Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. I’m here with my co-host, John Coleman. John, good morning, Henry.

John Coleman: Good morning to you.

Henry Kaestner: Indeed, although as I look at it is afternoon for you and as evening at night for our guests. Today, we’ve got a real special podcast and as we’re getting ready and we’re talking kind of quote on quote backstage, I was talking about this guy that I love like a brother and I really do, and he’s the real deal. He’s been encouragement to me. He’s challenged me appropriately in the past, so I’ve known him for maybe a dozen years and just really helped strengthen my commitment and resolve to knowing Jesus. And he’s been living this incredible life that he’s going to tell us a bit about. And my hope today, John, is that we might give our audience a different perspective and a different viewpoint that helps them understand what it looks like to invest in Africa. Our time, our experience, and yes, of course, the capital that God has entrust us with. So I’m fired up.

John Coleman: Yeah, it’s such a such a remarkable topic. I mean, the ability to impact a billion people. I know this is something you’ve gotten really fired up about recently too, right? Henry Yeah, it is.

Henry Kaestner: It is. We had gas. I guess we’ve gone now to Africa four times over the last two years. I mean, even with COVID and we had our Faith Driven Investor Conference Mini conference in Nairobi, we’re going to go back in September for the Faith Driven Entrepreneur and Investor Conference in Africa. God is doing incredible things there. I’m personally compelled. We’ve done so much. Of course, John, you and I know Southeast Asia so well and we’ll continue to love Indonesia and Singapore. And yet there is something about the continent of Africa and just the demographics and how young the population is. The joyfulness that comes from meeting, maybe that’s the selfish thing for me. I just and we’re going to get to the media podcast in a second, but there’s some amount of selfishness that I have. I want to know God, I want to know your own experiences, joy. And when I spend time on the ground in Africa with my African brothers and sisters, I see the joy of knowing God. And for them, the Holy Spirit is a very real active thing. Jesus is somebody who can be known and celebrated and loved and be loved by. And I just get really excited and every time I’m there, so we want to do more of that. No better person to help us on a tour of Africa than somebody who’s given his life to the continent. Neil, welcome to the program.

Neil Holzapfel: Thanks, Henry. And you’re far too kind, but it’s great. Great to be here. Thank you. Henry and John,

Henry Kaestner: excited to have you.

Neil Holzapfel: I think about Africa. And yeah,

Henry Kaestner: I think back to the time when I first met you, you know, we don’t do this on video, but I remember. And I think there’s a metaphor in here somewhere. But I remember when I met you is at the UK. Prayer breakfast is probably 12 years ago, so it was at the House of Lords and it was just a really kind of a buttoned up affair and it’s a little bit stuffy. And Byron Laughlin, our mutual friend, took us out for lunch afterwards. Maybe I met you before I came here, but I remember this time. I remember that you’re like, You know what? This is just too stuffy and you, you know, because we’d been at this really nice thing, kind of a suit and tie type of thing. You stripped down to a t shirt right there at lunch, and I’m like, I like this guy. This guy’s is like, all pretenses aside, let’s be real with one another. And that started our friendship, and I’m grateful for it. So one of the things we like to do, or the thing we like to do with all of our guests on the podcast is understand who they are and get an autobiographical flyover. How did you come to know Jesus? How did you come to the vocation you found yourself? And how did you come to investments? You’ve got a great story, and I’m hoping you’re going to just share with us. Bring it.

Neil Holzapfel: So I’ll start with some of the high level, right? Neil’s my name. I’m from New Hampshire. Born in the Boston area, St. Thomas grew up in New Hampshire and then went to school in Boston, in the UK.

Henry Kaestner: And oh, I need more than that. We need more than that.

Neil Holzapfel: No, no, no. I’m a bring it. OK. Right now, I’m married to a woman who’s just completely shaped and changed my life so dramatically. Less so. We live in Cape Town. We have three sons Bonilla, Joel and Pascal, and we’ve been based here in South Africa for a decade this year, actually, and just celebrated our 12 year anniversary. We spent a couple of years in New York and then a bit of time in London, but been based here since then. And you know, my story, Henry is, you know, really starts with my father because my father was abandoned by his alcoholic dad when he was a child and grew up in an abusive single-parent home in a housing project in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. And, you know, the 70s were a bit dazed and confused for my parents. Well, they had me and my sister smoke. A lot of pot, drank a lot of beer and used, you know? Recreational drugs, but it was in the brokenness of their own marriage and their divorce and splitting up that, remarkably, my dad, someone gave him a Bible at work and told them that Jesus offers hope, forgiveness and new life. And he grabbed a hold of that for two years, wrote my mom in to the church. She had a Pauline conversion experience. And, you know, very much road to Damascus type ended up in church for the first time, and who knows how long they had both spent time around a Catholic church when they were young, but they were at a Pentecostal church and at that service. My mom didn’t remember anything that the pastor said. Except if you think you’ve done things you’ll never be forgiven for. I’m here to tell you, Jesus will forgive you for it. And she couldn’t help thinking about the first child that she aborted against my dad’s well before they got married. And so that was about 1983, so I went from having a pretty traumatic first six years with deep trauma. Then I’m still working through now in some ways to seeing my parents come to faith. And yet never really kind of breakthrough into for healing. So my dad is now and as you know, Henry said, I stripped down to my T-shirt, I’m stripping down here about my dad, who’s 73 this year, will start drinking today at probably noon beer go to hard alcohol in the evening. And he smokes pot all day and he’s on to prescription opioids. That’s today. Wow. So he had about a 10 year run of trying to follow Jesus and stay in community, but could never really break free of his past and the trauma of his past, his orphan spirit. And then my mom has stuck with Jesus. She’s really clung to Jesus and been the emotional and spiritual center of my family. And after my sister and I and they came to faith, they had three more children with his five kids. And now, I think, 17 nieces and nephews. But I think in my own journey as a young man, one of the big questions for me has been What if a man, a godly man, had stood in the gap for my dad when he was a boy who had no man in his life? No uncles did it, no coaches did it. You know, he went to Catholic school with nuns who beat him up. So how would his life have changed if someone had stood in the gap for him? And I think that’s been one of my big questions. So a lot of the drive. And part of my own journey is this passion for boys mainly and girls and young men and young women that don’t have fathers. And that comes through in. I work with raised the children and elsewhere. And as you know, where some people might know, South Africa in particular has been in the middle of an orphan crisis for the better part of the last 15 years, given what’s happened with HIV and AIDS. But the other thread to jump into a bit now is just what my experience of my dad and my mom and my birth family has meant for my own family and my own journey. Because I think for much of my adult life, I have been energized by the trauma and the suffering in my family, but also the joy and the strength and the loyalty and commitment that we share as a birth family. But also, you know, having to as a married Lazaro when we started our own family, really having to own some stuff and grow and understanding who I really am and who my real father really is, how Jesus brings me into a family with a perfect father who loves me and says, I’m worth it because he says so. Period. So that that’s that’s one way to kick off. Get right into it, I hope.

Henry Kaestner: No, that’s beautiful. And that’s what I was looking for. And that’s a perfect descriptor and the encouragement that we all need to hear the beauty out of brokenness and hope. And Heavenly Father right now, just all of our hearts are broken for Neil’s dad, and we just asked that you’d hear him. You were the god of healing and the God of miracles. And so we ask that you bring him back in and just be the father for him, as you are for all of us, the wonderful and infinite love. And he’d feel that today and pray for that Jesus, his name. There’s nothing better about the background of your story than that message. And yet there’s also some interesting aspects to when you get somebody comes out of that type of a background. You ended up a capital group with one of the most premier money managers of all time. How you got that, the opportunities that presented themselves along the way are very, very interesting story that go back to extra in New Hampshire. Can you give us a flyover just of your educational experience? The way you ended up at an Ivy League school is a little different than most, and I find it fascinating.

Neil Holzapfel: Yeah, it’s a great story in one rooted in what we just talked about. So that’s a good Segway. Just because when I kind of started, you know, going through puberty and noticing women around me, young women, I realized most young women I knew were interested in athletes small town, New Hampshire. And obviously my dad, who didn’t have a father, really benchmarked a lot of his view of masculinity around physical strength. You know, so I started freshman year had just started, you know, puberty probably 10 months before or five £850 pretty slow on the feet decided to go out for the freshman football team and got beat up so badly with that combination of, you know, lanky, skinny and slow. I got beat up so badly I went to the starting tailback. His name was Brett Rossmann, a little Jewish kid, but he was stacked and I’m like, Dude, what are you doing? He’s like, I lift weights. I’m like, Can I come? He said, Sure. Little did I know that his stepfather was teaching Driver’s Ed at the summer school of an elite East Coast boarding school called Phillips Exeter Academy. And Brett had a gym pass a week, six days a week for two years, we pumped iron in there and I packed down about 50 pounds of muscle and got kicked out by the security guards a few times and kept on going back. And I was pretty friendly, so befriended people and smiled and said, Hi, and I just like none of the prep school kids use the weight room, so I just blew it up in there and eventually an admissions officer was like, You were like one of the strongest kids in the school. How come you don’t play any sports? And I’m like, I go to the public school in town. She’s like, You’re a townee. Like, Yeah, she’s like, You do well in school. I’m like, Yeah, it’s like, Do you want to come here? I’m like, I don’t know. I never thought about it. So she she sent the application. I mean, this is when you come from my kind of bad. No one in my family had been university educated. You know, I went home, told my parents, I’m like, Should I go? And then something something the application. They gave me a scholarship. They’re like, I don’t, we don’t know, do what you want. So I went to Phillips Exeter in Grade 11, and it was a life changing experience, as you can imagine. And for whatever reason, it was a really smooth transition for me. You know, I didn’t feel and I think this is where I see God’s favor. I’ve always been a bit of a grinder. So, you know, I took to it like a duck and water, both the academic work and the sports work and my like junior year, they’ve got 10 college counselors. They’re like, Yeah, you’re not going to cut it at the Ivy League. It’s too competitive from here. But senior year, as captain of the football team and we won nationals in rowing and my test scores came back great and ended up being able to go to Harvard for undergrad where I spent, you know, a big chunk of my time rowing. I rode for Harvard. I was captain of the men’s heavyweight rowing team and then on the servant leadership team of Christian Impact as well. And that’s coming from a small town in New Hampshire. That’s really where I found just some brothers that we actually experienced a mini revival there. And I think I have a theory. We’ve spoken about it recently, but Christian Impact, which is the campus crusade at Harvard, I think it had four people a year. My cohort got there and the year we left at a weekly meeting just for athletes in action, there were like 70 to 75 people. Wow. Which is a big number for a campus of six hundred undergrads, right? Like, that’s a that’s a sizable it’s a of the population. And I think part of my theory and you know, how God moves, the Holy Spirit moves in certain times, but I think the core of what happened was real, raw, just intimate sharing confession of sin and a real passion for worship. In that cohort, that Bible study I was in my freshman year, that was pretty awesome. And then I went for Cambridge, for graduate school. I thought I was going to be an Olympic rower at Cambridge, where kind of the truth came out that I just wasn’t that good. So, you know, I was fine, but I wasn’t Olympic material, and I had about thirty five thousand dollars of debt from all my education, and I had a Ph.D. place at Cambridge in international studies and thought I was going to do development, work in the international, you know, whether working for the U.N. or as a missionary, but as God’s providence would have it, I figured, let me pay off some debt before I do the Ph.D. send out my CV to a bunch of investment banks and financial companies because I figured they had the money to pay off my debt and capital was the only place that gave me an interview.

John Coleman: Wow. You know, Neal, it’s a great story about finding Phillips, Exeter and Harvard. I will say the only other similar interesting story I heard was the commencement speaker. The year that I was there, the student commencement speaker had found Harvard because he used to steal bikes on campus. So at least you found a more reputable way to get introduced to the school. Now I know you went to Campus Group and you talk about that because they gave you an interview and you had this debt to pay off. But at that time you discovered an interest in Africa as well, you know, studying international relations? Or would that come later?

