Rob Boyer, CEO and founder of Narthex Properties, joins Impact Investing Roadshow to discuss his firm’s mission of acquiring and repositioning underutilized historic church properties as thriving faith-based community hubs—illustrated through the Our Lady of Lords transaction in Raytown, Missouri.

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Guests:

Rob Boyer: CEO and Founder, Narthex Properties

Email | LinkedIn

Deal Highlights:

The Our Lady of Lords Catholic Church in Raytown, Missouri—a multi-building compound on three acres near Arrowhead Stadium—had been vacated by the Archdiocese and left largely unused. Narthex acquired the property in 2023 for $1,290,000 after negotiating down from a $1.9 million asking price, then invested approximately $910,000 in renovations including HVAC upgrades, bathroom additions, and general refurbishment, bringing the total all-in cost to roughly $2.2 million.

The project was financed at a 50/50 equity-to-debt ratio, with $1.1 million in investor equity. Narthex secured City KC—a rapidly growing Kansas City congregation led by Pastor Armor Stevenson II, whose membership has grown from approximately 1,000 to nearly 2,000 since moving in—as the anchor tenant.

Under a two-year lease structure, City KC is under contract to purchase the property for $2.5 million, generating a projected 15% IRR and approximately 50% cash-on-cash return for investors over a three-year hold.

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Christy Johnson, Founding Partner of Fireroad Ventures, discusses the firm’s thesis around applying AI to small and local businesses and digs into their pre-seed investment in Ando, a workforce scheduling platform designed to improve job quality and scheduling flexibility for the 82 million hourly W-2 workers across food service, hospitality, and transportation.

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Guests:

Christy Johnson: Founding Partner, Fireroad

christy@fireroad.io | LinkedIn

Deal Highlights:

Ando is a workforce management platform serving industries with large hourly W-2 workforces—food service, hospitality, and transportation—where chronic overemployment and unpredictable scheduling drive turnover rates exceeding 150% annually. The platform delivers AI-powered predictive scheduling for employers while simultaneously giving employees cross-employer schedule visibility, enabling workers to coordinate hours across multiple jobs and personal obligations. The company is targeting the 82 million hourly workers in the U.S., positioning itself to build the largest labor graph in the country.

Fireroad invested in Ando’s approximately $1 million pre-seed round via a SAFE note, writing a check in the $100–200K range. Diligence spanned roughly three weeks, from an initial partner call on April 7 to an investment committee decision on April 25, with the round closing in early June. Key conviction drivers included founder and CEO Paul Wellens’ deep domain experience scaling brands such as KFC and Einstein Bagels, a rigorous 40-page first-party research white paper, and early commercial traction with multi-location partners. The company, originally named Methodic, rebranded to Ando ahead of a planned $ 3–4 million seed raise targeting further commercial expansion.

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Phil Reeves and Michael Brown Rig, co-founding partners of Apis & Heritage Capital Partners, discuss their employee-led buyout (ELBO) strategy that converts lower middle-market businesses to employee ownership.

They detail how they sourced and structured the Blooming Nursery transaction (Cornelius, Oregon), including screening criteria, diligence on agriculture-specific risks like seasonality and weather.

They explain ESOP mechanics, trustee oversight, tax advantages, multilingual employee communications, post-close governance and ownership-culture training, operational upgrades, and their non-sale exit model focused on refinancing principal and monetizing warrants as the business grows.

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Guests:

Phil Reeves: Co-founder, Apis & Heritage

Phil@apisheritage.com | LinkedIn

Michael Brownrigg: Co-founder, Apis & Heritage

Michael@apisheritage.com | LinkedIn

Deal Highlights:

Blooming grows branded, high-quality plants and sells exclusively to specialty garden centers across the western U.S. Demand is tied to seasonal and weather-driven buying patterns which creates diligence and forecasting challenges.

Apis & Heritage found the deal through a brokerage and structured the acquisition as a sale into an ESOP, enabling the founder, Grace Dinsdale, to receive about 90% of value upfront. The ESOP approach protected the land and Grace's legacy by keeping ownership with the company and workers.

The debt transaction put roughly 70 full-time employees plus about 50 seasonal H-2A workers on a path to wealth, with plan tweaks so seasonal workers could earn shares. Post-close, Apis & Heritage added governance, ownership-culture training, finance upgrades, and expanded capacity with new greenhouses. Apis & Heritage received share purchase rights along with their subordinated note which gives them the opportunity for upside.

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