began. And then as we start building, or as I was writing curriculum for schools, I also wanted to raise the bar for construction. And tiny houses are a really cool place to do that because I can put in, I'm sitting on

Hemp wood floor, which is expensive. It's like 10 or 11 bucks a square foot and a 3,000 square foot house That would be a huge line item But in a 300 square foot house that versus some crap $2 a square foot flooring from Home Depot is too grand You know, it's just not a huge huge jump and so we can do beautiful reclaimed hardwoods We can do real wood, you know siding we can do, you know metal siding We can get rid of particle board and OSB. We use all plywood

We can do, you know, some pretty nice things in tiny houses that we wouldn't do in the large scale, you know, just pump and go building. And my goal is both in house to create a sustainable business. I'm in California. I'm not going to compete with somebody in Southern California building over in Mexico. I'm not going to compete with somebody building three or four tiny homes a week. We build 20 a year. We're going to scale that up a little bit more. So we're medium. You know, we do a couple million bucks in sales. And

I am going to pay really good wages to people to support my community. And so with tiny homes, I can do that. And to do that, I need to create a niche within the niche of tiny homes. And so we found our market is really in creating really environmentally friendly, non-toxic, locally sourced builds. This building I'm in, people joke because of the hemp floor. They say it's the building you could eat in the floor you can smoke because everything in here, the glues, the paints, they're not.

zero, you know, or low VOCs. There's no VOCs. The plywood is purebond, soy-based plywood. The glues and adhesives are super, super non-toxic. The stain on the outside is whey protein-based. You know, it's all, like, you can lick this building and you'd be okay. And there's no off-gassing or anything else. So we found that that's where we can really, like, raise the bar, build stuff where I feel really good with my crew, you know, cutting these pieces and using them and being around this material.

And we can also carve out a niche within the businesses of selling tiny homes. And then in terms of, you know, environmental impact, it's everything that you've, you you know, the carbon footprint of where we get our things, how we support people in the community. You know, lot of the wood that we use is reclaimed, you know, from fire abatement or from, you know, people bringing down trees to avoid electric lines. I just brought in a bunch of Sequoia and we use this giant Sequoia in buildings, but I was able to do that because I...

had a local, one of our ER doctors does milling in his spare time. And he had, you know, 700 square feet of beautiful Sequoia. And you couldn't use that on a regular house, but on a tiny house, it's enough for me to do a really cool section. And so, you know, I think that in terms of sustainability, we just look at each place and each thing that we're sourcing and then try to do it as best as possible. And we still buy stuff from Home Depot and we still get stuff off Amazon, but as little as possible.

Less House More Moola Podcast (25:27)
So let's ask the really hard question.

Travis (Sol Tiny) (25:32)
Yeah, let's do it.

Less House More Moola Podcast (25:34)
And the really hard question for

all of us in our life, right, is thinking about our impact. And I just, you've talked so much about your impact in the community and the way that you're building, the way that you're creating community and the way that you're, cultivating relationships. Like what is the, what's the, what is the succinct way of thinking about the impact of Sol Tiny and Sol Learning Institute? Like what, what is the,

the big vision that you have.

Travis (Sol Tiny) (26:08)
When I was a teacher, I high school teacher, and that was great to get involved in this community, like I said, I taught roughly 20 to 30 students at a time. You know, over the course of year, I teach 100 kids like throughout the day. That was awesome. And I got to inspire people to do cool things and to be good people. When I was a curriculum developer, we would host workshops and I would teach 30 teachers that then taught 100 kids at a time. The impact was way bigger.

So what I do on the ground here at Sol Learning and Sol Tiny is still being the teacher in the classroom. We are doing something in this community. We are inspiring people in this community. We are empowering ⁓ change locally. And my goal is that we can document that, model that, share that, and inspire people across the country to do something similar, because that's where the impact is. So the impact to me has to ripple out. It has to say, hey, we built a business.

with really good ethics. And we take less of a profit margin so we can still be competitive and still give affordable housing. We're not greedy. I pay my workers really, really well. I don't pay myself really, really well, but I pay enough to put food on the table and keep going. We are carving out a product that I feel extremely good with, whether it's the people that are working with these materials as they build it or the people that live in them afterwards. This is an extremely non-toxic builds.