Neil Holzapfel: Well, I can tell you, John, it’s a good question exactly what happened. I was in the history library at Cambridge University, working on my master’s dissertation, and because I was in the UK, I would, you know, I had the internet back then. I’d flip up the BBC before I dig into my masters because I was focused on international studies and a headline came up on the BBC. This would have been May of 2001, and it said the headline was very simple three to four million people had died in the Congo since 1996. Wow. And I kind of had this moment just I’ll tell it like it is, and this is probably anger. It’s kind of my issue in life. Right. It’s my super strength. And it’s like, think about rowing and rowing. It’s the only sport that was once a form of slavery. You sit on your butt pulling in or going the opposite direction, right? It’s basically a hurt contest. This is going to take it to the wall and hurt the most. And I think I just had so much rage inside of me. It was a good way to air it out. But when I read that, I was like, I just went to Phillips, Exeter, Harvard University and Cambridge. And I haven’t even heard about this. And I’m sure maybe some people in the podcast might have the same experience. But after the Rwandan genocide, which most of you have heard about, there was an internet saying conflict. At one point, seven African countries were involved in the northeastern eastern part of the Congo because the Hutus and others perpetrated the genocide against the Tutsi and sympathizers. They fled into that part of the Congo, so Kagami has been going after that area and the people there for the last year until now. And Zimbabwe and Uganda and a bunch of other countries sending troops, and basically there was a civil war that it killed three to four million people. And I had never heard about it after just finishing, you know, what is it, seven years of complete elite education. And I’m like, There’s a problem with that.

John Coleman: Why do you think that is? Neal, you know, because it is glossed over, I think, and it’s treated differently. I mean, what’s behind that? How can people so educated be so ignorant of what’s happening to such a huge group of people in the world?

Neil Holzapfel: Well, John, there’s been a civil war in Ethiopia in the last 17 months that’s probably killed many multiples of the number of people that have died in Ukraine in the last month. How come no one knows about that? Yeah. So to answer your question, I don’t have an answer. But what I do know is say is the father of lies. So there are lies and there’s untruth that subtle. There’s some that’s more obvious. You know, one of my favorite examples, I don’t want to get distracted, but I really believe that the evangelical and when I say evangelical, I mean, people who believe the Bible is God’s word, they believe in a conversion experience, a choice to follow Jesus, and they believe that God is active in our lives. Right. That’s theologically a broad based definition of evangelical. But the Evangelical Church in America should be the most powerful force for kingdom change and salvation and redemption and renewal in the history of the world. But I don’t think we’re doing it. And I think because people have bought into and I’ve done this on my own things that aren’t true. You know, for example, I’m not sure if anyone out here is down with the Bible project, but man, am I just having a blast with the Bible project this year? So shout out to the creators of the Bible project. I mean, we’ve got three boys 10, nine and three, and every night bar tonight, I’m like, All right, we’re doing a Bible project. VIDEO And they are so down with it. Even my three year old is like, Let’s watch the Bible, and it’s just so good. But it’s been so refreshing to really get stuck in the Old Testament again and in the Old Testament. And with the reading program like God’s Passion for the fatherless, for the foreigner and for the widowed, it’s just all over the place. Yet in America, there’s like over a hundred thousand children who are in foster care, right? And foster care means no one wants you in their family, right? Like, if you’re in foster care, you haven’t been adopted. So for me, the concept of having orphans in America, where there’s tens of millions of evangelical families who know who Jesus is, it’s just unconscionable that there would be any orphans in America that places the lonely and families.

Henry Kaestner: That’s a great challenge, and I think our audience now can see how when we started this off, I said that Neal has done a great job of challenging me. Neil, I want to get back to the work that you and let’s say, ho do with orphans. But before we go there, because that’ll be a little bit more in terms of real time, although you’re doing a bunch of things now you’re doing the raise, the children, you’re doing investing. Walk us through your time at Capital Group and what you learned about. So you came to understand, of course, that there are all these people that have been dying in the Congo. You want to get involved and then you do and you get involved in the investment side. Walk us through that time about what it was like to invest in Africa and what God taught you through that.

Neil Holzapfel: Yeah. So I read this article and just became just totally intrigued by what was happening in Africa and reading about it. But there was no runway to get here or do anything here or anything like that. So I go to capital kick off and the Associates program, a training program. And I was based in L.A. for almost three years. And just really, I love numbers and I loved the culture of capital and the people. And it is. It’s a phenomenal place to work and a great place to be. It’s gotten really big. I think that brings its own challenges, but. Halfway through that training program, I read another article that said South Africa will have five to 10 million orphans in the next decade. This would have been 2002, and my younger brother, who followed me to Harvard and was also captain of the rowing team at Harvard, he’s a real rower. I was like the prep squad. But he he said, Let’s do something for those orphans in South Africa, let’s do something and I’m like, Let’s do it. But there was no runway. And then the next year, providentially capital came to me and said, Hey, we’ve got an opening for someone to cover South Africa and invest in the public markets. Do you want to do it? And I was like, Absolutely. So I came to South Africa. The capital gave me a few and a million bucks was like, Go invest it, you know, hang yourself a couple of times. I’m like, Where do I start to like, that’s up to you? And I came here for the first time in two thousand and three and started coming down once a quarter or three times a year and meeting public companies in Africa and the Middle East and investing in them, which I did between 2003 and 2012 before we relocated down here. So it’s just I mean, there was no plan. God had the plan. I mean, I I am so grateful. Looking back at his providence. Amazing, he’s so good, and she’s so not that stuff goes right, right, because the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous, and I feel deeply humbled saying that, but I can see that there was a plan that I just couldn’t have seen or understood.

John Coleman: Neil know what’s striking to me is just how much of a passion you have for people and for the people of the African continent. Specifically, you got handed a big pool of cash to invest at a relatively young age. It sounds like a capital group, and I know what that’s like in big organizations. You know, three or four hundred million dollars is quite a lot of capital to manage. For a big organization, it doesn’t feel like that much. And so they can give young people a lot of responsibility early. Talk to us about what you learned investing in Africa and for someone with your passions, you know, a lot of people pursue ministry or a service rather than something like investing. Why was investing fulfilling to you in the context of your passion for the people of Africa? And just tell us some stories of what investing there was like and and what you learned about being successful and investing across the African continent?

Neil Holzapfel: Oh man, that is. I could talk all day about you. Just ask like five questions. But what I will say is capital. One of the wonderful things about that culture is it’s high responsibility, high accountability framework. So because you were in the multiple portfolio manager system where everyone’s managing money, you got basically assessed on your results, which are mainly quantitative and somewhat qualitative. So no one could kibosh your career. You could say, I want to buy this stock if people are like, you’re dumb, you go and buy it and it goes up well, everyone thinks you’re a genius and you get paid. And that collegial environment really was powerful to witness and be a part of. And you’re making decisions because investing is making informed decisions based on people and businesses with limited information. And the beauty of the public markets is if the story changes, you can exit, you can sell. Right. Private businesses, we know that’s not so easy, especially in a place like Africa, which has very undeveloped capital markets and significant risk. So, yeah, I learned a lot about thinking about economies from the macro economic picture and what makes them systematically competitive. So for instance, let’s take a snapshot right now. Up until Ukraine happened, the war in Ukraine kicked off a month ago. My favorite macro country on the continent would have been Egypt, right? They free flow to their currency. They just devalued it by a bunch last week or a few weeks ago because they’re a big wheat importer and all that wheat comes from Ukraine. So they knew they were going to have problems on their accounts, but they free floated their currency. They cut their deficits dramatically. Their fiscal deficits are running a primary surplus. They investing in household formation massively at the moment because they need to. Cairo has a shortage of housing, and they’re just doing all the right things right now, and they’re growing four or five percent a year. I mean, kind of hectic that it’s a nominally Muslim dictatorship, whereas South Africa has just gone through a terrible decade with such a corrupted top leadership structure. Well beyond my expectations, they’ve set us back here 10 to 15 years from a macroeconomic point of view. Now that being said, both places still offer investment opportunities, but they’re in different places because one of the great things about being here, it’s kind of like. It’s a bit of open canvas, there’s still so much room to build. In core industries, whether it’s agriculture, whether it’s energy, renewable energy, whether it’s, you know, food production, there’s financial inclusion, there are pretty big blue sky opportunities where if you back the right people in the right sector and continue to back them, you can really grow things to scale. And so I think macro has to be part of the analysis, and I think Egypt, the next five, 10 years are probably going to be great there. And anyone investing in the public markets, especially after this devaluation, should feel good about it. Once you leave Egypt, it gets a bit trickier because when you’re in the bigger economies like Nigeria and South Africa, you have to be much more selective on what you’re doing, who you’re backing and what the opportunity is.

Henry Kaestner: By the way, I love that you mentioned Egypt. We had a Faith Driven Entrepreneur meetup in conference just meant to be reasonably small in Cairo, I guess, just two weeks ago. And the community got so behind it, it was way oversubscribed. The national news came and reporting on it, and it got distribution all throughout the country. God is doing something there in the entrepreneurial climate in Cairo, and that’s super encouraging. I didn’t know about it against this macro economic backdrop that you just talked about, but that’s a no.

Neil Holzapfel: It’s about six weeks ago again after this wheat issue. I mean, literally, Egypt, like I said, is the largest importer of wheat in the world, and they subsidize it. So they’ve tried to reduce subsidies for petrol and for bread, but they’re just going to get crunch right now. But previous to that, it’s that place has got so much going for it at a macroeconomic level right now.

Henry Kaestner: OK, we’re going to go through a time of the podcast. We’re going to do kind of rapid questions and think about this. Just real, real quick answers kind of like pardon the interruption, which is near spin program and ask you a couple, Joe, ask you a couple and then I’ll close. And we always close with with my favorite question, which is what are you hearing God through his word recently? OK, so number one question answer is 30 seconds or less. OK, give us three things that an investor needs to know before they consider putting money into Africa.

Neil Holzapfel: Who am I backing? Who am I co-investing with? And. What do we do together when things go well or go to plan or things don’t go to plan?

Henry Kaestner: Good. Next. Give us a 30 second pitch on why Africa makes sense for a crisis. Fowler listening to this podcast that’s been entrusted with Sterling Capital. Why should they? Why should they look at Africa and what’s a good way to get started?

Neil Holzapfel: I think that 30 seconds on investing in Africa, I would say backing the right people, you have the right experience and the right industry segment with the right capital, the right kind of capital and the right support you can you can build wonderfully redemptive businesses at scale and make a lot of money as well.

Henry Kaestner: So you talked about AG being one of those,

Neil Holzapfel: I think agriculture, agriculture is not a place to make a lot of money. I think it’s a place to make. You can make a bit of money because it’s the wrong end of the food chain. Right? But the impact you can have when you get it right can be fantastic. I think energy is very interesting. I think financial inclusion is very interesting. I think education is very interesting and I think those are all areas where LEAP Africa is kind of behind or in some cases in renewables has moved quite far, quite quickly. But you can build big businesses at scale when you get things right.

Henry Kaestner: OK, my third one and this kind of lightning around is I want to spend 30 seconds unpacking financial inclusion. And if you channel your inner John Staley on this, I won’t be disappointed.

Neil Holzapfel: Yeah, well, that’s all I’m going to channel because he’s one of the guys I’d back any day, but he effectively we don’t have financial inclusion, right? It’s still very much a very poor place. It’s still very cash full of physical cash, which is a disaster and a lot of people on our bank accounts. So if you can get every African, a digital identity and you can create ubiquitous and easy way to pay or be paid electronically and you combine that with data connectivity, you can dramatically reduce the cost of any financial service.

Henry Kaestner: Digital identity, micropayments, connectivity When John rolled that out and it’s just like cash I love a simple framework makes all the sense in the world.

Neil Holzapfel: It’s a very simple framework, and John’s the guy who can pull the pieces together. So that’s something we’re working on actively now, and we’re really excited about it.

Henry Kaestner: You say working on. Does that mean working on get him on the podcast? I’m just kidding. Now I know you’re working on a new venture,

Neil Holzapfel: so he would he’d be great. Well, John, John might. He might be harder. He’s not as good of a storyteller as I am, so

Henry Kaestner: nor is good looking.

Neil Holzapfel: Well, he’s a little bit older than me. The African sun’s been hard on them.

Henry Kaestner: They like Geoff Johns listening to this. John, you look awesome.

John Coleman: Maybe so I’m going to jump in. Henry with a couple of lightning round questions in mind, Neal, you talked about the importance of backing people on the African continent. Maybe talk about one company and one fund that you think are really exciting right now.

Neil Holzapfel: Well, I mean, the fund, the guy that you got you, this team knows who I really we’ve talked a journey with and I really love working with him and trust him. Is Richard Tim Keller and Sango. So I love what he’s done. He’s he’s been a very long thinker with his approach and done things the right way, and he’s fantastic. And I’d say that being the one saying, go,

Henry Kaestner: he is amazing and I should just throw in there. You get a guy who is partners with Ray Dalio of Bridgewater, goes back to Africa, brings what he’s learned in the United States. He’s he’s the real deal. Let’s get to his. One of his partners is a pastor. The guys, he’s outstanding.

John Coleman: And where is he investing? What are the themes?

Neil Holzapfel: He’s a mid-market and mid-market private equity initially fund of funds, but now making direct investments and set up a permanent capital vehicle.

John Coleman: Awesome. And what’s a company? So if there’s any top of mind you?

Neil Holzapfel: Yeah, I mean, I know, I know on the private or the public side either one. Yeah, I I’m pretty I don’t want to talk my own book, so I’m going to try to talk about something that I’m not involved with. There’s there’s one of we have owned one business for years that’s really growing rapidly at the moment. It’s pretty exciting because it’s it’s it’s got the potential to drive decarbonization at scale and help help supply energy here in South Africa. I’m excited about that.

Henry Kaestner: But can you say the name? Can you see anything we can say to them on this podcast?

Neil Holzapfel: Sure, sure. It’s called Power X. We’ve owned it for a long time. It’s the only well, it was until last month the only independent power trading license in South Africa. It’s actually fascinating, right? Because we talked about macro, but as disastrous as macro has been in South Africa, they have basically completely liberalized and deregulated the energy industry. So there was a state owned monopoly which owned the distribution of generation and the transmission lines here and in the last two years, they’ve broken it up into three entities and they just issued another trading license and they’re, you know, really changing own generation kind of limits so anyone can build up to 100 megawatts without having to go through the brain damage of getting a generation license. And we just happened to be positioned right in the middle of that. So that’s a good one. I’m very, you know, fired up about what we’re doing with John Henry in buying this payments company. I think that could be fantastic. I, you know, when when COVID kicked off, there were a bunch of public companies. I was fired up about MTN was my biggest and the one I was excited about the most. But that puppy just been ripping it up like. Probably like two hundred and fifty percent now it’s a lie, it’s up five hundred percent, it like bottomed in March of 2020 at like 40 or 50 rand, and I think it’s over 200 now. But then there was a logistics company I really liked called Imperial Logistics that just got taken private by DP World a few months ago. So they got a buyout offer from an Emirati, an Emirates listed company called DP World. But there were a basket of public companies I like back then. Right now, I’m just trying to think I like. I’m nosing around in some small caps here, but I’m not particularly fired up about them. I’m more excited about what I’m working on.

John Coleman: That’s awesome, Neal. And then to close us out, you know, Henry mentioned, we’d like to ask people what God’s teaching them and especially anything that you’re encountering in God’s word that’s been an inspiration to you recently or helped you learn something. Does anything come to mind just a lesson from God’s word that that you think has really struck you recently?

Neil Holzapfel: Well, I think like I referenced the Bible project earlier and going back, you know, through the Pentateuch and then Samuel and now in Kings and just realizing, I mean, John, you got it all in there, right? You know, you’ve got murder and you’ve got adultery and incest and all this kind of you’re like, What a disaster. And on one level, you look at the world today, look at Ukraine. What a disaster feels like. We haven’t moved that far, right? Yeah. And yet, what a disaster I am. You know, for instance, we didn’t dig into this too much, but when my three year old disobeys me and I get angry and I speak to him with an appropriate tone, John, what am I actually angry about? He’s three years old. Yeah. Right. There’s a part of me that’s angry because I think there’s there’s right and there’s wrong. But most of my emotion is tied up in me, in my story and my past and my wounds from my dad. So learning and thinking. Daily minute by minute, moment by moment and letting the Holy Spirit and the truth of the gospel. The good news about what my real dad did for me. Bring me home to a family. Say that I’m a son. I’m a treasured son because he says, so send my brother in in that family. Jesus, the god of the universe to die on the cross, to bring me home, and then to send the spirit to be with us. Like, That’s that’s life. That’s love. And I want more of it. I want my family to have it, and I want people. I’m around to have it. And if I can share that with them, I need to. I realized I’ve lost, so I used to be a really friendly person. I’m not friendly anymore. I want to be friendly and I want to smile at people minute by minute, moment by moment. How can I love the next person around me or is my friend? Tim Keller says. Wash the next pair of feet.

John Coleman: Wow, Neil, that’s a great word, great word and a great place to end. We’re so excited for the work that you’re doing in Africa and with vulnerable kids, and we’re just really grateful that you spend time with us on the FDE podcast today.

Neil Holzapfel: A pleasure and I love the work you are doing and John and the team, and thank you so much for having me.

John Coleman: Welcome to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. This is John Coleman joining you today and I’m here with my good friend and partner, Luke Roush. Luke, how are you doing?

Luke Roush: I’m doing great. It’s going to be on. I love the story we’re going to be able to profile today. I love seeing entrepreneurs and investors coming together to further the mission that they’re on. So I’m excited for our story here.

John Coleman: That’s awesome. I think we all are. And we’ve got three fantastic guests today, all coming together with a similar mission. They actually met through or at least started interacting through the marketplace, which we’re going to come to, which is a really exciting story. But we’ve got Colin and Jared and Tom here coming from different walks of life to really invest for the kingdom. And so maybe just to start off, guys, give us the two or 3 minutes on each of you, just your backgrounds and how you got interested in this space. And then let’s start to talk about how you got introduced to one another and came together, maybe lead off. Jared, let’s start with you.

Jared Fulks: Yeah, awesome. So, Jared, folks, I’m based in Atlanta, Georgia. My wife and I live right outside the city. And my story began in Columbus, Ohio. I grew up a pastor’s kid. And I thought I went to college to play basketball and I thought that was going to be the end all, be all, become a college basketball coach. I quickly learned that there’s a lot of steps between dreaming that and actually doing that and after an injury in college, ended up transferring to Liberty University in Virginia. That’s a part of the story later. But after college, God did let me live out the dream a little bit, coaching semi-pro basketball in England. And the reason I got pulled back to the States was I was now dating my now wife and so came back and we got married four years ago and quickly jumped into entrepreneur space here in Atlanta in the tech space. And I loved it. I had this tension, though, full time ministry, full time business. God, what did you want to use me for while you’ve given me this life? And so my wife and I started praying. And after about three years of praying, God reconnected the dots with the fellow peer from Liberty, which was Colin. So I’ll kick it over to him. But that’s how our stories got reconnected five years later, after we’d both gone our separate ways.

Collin Wenrich: So my name is Collin Wenrich born and raised Bay Area out in California. And my story really starts when I went to school at Liberty University. And so when I was over at Liberty University, I was pursuing an electrical engineering degree. The Lord quickly rerouted me, sent me on a commercial corporate aviation path, and admits that after about two and a half years, he then sent me on a wild adventure to Uganda. And at that point I teamed up with 15 other young adults based out of actually right outside Atlanta. I think it was over in Gainesville, Georgia, through adventures and missions and sent us for four months to Uganda. I had no idea what I was going to be doing other than I was going to be in Uganda for four months. So we ended up partnering with some local organizations, some local churches out there, and I quickly fell in love with the culture, quickly fell in love with the people. I had no idea how my skill set or what I was passionate about in life was going to align with the future in Uganda. And the Lord did His work in the near future after that. But I knew quickly that it was going to be a part of my future. So I called my parents, called my family. After three months, I said, Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride because Uganda is going to be a significant part of my future. So I finished up my four months, came back to the States, finished up my degree, moved over to Uganda to start a ministry. And this is where I had some of the similar tension points that Jared It was like I was full time missions, but then people would always ask me about the sustainability aspect. And so two years after being a full time missionary in Uganda, I started to wrestle with God on what it looked like to start a business. And then we’ll fast forward to Pureflow here soon.

Luke Roush: Awesome. It’s awesome. Awesome.

Tom Lernihan: Guys, good to be here today. My name is Tom Lernihan based in Indianapolis and I lead a venture fund called His Fund as a reference. These are God’s resources and we’re here to steward them on a way to bring him glory. And we focus on investing in faith driven entrepreneurs that have a social mission and an opportunity to create jobs in under-resourced communities. And I can’t think of any better example than Pureflow in what Jared and Collin have built over the last several years, we’ve built up a portfolio of investments that are industry agnostic. They’re focused on four main geographic regions, US, primarily, East Africa, Southeast Asia and Central America. And what we’re really looking for is just partnering with entrepreneurs that have, you know, an opportunity to do incredible things. And we get the blessing to work with great guys like what we’re here talking to about today.

Luke Roush: So the beginning of every great love story or every great investment partnership, there’s a spark usually. Thank you for sharing a little bit about each your backgrounds, but I want to hear about the spark when you guys first connected and what caused you to want to learn more and get to know each other and do life together.

Tom Lernihan: Well, I’ll start first. If you haven’t heard the story of Pureflow, what they’re doing. A great place to start is by going to their website and watching their founder story. That’s my first exposure to what they’re building, what they’re trying to do, and it’s an awesome example. It’s a four minute video and I can’t recommend it higher. It gives a great lens into just the mission and the focus on what they’re trying to do at Pureflow. And after watching probably 2 minutes of this four minute video, I was hooked. I said, I’m in, I’m ready to go. Let’s do this. And then got an opportunity to connect with Jared and Collin shortly thereafter and just was instantly connected and aligned with mission and what they’re doing and just was really passionate about finding a way to join on and help in the mission, what they’re trying to do.

Luke Roush: And so what was the original inspiration around the idea? Maybe Jared and Collin share a little bit about what got put on your heart or what you saw that then forced you to say, Hey, we’ve got to do something here, which is usually what creates new companies. Great companies are born out of an unmet need that an entrepreneur resonates with and then wants to do something about. Maybe just share a little bit about that founding vision story.

Collin Wenrich: Yeah, absolutely. So when I was full time ministry out in Uganda, I had about it was about a mile and a half walk to and from our partnerships every single day. I did not have a vehicle and I wasn’t riding motorbikes at the time, so it was like good old fashioned two feet. Took me everywhere. And during that walk, I would just stop and talk. You know, I didn’t really have a lot of time constraints. So all along the way there would be these Botha stages which are like these areas where the motorcycle taxis would group together, they’d hang out and that’s where their business would be focused out of. And so I would just stop and talk with them, just shoot the breeze, just catch up, get to know their names, what they’re doing, their families. And I knew a little bit of the local language at the time, so I would say a few things and make them laugh and we’d joke around and then I’d continue, you know, after building some of those relationships through some months into the years, you know, I started to ask more in-depth questions and started to realize that, you know, these guys were on these motorcycles. Some of them looked absolutely terrible and they didn’t own them. They had no ownership, no equity within these motorcycles that at that point had no idea how much they cost it. But when I soon started to figure out, like, you know, what are the values of these motorcycles, it was raising some red flags and some questions that guys have been paying seven or eight years on these bikes, but there were only 12, 13 hundred dollars to acquire. And so really it was just through walking up and down town, asking questions, building relationships with these guys over a period of two years. Then we started that’s when we started to address the issue that was literally right in front of us the whole time.

John Coleman: That’s wild. So you got a sense of this market that most people probably wouldn’t even know exist, or actually it’s a market failure over there where there’s not really local financing available in the way that we’d think about that in the U.S.. How did you start to identify the way in which you could engage with this problem, and how did you begin to set up that business in its infancy?

Collin Wenrich: Yeah, so it was that was the fun part of it. When we saw the issue and I say we at this point it was a business partner. He was actually working on the ministry side with me at that point and myself. And we knew at the centric focus of why we wanted to do what we were doing, it was all Christ based. It’s like we want to share the gospel with these guys. You see them working day in and day out and I mean seven days a week, 14, 15 hours a day. They’re driving people, they’re driving things, they’re putting bunk beds on the back of hundred cc motorcycles, and they’re going and there’s no time for rest. There’s limited time for family, and there’s absolutely no time to sit and worship. And so it was one of these instances where it’s like, okay, you can rent to them, you can make some money, you can pour it back into the ministry. That’s great. Okay, we can sell these bikes, but we’re still not doing anything of significant value here. How do we give them a chance to own the bike but go on a journey with them? And in that journey, how do we teach these guys, teach them about their finances, teach them about how to lead their families, and ultimately, how do we get them around the table to share the gospel with them? And so it was all based around how do we get these guys together at a table to share the gospel?