So I can feel good about that. They're also super high quality. We had a client a little while ago and they had a manufacturer and there was a small leak in their tiny house. It flooded, but it was all good materials. Everything dried out beautifully because it wasn't just crap particle board that swells and goes to hell. We can do things better. And I really do want to inspire, you

other people to do things in their community that raise capital, that spend money locally. I want to inspire other people to build a co-housing community like we're going to be doing. I want to inspire people to raise the bar in whatever it is that they're doing. I'd love to see contractors and builders and architects, we invite them out to our open houses and have beautiful conversations to talk to their clients and say, you know what, I'm not going to build you a 3000 square foot house. I'm going to build you a 2000 square foot house for the same budget. And we're going to do it with way better materials. We're going to make it way more multifunctional. And it's going to be a better space for you to live in. And

we just don't need that big of a footprint. So I think that inspiring people to do things better and showing that it can also put food on the table and can also make money, and that's why we do this as a for-profit business, I think that modeling that is really the goal for how we then have that impact to inspire other businesses to operate a little more kindly, a little less profit-driven, and a little bit more community-oriented. And then hopefully...

that spreads across other communities, not just ours. Because I think what you said is really important is there are a variety of ⁓ receptivity communities across this country. I've lived everywhere across this country and that's true and we're in a certain place that really supports what we're doing and I love that. And I think that there is a way to show what you do in your community and then have somebody else adapt it to theirs. so hopefully that's what we're doing.

Less House More Moola Podcast (29:27)
setting an example and you bring up the profit motive which of course no matter how much we want to be altruistic or focus on all stakeholders or what have you in our society there has to be that profit motive to help keep people engaged in doing good.

Travis (Sol Tiny) (29:46)
doing sustainability for decades and

we do amazing work and I would do it for free. I would do this for free. I've seen so many wonderful colleagues of mine in the world of sustainability go get a Rayleigh or corporate job, fall away from it and stop doing it, stop teaching it, stop implementing it because they couldn't financially charge for it. And that's sad because now it's not happening as much. So I think there's a healthy way.

Less House More Moola Podcast (30:09)
So for

folks in other communities who are looking for advice or maybe mentorship, how do people track you down?

Travis (Sol Tiny) (30:23)
Yeah. We've got so many irons in the fire right now. It's wonderful. Every time somebody calls me, it's like, my goodness, I love talking to people, obviously. But it's lot. ⁓ Yeah, so we're in Nevada County. I'm Travis. I do my best to connect with people that need help. I'm an old teacher. I talk to people all the time that are installing their own tiny houses or come up with issues. We have a little pilot program where we make a kit that we send off to people to build ⁓ and try to inspire people.

kind of on the back burner because of everything else we're doing, but I'm more than happy to help whenever I can. My email is travis, travis@ sollearning.com. And yeah, we're Sol Tiny. We're at a Nevada City, California. We have a little website, Sol Tiny, and Sol Learning for the educational components. But yeah, that's where we are. yeah, reach out to me, but I also, like I had a...

I went to a talk, think was Brad Lancaster who does, he's in the South, the West, he's in Arizona doing rainwater harvesting. And I remember somebody asking if he would come to like speak to their city council or their mayor or something like that. And he just blew them off essentially. And he was like, no, go, you do it. And I really do. I hope I can empower and inspire people to, to not idolize others that are doing things, but be inspired by them to go and do whatever makes sense in your community. So yeah, reach out to me, but more importantly, like just start.

in your community and do something and be that voice and be that advocate and be that rock star. Because we can all do it. And it just takes practice and diligence. Yeah.

Less House More Moola Podcast (32:00)
Yeah, can't depend on the people that have done it before to be everywhere all the time. have to...

Travis (Sol Tiny) (32:07)
No, and what I do here doesn't make

sense in Taos You know, it's not the same.

Less House More Moola Podcast (32:13)
Well, Travis, thank you so much for inspiring and sharing the way that you have approached your business and your life and your relationships and for the important work that you're doing in your area. And I really appreciate, our conversation today. And hopefully that can help other people, you know, take that first step.

Travis (Sol Tiny) (32:35)
Yeah, well thank you Laura. mean, this is the walking of the walk. Like you're inspiring people through this venue or this medium of podcast. again, it doesn't have to be tiny houses, it can be anything. And just start spreading whatever it is you're excited about. And I really appreciate you providing a platform for that.

Less House More Moola Podcast (32:56)
Thanks for your time.

Travis (Sol Tiny) (32:57)
Thanks for having me.