John Coleman: That’s awesome. And at some point, you know, every business for most businesses come to this point where they can’t bootstrap it anymore. Their personal finances aren’t going to cover the model, which is where the investment community comes in. Maybe Jared and Collin talked to us about how you got to that point and when you needed the capital, when you realized you needed to go out and find capital to support the business, what was that decision making process and how did you decide to go where you went?

Collin Wenrich: Yeah, so originally we had started with $6,000. We bought a six bikes at that point, and so we would inject revenue as fast as we could to get another member on the bike, because as soon as we launched this program, it was a hot commodity and people were signing up. We had over 100 applications. Within ten days. So at that point, it was inject revenue as fast as we can and then it was do it again, get to bike seven, get to bike eight, get to bike nine. Then Grandma came on board and was like, I love it. I was like, All right, let’s do it, grandma. So Grandma buys Bike ten. But we started to grow and we kept growing organically for a while until we got to about the 100 bike mark. And at the 100 bike mark, you know, Jared came on board and this is where we really started to analyze our finances and our growth and a whole different line of sight.

Jared Fulks: I saw the business for the first time and like you guys would be if you watch the story, as Tom did, I’m in the same boat as Tom. I was just inspired by the story. And so at the time, my wife and I agreed that I could just give 40 hours of work to Pureflow for free because I was about the vision. And I said, this is going to serve a lot of people. And so that’s how we started. Collin was back stateside because of the pandemic. It was early 2020 and the businesses is kind of in this uneasy ground of does it grow organically? Does it scale now? And I saw the model. I said, look at the numbers and come out of the tech startup space where we had raised money. I was like, I think there’s funds here. But we battled the back and forth of nonprofit or for profit. Could we crowdfund motorcycles? And the challenge with that is, is, you know, how do you move the money? How quickly can it scale? And are we just trying to put heart strings to tell the story to people to get crowdfunding? Or on the flip side, do we go to investors? And Collin and I had no idea about the impact investing space. I mean, Faith Driven Investor Faith Driven Entrepreneur was not on any of our radars, and so we started just doing a little digging in and that’s how we got into the space and sort of finding the right partners to partner with.

John Coleman: That’s awesome. And I think you all actually connected with Tom via the marketplace. If if if I’m correct, Tom, maybe just from your perspective, talk to us about why you got involved in the marketplace and why you viewed that as a platform where you could find great entrepreneurs like this and how you came together with this team.

Tom Lernihan: Yeah, absolutely. The marketplace has been an excellent resource for the work that we do. We built up a network over the last several years where most of our investments have come through some sort of warm introduction into a business. But the marketplace is quickly replacing that for us, where we can go on and find really high quality investment opportunities that are very much right in our wheelhouse and the types of deals that we like to support. And one of those that we came across was Pureflow. It’s just really easy to see the impact and alignment on what they’re trying to do with square in the center of what our fund is set up to achieve. So it was a very seamless process for we’re able to connect with Collin and kind of reach out via the marketplace and get scheduled on a call. And from the very first interaction, we knew right away that this was a business that we wanted to partner with and help them grow to, you know, significantly more bikes than they had in the first round.

Luke Roush: So there’s always these choices to make around how quickly you want to grow and the pace of expansion of the business versus sort of control and the ability to kind of measure carefully before you have to start cutting. How have you guys modulated that sort of desire to have more impact, but also desire to understand the mission in the model of the business? Maybe just speak a little bit to how you’ve regulated on that front?

Jared Fulks: Yeah, it’s a question we ask often, and guys like Tom, Luke, you might know from spending time over in Asia, but there’s a lot of bikes, there’s a lot of guys that don’t own the bikes. So the market’s big. You don’t have to look very far to find market opportunity. And Tom, having spent a good bit of time in East Africa, understood that more so than I think most partners would understand if you haven’t set foot on the ground there, and honestly, more so than I understood until I first saw it. And so you would then ask that question how fast you scale. And to be honest, when we first did our first round of debt financing, we really didn’t know what the end goal was. And we still don’t really know what the end goal is. But what we knew was that we want to scale where our culture doesn’t get lost in the scaling. So we kind of measured our scale speed based on our culture and our people. That was kind of from day one. It’s about the people on both sides of the coin. And now we’ve kind of refined that more specifically and our growth strategy around this concept that we never will out scale the table. So Collin mentioned earlier that the goal is to get these guys around the table every week because they’re not in a local church. A lot of them are not in relationship with Jesus. I mean, a lot of the places we work, you have many different religions represented. And so the heartbeat of Pureflow is to get guys to the table. Because if we read through Jesus’s life, that’s where change was happening. That’s where brokenness was revealed. That’s where he was able to be love, light and speak truth to people. And so our goal is to get people around the table as often as we can so our guys are paying off their loan over two years. 104 payments. That means 104 times they’re getting fed spiritually and physically for 30 to 45 minutes at a table with ten other guys. And there’s no misses. So that’s for 104 weeks. Again, have been worked in the church before? That far outweighs a lot of the small group models that I’ve tried to implement. And so we love that. So at this point, yeah, we want to scale to more markets, but we don’t want to out scale the table. And in order to serve people at the table, it requires the Pureflow team to be understanding of our core values, which the number one is serve with purpose. And so if we outgrow our values and we outgrow the table, it’s our indicator, if you will, of or out scaling the impact we want to have.

Luke Roush: So I want to ask the question actually, it’s a little bit awkward and I’ll go ahead and acknowledge the awkwardness on the front end. But I want to hear actually challenges maybe Jared and Collin, from your perspective as you progressed through the last couple of years and then maybe also from Tom’s perspective, key obstacles, challenges that you’ve had to overcome.

Collin Wenrich: Yeah, I can start on like in the beginning when we first launched this program, we had a little bit of backlash from like local loan sharks and some guys who are running some mom and pop shops with spare parts and fixing bikes. And especially when we built our first permanent building, you know, day one of opening, they shut us down and they shut us down for about two and a half weeks as it was kind of there was a lot of like petty litigation that we had to proceed through. And so really on that part, too, it was getting the community to understand, like, why we’re here and what we’re doing. And it wasn’t because we wanted to sell more bikes than a distributor, right? It wasn’t because we wanted to take the other loan sharks and take all of their bikes. Our core focus. Right, was to disciple these guys and get them financially literate to get them and savings groups and just give them and allow them the opportunity to become the godly men that we see in them. And so once we really built some platforms for the community to also get involved and for us to get integrated within the community, we started to see those type of challenges subside. So that was like the first, probably first two years. And then I can let Jared share on the most recent ones.

Jared Fulks: Yeah, anytime you run to come to an organization, you guys can imply some of the challenges that you might face, starting with, you know, the Zoom stuff that we all love. And so that’s one thing. And structuring our leadership to scale was a big shift that we made over the last 18 months, putting people not only in the right place in the bus, but also ensuring that their understanding of what that role and responsibility entails. Because our team is really young, we have 27 full time team members now, which is awesome. I mean when I came on, I think we at like maybe seven or eight two years ago and so scaling that along with the member side of it, again, we really want to focus on our team and now we have five branches, three main branches and two sub branches. And so the dynamics of that are a great healthy challenge for Collin and I on a daily basis of how do we best serve our team, how do we best cast a vision that pulls the people and our team towards the vision and it develops leaders? Because what we realize is that we’re going to promote from within. And so we need people that are focused on developing leaders and not just ensuring that we we get paid by our members. So I think that’s a good challenge to have, but nonetheless a challenge that we’ve come across.

John Coleman: So I love that y’all have talked about the spiritual impact on the individuals that you’re working with, and that’s such a neat engagement model. Talk to me about the broader impact. So obviously you’re filling a need in the community. What is that doing to these communities, the kind of economic and social impact on the community itself, on the individuals involved. And maybe, Tom, as they describe that, I’d love to hear you describe how you think about this difference between the social and individual and spiritual impact in the financial return that you’re getting. How do you balance those things as you look at the model that they’re creating?

Jared Fulks: I think the four big things we look at in the community that happen as a result of these guys owning this asset, which just for some frame of reference, when they own it, they double their take home income. So I kind of ask the question to everyone listening and I ask it to myself when I think about the impact financially is what would happen if you double your take home income? What would you do? And it’s surprising enough they do the same things that we would do. And it kind of comes in these four buckets of build. They build things, they invest in things they give and they save. And I think those are the same buckets that we would find ourselves in if we doubled the income that we took home. And so you can imagine what that does. Downward effect for families, multi-generational impact around kids not getting private education. They’re growing up under a roof now that’s stable. I mean, you can hear the stories of our members that have finished move to ownership. They’re now getting meat on the table more frequently. And a big thing that happens very, very common. Either they come back for a second bike. So what that means is they’re taking the first bike and they’re going to somebody they’re serving a market that we wouldn’t serve that needs to pay for a used bike. So they’re creating more jobs downstream, but they’re also creating a second source of income either through that second bike or their spouses starting a shop that happens a lot where they have now two incomes for their family because they’ve kind of gotten the chance to get above water to breathe for a little bit.

Tom Lernihan: And from an investor perspective, we came into this investment at the onset really excited about the opportunity to create jobs and really substantially increase their income, as Jared had mentioned. And that was our first lens, right? That was what we were really excited about. And you asked a question about how we balance the financial return and the social and spiritual impact. We’re blessed that our fund is set up in a way that we don’t have any financial objectives on what we’re doing. We’re trying to really achieve excellence on finances, but we’re not tied to any sort of metric to hit or to achieve. And so we get the opportunity to deploy capital with a social and spiritual lens first, and they just knock that out of the park. So if we were just looking at this from a job creation perspective, the opportunity to change the communities of these serves is exponential and something, you know, we could totally see this being replicated in many more cities around Uganda and East Africa and encourage that. But it’s really exciting for us when we see the intentional ness that’s there, focus on really investing into the lives of these drivers and focused on how they can serve them in their kingdom lens and really be partners with their drivers. And that was just an incredible experience for us, something that we aspire to replicate in other investments in our portfolio. They’re really leaders in this space and really pouring into the opportunity that they have.

Luke Roush: What you’re also speaking to that resonates with me is just this idea that and it’s sad, but it’s a very rare thing in an emerging market, particularly with jobs or individuals at this level that are not using private cars but are instead using bikes. It’s very unusual for people to actually, you know, care for them, to reach out for them to invest in their kind of growth and development as individuals, to help them think about what is my pathway going forward from here. And so, you know, my guess is that you’ve got raving fans with a really high net promoter score on the individuals that you serve as clients. Is that often the case?

Collin Wenrich: Yeah, I would definitely say that once you are embedded and integrated within the Pureflow family, I mean, it’s a beautiful thing and we love to invite and we love just to remain in relationship with them. You know, one of the hardest things, too, is when you bring new members into the program, is really sometimes getting past the barrier of the core essence of why we’re doing what we were doing, and that is bringing people to the table. Right? So they’ve got to come from where they’re at and we’ve got to come to the table. And sometimes they have to disrupt their daily schedules. Could be 30, 45 minutes to come sit at the table and conversate with us and share a meal. And sometimes it doesn’t make sense, right? Because of their lifestyle. It’s hustle, bustle, go, go, go. And every lost trip, right? That’s the money out of their pocket. That could be less lunch or less a soda or something small, but it’s still less something. And so, you know, Jared and I talk about that to what’s the value add of these touch points, these 102 and 104 touch points that we have with these guys through the duration of their loan. So sometimes is that pushback, right, of I can pay you for this bike, thank you for the program. But I don’t really want to show up at the table to where it’s like you come to the table, you have a meal, you meet with some great guys. Okay, I love it. But you have to do it again. Yes, we got to do it again to really like you start to build the trust, you build the relationship, and then they just keep coming because they want to. And then they get their buddies and they call you from another town and they’re like, Hey, I’ve got buddies who want to do this as well. We want to be discipled. We want to sit around the table like we’re hungry for more of what God has to offer. And those are the beautiful things that we love to experience and be a part of. But sometimes you just got to push through that first barrier.

Jared Fulks: Yeah. And Luke, I’ll say too, you raise an interesting question about the neglection that this part of society faces across most developing countries. And I’ve got a chiropractor friend that I spent some good time with, and he always talks about how we, especially in America, we neglect our backbone, a lot of vertebrae. And so but it has a lot of bad effects. And what people fail to see is that if you look at we estimate there’s over a million boda bodas in Uganda population around 4850 million. So that’s a lot of people doing this one thing. It is the backbone of society. We talk about homes and we talk about health and food and education. Those are all big things. But a lot of times we leave out transportation and you’ve got to have transportation. And so they don’t have a train system and people don’t own cars themselves. And so they have to get around these bodas. So you have two options. You can neglect them or you can figure out how to serve them in the way we look at it is every one of these bikes has a big light on the front of it. That’s the style of the Bajaj Boxer. And what an opportunity as we aim to disciple these guys that they could truly be light moving around the city in thousands at a time and the amount of impact that they have is far greater than we could ever have because they’re touching 50 people a day, giving rides in the back in a pretty intimate setting. Honestly, as close as you are, especially if you pile a whole family on the back of a motorcycle. So yeah, it’s often that neglected part of society, but. So important because they are the backbone of society.

John Coleman: So in a moment, we’re going to pivot and we’re going to ask each of you guys, if you don’t mind, just to comment on a scripture that you’re reading right now and what it means to you and just what you’re learning in the word. Before we do that, just one more thing. Tell us what’s next for Pureflow and is additional capital going to play a part in that as you think about further investment?

Jared Fulks: Yeah. And I’ll pass it off to Tom real quick, because Tom is such an integral part. And I mentioned we raised a little bit of money in 2021 and we saw that and we forex in 2021. And a lot of those great things happened and a lot of the challenges came as well when we did that and we were really not certain what was next. But Tom, can I pass that to you to kind of share maybe a bit of how you encouraged us in the growth stage? Because this really came around that the partnership that we found in Tom and their fund.

Tom Lernihan: Yeah. From the very early days, the vision that Collin and Jared had cast and how many bikes they were hoping to serve and what they could see as their their big, hairy, audacious goal. I looked at and I said, Guys, we can do more. We can serve more drivers. I know that there’s plenty of capital in the market that’s looking to support visions exactly like this. Let’s dream bigger, let’s move faster and let’s go crazy. And it even got to points where Jared and Collin has. Hey, we’ve got a real back, time a bit here. We want to stay laser focused on serving our customers and making sure that we are excellent at Kingdom Impact in everything that we do. So they’ve been really pouring in to me and like at myself, just making sure that I know we’re impactful, focused investors, but still we want to do it with excellence and we want to make sure we’re moving at the right pace. And so I think we’ve gotten to a point where we have a great plan moving forward. I think they have an excellent opportunity to serve a tremendous amount of drivers, and we’ll grow at a pace that’s really sustainable and allows them to continue this for many years to come.

Jared Fulks: Yeah, and to speak to the partnership side, John and Luke, it’s Tom was a huge asset for us in this next stage of funding. We are finishing up 2021 and we’re looking ahead to say if we’re going to continue growing at the pace we are, we’re going to need more cash. So raise a little more debt. And we had a call with Andrew Firman at Faith Driven and he encouraged us to go back to our partners because that’s what they are. They’re partners. And so we went right back to Tom and Tom once he saw where we wanted to go and he aligned again. When you have alignment in this partnership, you can have a lot of fruit that comes from that. And it took us, I think, maybe six months to raise the first bit and we raised like three exact and about six weeks to start off 2022 thanks to the partnership that Tom brought to the table and and being able to connect us to other people on the side of the table he’s on that we don’t spend as much time on. And so we can’t speak highly enough to the value of the partnership and what that means and why we look at our investors as partners and not investors, because we truly are trying to steward resources. That God is given us on all sides of the table to advance the gospel in places all over the world.

John Coleman: And that’s an awesome word. I mean, we see that all the time where, you know, folks will chase the highest value or they may think about their partners in the wrong way, capital partners in a more transactional way. But finding the right capital partner at folks like Tom and others that y’all probably met in this process can be transformational, both on a personal level for an entrepreneur who’s struggling through a ton of problems every day and, you know, encountering things, and then also on an organizational level where they can really help to cast vision, connect you to others who share that vision. And so I think it’s wonderful that you highlighted the depth of that partnership before we close out today. We do like to close just with what you’re learning from the scriptures, what you’re learning in your own spiritual walk, and maybe start with Tom and then go through to Collin and then Jared. Tom, what are you learning from Scripture right now that you want to share with the group?

Tom Lernihan: Yes. Now, I’m always learning, but right now I’m working through Hebrews and it’s the idea that God is an anchor in my life and all that we do, and that we tether that rope tight so that as the world drifts us and as we find ourselves ultimately following that flow, that the anchor, he’s the center of our lives and that we continue to stay on that path. And I share an example earlier. Jared and Collin have been great at just reinforcing that and the work that we do and keeping him central to our investment strategy. And just as a man of faith, keeping that central to my life is what I’m working on right now.

Luke Roush: Love that. You know, if there’s no current, then we don’t need anchors. Except there is a current. The current of this world is not the current that the Lord is necessarily want us to move in the direction of. So I love that word. That’s a good word, Tom.

Collin Wenrich: Yeah, thank you very much. Tom that’s good. I would say, you know, this has been a crazy season of life in such, so many beautiful ways. We were just over in Uganda for the past three months, my wife and myself, and just got back to the States and we found out that we’re pregnant with our first. So we’re very excited. But through that journey and through this time of prayer to have been. Praying and proverbs and Lord has put Proverbs 14 on my heart actually the last few days. It says, Whoever fears the Lord has a secure fortress and for their children it will be a refuge. And it’s really this like my hearts cry, my heart’s call on to the Lord of light. Man, I want to be just one with you attached to the vine. But also, as I raise my children, that they get to see that right, that they seek refuge under their father, who has submitted first and foremost to the Lord. And so that’s been my prayer. Navigating through a future fatherhood here soon and just seeking wisdom in the Lord.

John Coleman: That’s awesome. Congrats, Collin. What a great word. And Jared, I don’t know how you’re going to top a birth announcement to close us out here.

Jared Fulks: I’ve got nothing, man. Can someone closes in prayer? You know that that might be my role here. Now, I have been reminded, and this is part of the journey that I’m so grateful to. Collin, if you talk about partnership, there’s no other word. I would define what happened two years ago after literally stone cold silence for five years, no conversation. I would never have thought of Collins name again. Honestly, he probably wouldn’t have mine other than God intervening at the right time and reconnecting us. But I’m grateful for his partnership. But in this journey to have some perspective shift, when you work with people that live in a different culture than you every day, your perspective just shifts. And I praise God for His grace in allowing us to see that in different ways, that before we didn’t and the psalmist I was reading the last few days is Psalm 48, and it just says like your name oh God, your praise reaches to the ends of the earth, and sometimes the task can seem a little overwhelming. Thinking about Thailand and the Philippines and Russia and Ukraine and and Uganda and the challenges and then looking at, you know, the United States. And that has been a reminder to me that he sees way further than we see. And he’s a creator of it all. And his praise will be made known across the world. And so that’s been a great refresher for me to know that, yeah, there are challenges out there and yes, there’s a urgency to go show the gospel. But but his creation is going to sing his praise, whether we do or not.

John Coleman: It’s a great word, guys. And look, it’s been awesome to learn about Pureflow. Tom, it’s been great to learn about your investment strategy. Great testimony to the marketplace and to faith driven investor broadly bringing folks together like this. And we wish you great luck. I know the prayers of the community are with you, as well as a number of other good capital partners out there, hopefully as you encounter the next wave of growth. And we’re grateful for your time today. Thanks for joining us.

Luke Roush: Thanks, Colin. Thanks, Jared. Thanks, Tom.

Collin Wenrich: Thank you, guys, for having us.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. I’m here with Luke. Luke, good morning.

Luke Roush: Good morning.

Henry Kaestner: It’s good to see you. It’s not even morning here in California anymore. It definitely isn’t in Tennessee. So I just I spaced out one. But I just want you to know that I’m thinking about you and I’m missing you and I’m fired up that we’re going to do this podcast because it’s hits on something that’s really near and dear to both of our hearts as we get involved in investing together. We wanted to do something other than just just a regular private equity fund or an index fund or something like that. We wanted to do something that was more innovative and participated more in what God is doing in the world. And we’ve got a guest today who’s written about that concept, the concept that we’ve kind of tried to live into very, very imperfectly. But when we think about the backdrop about us living and allocating capital and seeing entrepreneurs get out there and create redemptive products and services, it’s in this larger framework or matrix, if you will. And I think that all too often I’ve been thinking about it in an incomplete manner and just I didn’t do great my micro macro classes at the University of Delaware. I was too busy selling t shirts, but I remember just these different principles, like, this is the way the market works, don’t mess with it, just kind of get on and you know, it just there’s something bigger and there’s a guy who’s written a book on it and we’ve got him with us on the podcast. Welcome, Michael Rhodes.

Michael Rhodes: Thanks, Henry. It’s great to be here.

Henry Kaestner: So, Michael, what do we like to do with every one of our guests as they come on as get a biographical sketch? Who are you? Where do you come from and what’s brought you to today?

Michael Rhodes: Yeah. Thanks, Henry. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I’m Michael. And right now I’m in Memphis, my home where I have lived for most of my adult life. I grew up here and sort of a lifelong follower of Jesus who was really taught early on that the key to a full, abundant life was to live under the Lordship of Jesus, guided by Scripture. So I took that on board pretty early, but I was a part of a church community with a really ugly racial history and a very wealthy church community in a very poor city. And when I was growing up, the church was trying to grapple with both of those issues. And so as a result, there were just some incredible leaders who came into our church and opened God’s word and really exposed me to his heart for the economically poor and the heart for reconciliation and solidarity with all people. And so I kind of went into college, really fired up about participating. Living a full life under the Lordship of Jesus in line with Scripture in those areas. So I went to Covenant College. I studied community development with Brian Ficker, who we co-wrote Praxis in the King’s Academy with. And it’s always fun to write a book with somebody that you would have dedicated the book to if you hadn’t written with them. And that was true of writing the book that we’re talking about today with Brian and my pastor, Robby Hall. But anyways, I was at Covenant, learned about three developments, got married right after college and was headed to Kenya for two years. But sort of by what looks like an accident, it was definitely God’s plan. I ended up for six months in this one very poor, predominantly African-American community in South Memphis, and I was working for an organization almost by accident that was doing job training and financial literacy and helping people get their GED. All adults, almost all African-American in this one shop, in this community. And it just totally blew up my world. It wasn’t any credible experience. And so after two years in Kenya, my wife and I came back to Memphis. We moved into that neighborhood, and I went back to work for that organization called Advance Memphis for about five years. And that experience of living here in this neighborhood and working among economically poor people and being a part of a church that was trying to be involved with that has driven really all of my adult life and all of the kind of questions that I have. And so those questions that I have from living here and working here drove me back to seminary and then a Ph.D. program. Eventually, I left advance and worked for five years for an organization teaching community development and mission at a Bible college for adults predominantly black bi vocational ministries here in Memphis. And then the really crazy left hand turn in the last two years is that through a long process that caught Rebecca and I completely off guard. God now seems to be calling us to New Zealand, to Carey Baptist College in Auckland. And so the pandemic has made that complicated. But for the last year and now a little bit of some change, I’ve been teaching Old Testament to students who are in New Zealand. So that’s a little bit about me. I have four incredible kids, Isaiah Amos, Nuba and Jubilee. My wife is Rebecca, she works at our church and. Yeah, Jubilee.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, what an awesome name.

Michael Rhodes: Yeah, that’s kind of fun because you know, when you write a book, people are asked to come talk about it. And I was out talking at a church and I was giving a talk on the Jubilee and Rebecca was pregnant and I came off the stage and she goes, We’re going to name our little girl jubilee. And I’m like, We are. That’s amazing.

Henry Kaestner: So it’s pretty cool.

Michael Rhodes: Yes. I got two prophets As and Amos, one legal institution, Jubilee, and then Nova, the hippie name is actually named after Rob Holt’s wife, whose name is Nova. Christine Holt. So my coauthor, Robby Holt, his wife is the namesake for our third child.

Luke Roush: It’s exciting. How excited are they to go to New Zealand?

Michael Rhodes: Really pumped. The history of Rebecca Nye’s relationship is that I come up with a crazy idea and then kind of get cold feet right at the edge and she like takes the ball and runs it into the end zone. And so I applied for the job in New Zealand. She was the one who was like, No, we have to do this. And the kids, you know, we’ve been teaching them words like bittersweet to try to think through this move. But they’re really excited to me. Six months decide to do it. And when I came out of the room and I was like, I just wrote an email to New Zealand, I’m going to take the job. You know, Rebecca knew that, but I was sort of saying it and I came back a few hours later to the house and the girls, my two girls had packed their bags already. They got their.

Luke Roush: Wires crossed about what.

Michael Rhodes: It meant to say we were going. So, yeah, they’re pretty pumped.

Henry Kaestner: That’s all. Is there a chance you actually go from winter to winter, though?

Michael Rhodes: It is very possible. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to be there by this summer, our summer, which would be their winter. So, yes, that’ll be kind of a maybe a worst case scenario on the move. But at this point, we just be happy to be there and for me to not be teaching online anymore.

Luke Roush: Yeah. You know, Michael, you talked a little bit about just what inspired you to write the book on practicing Kings economy. If you had to pick sort of one thing, you know, many great companies are born out of just a sense of calling purpose, maybe frustration with the way the world works. And then entrepreneurs want to do something about it. And I think many great songs, works of art books, are kind of out of that same kind of calling a sense of purpose and need to speak into it. We had to pinpoint that on one thing. What would it be?

Michael Rhodes: Yeah, so that’s a great question. I have seen my whole life, adult life under this sense of call to help the church hear and respond to Scripture summons to become a community of justice and mercy and righteousness for the economically poor. So that’s the big mission. That’s a subset of God’s mission that I feel particularly drawn to. But this book has an even more narrow sort of inspiration. So when I was working at advance, I was going out trying to help people with stuff on their criminal background find jobs and whatnot. And because I grew up here, I would get asked by churches to come who supported the nonprofit to come talk to Sunday schools and whatever. And, you know, I was used to giving the giving talk, right? And I had done that a lot, you know, raised money as a missionary. God wants to give your money so that we can go do this thing. But I realized working at advance that people could give us $16 trillion, you know, but if nobody was willing to hire someone with a violent criminal offense on their background, we didn’t have a model, right? We could not do our work unless people were living differently in the way they hired and managed, not just in the way they gave. And that was the transformation point because, you know, I think if you think about our economics, your life or my economic life like an equation, and on one side of the equation, you have all the inputs, all the stuff that goes in our work, what we own, we invest, what we save, blah, blah, blah. And then on the other side of equal sign is profit. We take home the vast majority of the time when Christians have talked about our economic lives, we’ve laser focused on that take home pay, what Christians can give from what they’ve earned. And that is a huge piece of Christian economic discipleship. But from a biblical perspective, it is just one piece. If you look at the Bible, the Bible talks about how you work and with whom you work and how you treat your workers, and for that matter, how you treat the land and the animals that you interact with. It talks about how you interact with other farms, if you like, other small farmers, the whole of economic life. Right? That’s the subtitle of the book Work, Earn, Spend, Save and Give. The whole of the equation is what God is Lord over in Jesus. And so economic discipleship then isn’t just about what you do with what’s left over. At the end of the day, it’s about bending all of that towards Jesus’s Lordship and Jesus Kingdom. And so on the one hand, you know, you can hear that it’s like bad news because it’s like kind of more stuff where Jesus is getting in my business literally. But on the other hand, it’s like the most exciting news ever because it means that every aspect of our economic life can be an opportunity to experience God’s presence, to participate in His mission. And that’s like the most exciting thing. So when I was at Advanced Memphis, working with this company and I would see business guys who’d been asked for money for their whole lives get asked for, Hey, would you hire this guy or this woman? And when that worked, all of a sudden it’s like a new aspect of my life has become a site of God’s generous kingdom. People’s eyes light up. They get super fired up. And that’s the kind of joy that I wanted and desired for myself and for my neighbors. And so I really got disappointed that so much and I don’t mean to be uncharitable, but so much Christian stewardship material, so much faith and work stuff, so much entrepreneurial. It just misses this idea that all of your economic life God cares about. And secondly, all of your economic life can be bent towards God’s kingdom concern for the vulnerable and the marginalized. So that’s why Robbie and Brian and I wanted to write this book and felt like, you know, I mean, it came out of talks that I started giving at these churches to say, look. God cares about it all. And it was largely as a way to get them to try to partner with this organization to help invest in. One of our entrepreneurs that we were working on were hire one of our job training graduates or whatever. So that’s really the laser kind of catalyst for the book in a lot of ways.

Henry Kaestner: And it since I have is you just talking to us is that not only does God care about these things, but that as we look at these multiple dimensions, that we have this opportunity to step into something that’s much more complex and beautiful and is less black and white. It’s more like Technicolor. And presumably the joy that some of these employers experience when they’re a part of being involved in relationship with some people, just gives them a new dimension and more joy, right?

Michael Rhodes: Yes, I think so. And it allows for connection. So one of the laws that has really animated me has been the gleaning walls in the Old Testament. I just love the gleaming walls. I think they’re so cool because, you know, at one point when I was working at Advanced, the statistic that we were using was at six or seven out of ten adults in our neighborhood were not working right. So in a context where six or seven out of ten adults are not working, and then we were seeing the transforming power of a good job. Not just any job, but a good job can really be transformative in a person’s life. You know, and this idea in the Old Testament that farmers who are kind of the family firm, if you like, are supposed to leave some of their harvest, which is functionally their profit in the field to create opportunities for the vulnerable, to work the orphan, the immigrant, the widow and the poor. That just blew me away. And that sort of became kind of one of the things that I would talk to guys, men and women about is like, Hey, what would it look like to create space, right, for the outsider in this company? And, you know, again, that can be a hard message, you know, because not only do we like money, which is maybe okay, some of the time and profit, but we’ve sort of been taught that the very purpose of a business is to maximize profits. Right. Which the gleaning laws just they just don’t work along those lines. They require a different sort of framework. They don’t reject profitability. The farmer wants a harvest, but they don’t maximize it because they create space. So the one thing that seems like a hard ask, but then you look at a book like Ruth, right? The whole book of Ruth only works because of these cleaning walls, because the gleaning laws exist. Ruth, who is this like complete outsider? This outsider’s outsider becomes a fully invested insider in the community. She’s inspiring the neighborhood. When Boaz sees her in the field, he says, the entire Israelite village knows what you, foreign outsider, have done for our widow, Naomi. So the gleaning laws allow Ruth to become a fully invested member in the neighborhood. They allow Ruth to become the just woman who takes care of the widow, her mother in law, and the farm. All of a sudden it becomes this site for connection, where Ruth and Boaz meet right to the most powerful men in the story. Boaz and the least powerful person in the story, Ruth, meet in their economic life because of these cleaning walls, which I just think is a vision of what you’re talking about. Henry, where like when we get that multi technicolor, you know, we complicate the picture a little bit. All of a sudden, every aspect of our economic life is an opportunity to encounter God and our neighbor, including some of the neighbors that we often don’t meet. Right. That we often screen out, which is really important. You know, we live in an age where just economic segregation, right? Forget racial stuff. Economic segregation in our neighborhoods is on the rise. And there’s some argument that economic segregation is on the rise in the workplace. And so it’s more important than ever that we ask how can the spaces of our economic life be places of encounter with God and neighbor?

Luke Roush: Are there any specific examples just in terms of companies that you’ve interacted with or storylines that you’ve kind of watched unfold? That would be a great manifestation of what this looks like practically.

Michael Rhodes: Yeah, I love that question. So I mean, one of the huge privileges for me has been to get to know companies, not because of me who are living this out, you know, whose stories we kind of some we got to share in the book and some I’ve learned since, you know, and I’ve been working on a project with the Chalmers Center for a while now where we’re gathering some of these stories as well. So just name a few. One is my friend West Gardner out in Colorado. He’s a serial entrepreneur. He started this thing called prime trailer leasing.

Luke Roush: Love was an awesome story.

Michael Rhodes: It’s such a great guy and his, you know, the youth pastor, his church at the time, Dave Runyon, you know, helped him kind of think through some of this stuff. And so they started hiring single moms from a halfway house that Wes had been giving to. Right. So they’d been generous with what’s on the profit side of the equation. But now they’re saying, how do we be generous? How do we bend the way we work towards those same concerns? And now all of a sudden, these single moms are coming in to work in the company. And I talked to Wes one time. This is the thing that has stuck with me from West Side Story. He said, you know, Michael, I used to see payroll as a liability. You know, I go look at my pal and payroll is, you know, a problem. Now I go look at all the money that we pay people, and I see my payroll as profit. I look at that number and say, look how much money we’ve earned, right? I think that shift is like so radical, right and powerful. And, you know, that company did great work. They didn’t stop being a business and start being a nonprofit, but they did figure out how to bend their workplace towards these single moms. Cascade Engineering is a company I believe they’re in Michigan. Their chief talent guy, Dave Barrett, and I have spent a lot of time on the phone together. They’ve helped, like more than 800 workers get off welfare through working in their companies. And one of the things that shifted for them was they made every single person in the company do some training on material poverty. Because what Dave would say is we tried several times to make this shift and we failed again and again. And finally we realized the reason why we were failing was because we looked down on poor people. And when we stopped doing that, we started seeing transformation. And these are all sorts of crazy stuff. They’ve worked with their local government to get a social worker like on site in their business and all this stuff. And then there’s like some cool local stories. A couple of years ago we put on a conference where we were talking about some of these ideas and company here. Bryce Core in Memphis heard what we’re doing and came and listened and they heard about it. And organization here called Economic Opportunities that takes men and women coming out of prison. And they have a model where they bring in a group to your company and you sort of pay the nonprofit and they pay the guys, the men and women. And it’s sort of a transitional work opportunity. Now, this Bryce Care, they heard about this opportunity at the time. As I understand it, they were throwing away any resumé that anyone had any kind of serious criminal record on. Well, they went and got in partnership with this nonprofit. And a few years later, it’s like 10% of their local workforce has a criminal record and they’ve promoted people into management and they’re taking our guys. So it’s really cool stuff on the employer side that I think is just really phenomenal. And I course tell stories about guys who said, You know what, I’m going to start seeing wages as an opportunity for generosity and I’m going to bump starting wage up to $15 an hour. I had a friend who called me up and said, Hey, I’ve been listening to you. I’ve been listen to your boss. I’ve been reading about the civil rights movement and one of the guys who was striking in the sanitation workers strike here in Memphis, which is a big part of our city story said, I just believe a full day’s work ought to allow man to put food on his table. And he’s like, I’m just going to bump up my starting wage as an act of just commitment because it seems like the right thing to do, you know? So there’s all sorts of stories like that, you know. And in the book we tell lots of stories, tell stories about worker owner cooperatives and people who are sharing profits with all sorts of fun stuff at the level of the firm, the business for how we can bend our economic life towards God’s good news, particularly for the economically poor, which is a real focus of the book and of Robby and Brian and us.

Luke Roush: That’s great. I’m excited for Lightning Round, but I don’t know if it’s the right time yet. Henry We’re.

Henry Kaestner: Almost there. We’re almost there. You know, Michael, at the beginning of the podcast, the interview, you’re talking a bit about your time in Kenya. Yeah. And as I think about this alternate imagination for how you run your business across these six themes that you have in your book, the worship and community, etc., I think that you’ve done a good job of scoping out what that can look like in cities like Memphis. Talk to us a little bit about your thought about how those of us in the West and this is actually a quote from you, but the church in the West is rediscovering the fact that God cares deeply for the poor. More and more churches and individual Christians are looking for ways to practice economic discipleship. But it’s hard to make progress when we’re blind. Our own entanglement in our cultures, idolatrous economic practices talk about that through the lens. Just any wisdom you have about a Westerner realizing things like they’re going to be more entrants into the job market in sub-Saharan Africa over the next 20 years. Then like India and China, I mean, it’s a big place. And yet there’s also 50 years history of colonialism, right? So you want to kind of go in there and then, you know, you read a book like with your coauthor, Brian Fricker, you know, when helping her out. So what’s a framework from your time in Kenya so that those of us are listeners and say, I think we need to invest in sub-Saharan Africa. How do we do it? But how do we do it? Well.

Michael Rhodes: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot there. I do think that in the first part of that quote from the back of our book about we in the West, I think it’s worth saying and Henry, I think you were getting at this earlier, that the dominant economic picture of what humans are like in the West has been what Brian Ficker, who’s an economist, calls the homo economicus, the economic man. Right. So, you know, this is going out of style a little bit, but most of us, if we took economics in college, we had books that talked about homo economicus. This is what people are like. And what Homo Economicus says. Is that what people are? Fundamentally is we are individuals with limitless desires in a limited world who are constantly seeking to maximize our own consumption of goods and services and experiences. So we are fundamentally individual profit maximizers. That’s who we are, right? And Scripture has a very different view of what people are and what we’re called to be. But our economic way of thinking has been based on a kind of homo economicus idea. So in our book, the first thing we say about our economic lives, first principle is what you worship God with your money. Right. That’s the background is you love God. Right. To worship key is the first. The second here is the community care, which basically says that I am always part of a we and my economic well-being is always to be oriented towards that way. And, you know, we have this metaphor that we use in the book where we say typically when we think about care for the poor in the church, our functional metaphor is of a soup kitchen. You know, I have some leftover profit on one side of my equation, so I’m going to give that away to people who don’t have whatever the resources. You think about soup kitchen, you got soup scoopers on one side and empty bowls on the other. And that’s the theory of change. And we say, okay, food insecurity is a real thing. There are definite times when we want to do that kind of one way giving of goods and services. But the Bible’s fundamental vision is not a soup kitchen where everyone gets fed, but a potluck where everybody brings a plate. So, like, if a soup kitchen divides the room up into givers and receivers. You can’t have a potluck until everyone’s a giver to everyone and a receiver from everyone. And that makes the community fundamental. Now, that’s a long way around to say. My friends in Kenya know that deep in their bones and I’m on like baby step kindergarten level, learning it because we’ve been disabled into that western homo economicus. I am fundamentally a pleasure maximizing individual. We have trouble getting just how communally oriented the Bible is. My friends in Kenya do not have that problem. Right. They get it. And so the first thing I would say is when we’re interacting with saints in the Global South, we should expect that in many ways their economic discipleship, they will be further along that journey than we will be because they have experienced less deforming discipleship from this kind of hyper individualistic economic way of being. And so I was part of a phenomenal church in Nairobi, and it brought together people from all these tribal and ethnic groups that really don’t like each other outside the church. And we would have these potlucks and you would see everyone giving and receiving, and you would see the community becoming central to who we were. We were becoming family. And I think that picture of becoming family is central not only to the Bible’s kingdom vision, but to the Bible’s kingdom economic vision. And so, you know, one thing I think is when we think about how to invest, well, we need to defer a lot to the folks on the ground from the places where we want to participate. So often the and I say this as a former missionary, so, you know, I’m not trying to cast guilt somewhere else. It is so easy, so often for us outsiders to come, assuming we have all the answers because we are wealthier. And wealth is the sign of success. So really deferring to the folks on the ground, not only because they’re closer to the issues, but also because sometimes they’re just less screwed up than Jared comes. The money is really important. Also, I really am excited about folks who are investing in people in the global South’s ability to bring their best plate to the potluck through their economic lives. Right? So there is a ton of need for food aid. There’s a ton of need for health aid. There’s an argument for direct giving in a variety of contexts. But I also think it’s really exciting. And Christians are involved in the Global South in the way that allow people to bring their best plate to the potluck through their own energies and agency. So the trauma center has done incredible work helping some of the poorest people on the planet start savings groups. And the stories of these usually women who gather together and pool their resources are just amazing, you know? And I have friends in Kenya who are starting businesses in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Nairobi to try to help people who are in a community with just incredible unemployment find dignified work. And there are people you know, one of the reasons why I shifted away from like sort of direct nonprofit work into more teaching is because I realized sort of my gifts and where they are and where I’m strongest and where I’m not strong. So, you know, for people in the Faith Driven Entrepreneur and Faith Driven Investor network who are geniuses at figuring out how to make things work economically. And some of those folks. There are good ways of investing financially in businesses in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. And I’m not an expert on that, but I think participating in that is really important. And I think when we go to invest in the Global South financially, we’re partner with companies in the Global South. Economically, it’s more important than ever to remember that just as God calls us to be risky and sacrificial with our giving at the end of our economic productive output. God might be calling us to be risky and sacrificial in the way we invest and partner and do business in those places as well, especially since there can be enormous roadblocks to doing all of that. So, I mean, those are some quick intuitions, although I’m certainly not an expert anymore at kind of thinking about that in a global context.

Luke Roush: There’s so much to unpack there. We could spend a ton of time, but I love the idea of taking the last five or 6 minutes that we have and going lightning around. This is something that Henry and I just recently started doing. We both are really liking it. So I’m going to start off and then I’m going to turn to Guy Henry. He’s gonna follow my lead better than I followed his lead last time. So first up, 30 seconds or less. Author you most disagree with and why?

Michael Rhodes: And author I’m so agree with and why.

Luke Roush: Yeah, just for the support of it.

Henry Kaestner: Just show somebody who’s left. That’s easy. Just showing things.

Michael Rhodes: Um. Oh, gosh, throw bombs.

Luke Roush: We encourage you to throw bombs.

Michael Rhodes: I didn’t know you could pass.

Henry Kaestner: You can pass at any point time you could pass.

Luke Roush: You got 10 seconds and I’ll try.

Michael Rhodes: I’ll tell you, I don’t like people who think that we need to be encouraged to appreciate material possessions, people who think we’re too worried about being affluent. That bothers me. I think a plain reading of the New Testament says if we’re the most wealthy people that have ever existed on the planet and we are, we have some tough questions to answer. So any author that’s trying to blunt that a little bit drives me bananas. I like.

Luke Roush: It. I like it. Okay, that’s.

Michael Rhodes: Good. You can fill in those blanks. These days are on your own.

Luke Roush: All right. It’s good. It’s good. There’s nobody on today’s call, though, which is great. Second question what is the belief that you hold that most of the world would probably disagree with? 30 seconds or less go.

Michael Rhodes: In addition to the thing about every aspect of our life being an opportunity to bend sacrificially towards the kingdom. So every economic transaction gives us that opportunity potentially. In addition to that, I would say that where we live is a fundamental aspect of our discipleship and that if we want to experience real community, where we live will matter a lot.

Luke Roush: So defend. Okay, so this is good. This is good. And again, just for the support of it, defend moving to Auckland, New Zealand versus Nairobi, Kenya in that light.

Michael Rhodes: Yeah, that’s a great question.

Henry Kaestner: Still in the global south.

Michael Rhodes: Well, for one thing, you know, God opens doors. So, you know, I applied to this school in Auckland as a practice interview going to Old Testament jobs on the planet. I didn’t know I wanted an Old Testament job. I just thought I’d got a Ph.D. in that, so it was worth exploring. I got a third letter of rejection from one of them, and then the other one was from Kerry, which I knew nothing about. But then as soon as we started talking, I realized these people were looking for someone to teach Bible but oriented towards mission and justice, specifically on issues of economic and ethnic justice, which is my passion. And Tim were saying it’s for a long time I have really felt I have lived in kind of a black, white world, partially because of the make up of Memphis. One thing that I know that I have missed is getting my mind around the experience of Native Americans in this country and First Nations peoples more generally. And our school is very committed to being bicultural among basically descendants of the Brits and the Maori Indigenous people of New Zealand. And so that emphasis really got me excited for what I could learn from them and that has already paid huge dividends. So that’s that’s a big improvement.

Luke Roush: Okay, I’ve got one more that I’m doing. My partner. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Versus New Testament write as an Old Testament scholar, given some of your talk track. Right. In terms of the realities of what Jesus said about sacrificial living, I would have expected you to be a New Testament scholar. How did you end up getting kicked out on Old Testament?

Michael Rhodes: Yeah, I think because it’s easy to fit the New Testament into that give more away box, whereas the Old Testament, because it covers more ground across more different kinds of economic systems, it’s sort of the earthier testament. And so it gets into the fundamentals of how you manage the entirety of your economic life. Now, I actually think that Jesus speaks to that like forgive us your debts, right? That’s something I actually think we misread as to where they’re sharing their goods. We read that wrong because we make it all about generosity. But I think the only reason why I know that stuff is because I really dug into the Old Testament. So I love Jesus, but I think you get Jesus best when you start with Moses and the prophets and move forward. So little bit by bit.

Luke Roush: Thank you, Henry. Over to you.

Henry Kaestner: Okay. Lightning around 30 seconds or less. Best ribs in Memphis.

Michael Rhodes: Cozy corner, no doubt.

Henry Kaestner: Really. Okay. All right. Next. Next, what flavor of ice cream do you like to have after a great Memphis dry rub? Ribs.

Michael Rhodes: Man, any ice cream? Sounds good. Now, I’m a sucker for strawberry ice cream these days.

Henry Kaestner: Where do you get it?

Michael Rhodes: In Memphis. There’s a place called the Beauty Shop that has phenomenal ice cream.

Henry Kaestner: Okay.

Michael Rhodes: All right. Nashville Beginnings. Back in the day.

Luke Roush: A baby. Bring it, bring.

Henry Kaestner: Okay, Ecclesiastes. Does Ecclesiastes offer up that our economy is fueled by coveting another’s goods?

Michael Rhodes: Okay. So Ecclesiastes is really tricky. Started talking about in 30 seconds. But basically what you have is the narrator telling us a story about the teacher, right? So the narrator gives us the story of the teachers wrestling. So I don’t think you can take anything the teacher says without a grain of salt. Right. You’re always going, where is the teacher in this journey that he’s on? Right. But I do think he has a very poignant observations that much of our economic life is driven by greed and competitiveness. And what conservative Christians need to know is you can build in the short term a functional, effective, growing. Economy on set. That’s what Ecclesiastes would remind us. So the fact that it works doesn’t mean that it’s good, right?

Henry Kaestner: So it’s meaningless or it’s meaningless under the Senate, right?

Michael Rhodes: That’s right. It can be driven solely by, you know, what you’re describing, wanting to be better and all that stuff.

Henry Kaestner: Okay. Could you play Brian Ficker basketball? Who wins?

Michael Rhodes: Uh, he fouls a lot, cheats, so.

Henry Kaestner: So you play it? It’s happened.

Michael Rhodes: It’s happened? Yeah. I’ve run down the court with him trying to grab my shorts. I mean, he’s like, nine feet tall. You shouldn’t need to do that.

Henry Kaestner: But I said, okay, okay. We’re going to say that you get it next when you’re ready. Yeah. Okay. How cool was it for the boy in the story of the five loaves and two fish? And is that something is available for us?

Michael Rhodes: Yeah. I mean, I think that question, you know, what’s in your hand? You know, what do you have? I think that’s a beautiful I think the surprising thing about the story of the good news is that God chooses to use people and he never gives up on that. And so often, you know, God chooses Adam and Eve and they rebel. God chooses Abraham as the vehicle of his blessing to all nations, the world, and they fail. And so where Israel is faithless on the whole, God sends the faithful Israelite Jesus, right? And so often we read the story of Scripture as God had these big plans for people, they mess it up. So Jesus came and now we’re off the hook. And that is a garbage reading of the New Testament. The story of the Bible is that God sent Jesus to get His project of crewing his world back on track. That’s why the end of Revelation God’s people are co ruling with God in the end, because God wants to use people, which is incredible. And so would that boy with his few loaves and fishes is experiencing is a glimpse of what God invites all of us into, which is to be used to participate by the King in making everything that is broken, new. Right. What could be more exciting than that?

Henry Kaestner: Okay, Spectrum, you can go 8020, you can go 60, 40, 40, 60. But you got to end this spectrum as we allocate our investment capital. On one hand, there’s Ben sacrificially. On the other hand, there’s leaning into the joy that is available to us by participating in the work that God is doing. His Kingdom Where are you in the spec version of Christ, our being and that spectrum?

Michael Rhodes: I don’t know that I see the spectrum. I think that bending sacrificially is part of how we participate joyfully.

Henry Kaestner: Well said. Well answered. Well answer. I love it. I refuse. I don’t think I hemmed in by that.

Michael Rhodes: Yes, I don’t think that means that we’re not ever investing in ways that we expect to yield a good financial return. Right. And, you know, really honestly, one of the same is for me to come on to a podcast like this that has investors on it is to say, look, I’m a Bible scholar. I’m going to try to give you some principles. You’re going to have to work it out, right? You are going to have to figure out how to do this. But what I know is when we invest our money, we often have the opportunity to exploit. Right. And we often have the opportunity to intentionally bend our investments to impact words the way that God wants his world. And that what I’m saying has got to be better for everyone, for the world, for me, for you. So we talk about impact investing in the book some this idea that we can intentionally invest in companies and in spaces that bend towards God’s kingdom, that could look a lot of different ways, you know, that advance. Sometimes we were helping people invest in small businesses started by women and minorities in our neighborhood. Right. Sometimes that means taking more risk or potentially a lower return to do something that matters. In my neighborhood, I’ve been able to do impact investing by buying homes on two occasions in a residential economy. That does not work to try to help some of my neighbors become homeowners. That’s hard. I’ve made a little money on that. I think on the current one, I’m going to lose a little money possibly. But man, I know the joy of getting to put my money to work, doing something that God cares about. And there are platforms. You guys, Henry, are running a platform. I think marketplace is a new opportunity for accredited investors.

Henry Kaestner: Okay, sounds too much like a commercial in your through the 30 seconds. As much as I love the fact that you’re going there.

Michael Rhodes: You want. Can I give one more advertisement? Yes. Nice try. Not for you guys. So because Marketplace is only for accredited folks. Right. And so if you’re not an accredited folks like me, I’m not. Kiva allows you to make zero interest lending and we funder is a platform that a friend of mine helps run. Johnny Price Yeah, exactly. Allows you to make equity investments in companies. So just this week, my family was able to make an investment in a company that’s trying to turn restaurants into worker cooperatives. Man, I’m not going to make as much on that as I might make in the stock market. Whatever, man. What if the money that God gave me I got to use to build an economy that he’s going to be more excited about? And that’s awesome. Yeah, it is. But you guys, it’s you guys and your constituents, you’re going to have to work out the details, right? Because I’m just a Bible teacher and.

Luke Roush: Hey, we always like to wrap up with something that God is teaching you and that you’ve discovered recently, in God’s Word, a whole bunch of good nuggets from our podcast that would suggest and point to different things. But one thing that God’s taught you recently.

Michael Rhodes: Well, I’ll say two things. I am working on a new book right now on justice and studying justice in Proverbs. I’ve been really struck by this idea in the Bible. I think that justice and wisdom go together. And so if you seek justice without wisdom, it ends up being powerless. But if you seek wisdom without justice, it ends up being predatory. And I really want to meditate on what that means for my economic life for a while. And then also I’m on a couple of years journey in the Psalms of realizing just how much God wants a relationship with us, that he not only will say, Hey, Michael, you can say anything you want to say to me. He’ll give me some scripts that require me to say some crazy stuff to him so that I can learn just how vulnerable God and I can be in our relationship together. And that includes scripts from the Psalms that have us asking God about where he is and why he hasn’t shown up and whether justice is really working in the world. So those are some things I’ve been thinking about and writing about and they have touched me personally recently.

Henry Kaestner: Michael is awesome to be with you. Thank you very, very much. Heavenly Father, bless Michael and his family as they get ready to move, go in front of him to just be with him, to make new friends and to be able to have just great relationships with his students. And dear Lord, please speak to them. Continue to speak to them from your word in the Old Testament, the beauty from there and the wisdom that comes in mixed with justice and may your kingdom come on Earth as it is in heaven, in Jesus name. Amen.

Luke Roush: Amen. Amen. Amen.

Michael Rhodes: Thanks, guys.

John Coleman: So welcome back to Faith Driven Investor, where we get to talk to a variety of people working in different areas about the intersection of investing in their faith and the way in which they are creating an impact on the world. I’m John Coleman coming to you from Atlanta today. And we are very, very privileged to have Allison Long pertain with us today. It’s hard to sum up all of Allison’s experience. She’s a venture investor. She’s been an operator. She’s got a variety of passions, I think, in and around the investing world. And we are really privileged to welcome her and learn from her today. Thanks for coming on, Allison.

Allison Long Pettine: Thank you so much for having me.

John Coleman: So, Allison, talk to me a little bit just about your background. Introduce yourself to the community and tell us how you got to where you are today.

Allison Long Pettine: Sure. Typically, I’ll just talk about my work background, but I think because this podcast really focuses on the integration of faith and work, my background and my purpose is I think I see God’s definition of that is really like precedes me. Even so, my family is originally from China. My dad immigrated here when he was seven and so I’m kind of second generation and I’m also one of three girls. So I have two sisters and I’m the middle. So that kind of frames, just like my childhood, my growing up and I lived with my grandparents, I lived with my dad’s parents. And so, you know, just being multicultural, having that whole side of my grandparents, my parents who escaped communist China is very rooted in my identity. And faith has always been a really big part of my life. So my parents raised me and Christian. We prayed every night before dinner, you know, like I grew up reading scripture with my mom. So I think for me, like my first identity, right? My first background is as a Christian, a child of God. And then in terms of my career, I knew really early on. So my dad was an entrepreneur. He started his own real estate business and he kind of was the American dream, right? So he escaped communist China, moved here when he was young, started over his whole family, started over, and then ended up going to UCLA, Harvard Business School, and started his own career in real estate after an eight year stint at Carnegie Hall. So for me, like, that was always the narrative of him in my life. And I knew from a very young age I wanted to be in business. And my dad told me, You know, you can do anything you want, you just can’t be in real estate. So I had to pay my own path, right? So after I graduated from college, I moved to New York City, part of finance. This is in 2004 and really like it was very God led. I think my whole career has been God led where I thought I was going to get a job in finance, you know, work for an investment bank. I was interviewing at all of the investment banks that were around and of which half of them aren’t even there anymore in 2004. So I moved to New York and I ended up getting a job in venture capital. So I didn’t get a job at an investment bank. I got a job in venture capital, and at the time I really didn’t even know what venture was. So it was one of those things where a friend of mine, he’d helped me prep for all these events and big interviews, and then I told him, like, I have an opportunity to work at this venture capital firm. They invest in medical devices. And he was like, You have an opportunity to work in venture. You got to take it, you know, like that’s the job that us bankers, he was a banker at the time. He’s like, We want those jobs, so you take that job. So I had the fortune of working for this venture firm that happened to be run by three brothers. So it was a family business and they invested in orthopedic medical devices and they had an exit out of their first fund. And they started basically this incubator concept where they would acquire undervalued technology and create companies around them. And so I was one of the first employees at one of their first incubated companies, and the CEO was my boss, and he was also a partner at the venture firm. So basically I worked for him and I got exposure on the startup side and I also got exposure on the venture side. So it was kind of like a crash course in all things, you know, early stage ecosystem related.

John Coleman: Was that hard to navigate that kind of dual role between the investment and operating side?

Allison Long Pettine: You know, I was primarily on the operating side like that was my primary role and then I got opportunities to, you know, due diligence on new technologies they were looking at. And for example, there was an orthopedic surgeon who had a really great idea for a technology in medical device technology, and they gave me the opportunity to basically work with him. Filled out his patent, his IP, and then negotiate a deal and structure a deal with him. And that was, you know, maybe three or four years into my time there. So I feel like it wasn’t actually challenging because my primary focus was on the operating side. And then I got these incredible opportunities to just try things out. And it was a very entrepreneurial place in that sense where, you know, you kind of either sink or swim, like they would hire a lot of entry level analysts and kind of just see what happened. Right. It was like, well, if you’re going to make it, you’re going to make it, you’re going to figure it out. And so that was really a great training for me because I had to learn on the fly. And I’m a very experiential learner in general. But I think it also gave me confidence to say, okay, like if I can’t figure something out, I will figure it out. And you know, like fast forward to today where we invested a lot of founders. I think that’s one common trait that I always look for is just people who realize, like even though they don’t know something, they’ll figure it out or they’ll surround themselves with people that they need to in order to figure it out. So anyway, back to that, you know, like I worked there for six years and then I left. That was in New York City and came back to California, got my graduate degree, and then started my own fund in 2012 to invest in early stage companies.

John Coleman: That’s amazing. So, you know, as you think about that decision to do something more entrepreneurial, even working at a venture firm because it is a common path for highly educated folks, go work at an investment banker consulting firm or something more structured. Where do you think that entrepreneurial impulse or that willingness to embrace entrepreneurship came from? Is it something ingrained in you? Do you think it might have been a part of the immigrant story, for example, that your dad pioneered starting over a new life, starting a company like how do you think you got comfortable with that more entrepreneurial approach to life?

Allison Long Pettine: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s very much in my DNA just for my parents and my grandparents. Right. I think being an entrepreneur, that word is very overused in this day and age. I think all of us possess entrepreneurial characteristics. Right. And it doesn’t really matter if you’re, quote unquote, traditional startup entrepreneur or if you are working at a large company. Right. Like we all have entrepreneurial characteristics. And so I think it’s really a matter of being aware of what those are defining them and then being able to structure and utilize those characteristics in your everyday life. And I think that’s part of what God calls all of us to do right, is really understand what are areas that we’re strong, where areas he’s calling us to take risk to be uncomfortable. Right. But for him, not for us. But yeah, I think, you know, like it was just in the way my parents thought, right? Like, they were always encouraging me and my sisters to do things that weren’t comfortable. Like, I studied abroad at a very, very young age. So in high school, I studied abroad. In Montreal, I studied French, I studied Italian and Chinese at home, but I went to Montreal. My parents really encouraged that, right? Like there was no sense of fear around the unknown for even on their part of like, don’t go there. It’s a far place. You’re only 14. And I think that kind of encouragement really led me to have the courage to do it without really thinking about it.

John Coleman: What did failure look like in those contexts? Because, you know, it’s one thing to push yourself or to push your kids out. I’ve got kids now to do something. And then the way in which you embrace failure or handle failure as a person seeks independence, I think really shapes who they are and how they operate moving forward. What did Encounters with Failure look like for you on that journey to independence as you charted your own course?

Allison Long Pettine: Yeah, well, I think, you know, I talked about my first job adventure. When I think about a failure like that was one of the most difficult times in my life. And I think for me, I really try to reframe the word failure, right? Because there’s such a judgment on failure where failure is a part of life. And I think if we see failure as a step in the direction that God ultimately wants to lead us, then, then it’s less about something we did wrong. It’s less about our egos. So I think for me, you know, like when I think about a traditional failure, like I graduated from UCSD, I wanted to move to New York, as I mentioned, and I interviewed for four months at literally, like when I say every investment, think it was like every single investment bank, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, UBS, in every single department, wealth management, investment, banking, research, sales, marketing. And time after time, get turned down, turn down, turn down. Right. And I’m sure a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to this, right? It’s like you pinch people, you get turned off. And that was I mean, it was wearing on my soul to have again and again people just say, hey, you’re not good enough. You know, like that could be seen as a failure, right? Like, I didn’t get the job that I wanted. And I think what came out of that was. I was like, Look, I know that I can get a job. It’s ridiculous that I’m not. I know that I can. And I just kept trying. And, you know, those four months that I interviewed, like I was at the top of my interview game, right? Like I could walk into any place. I knew exactly what to say. I knew the story like from September to December, like I had honed it on that skill. And so then when this job with the venture firm came up, I was ready for that interview. And so I think when you think about failure, it’s like, well, yeah, those were a series of failures, but God was shaping me and he had a different plan for me. And, you know, I think if we can look at that with his perspective, then it takes it off of us a little bit, but also like it even changes this word failure mean. So like similar to you, I have young kids, they’re four and seven and I’m trying to normalize this word failure, right? Like, what did you try? So first of all, they’re like, What’s failure? I’m like, That’s awesome. And second of all, it’s like, well, failure is just trying something that didn’t work right. And so we talk about this at the dinner table, like, what did you try that didn’t work today? And it could be something super small. My son was like, I kicked the ball on kickball with the wrong way. I’m like, That’s great, right? Like you tried something different. You didn’t know how it was going to go, didn’t work out the way you thought it was going to. But the next time you try it, maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. So I think it’s reframing kind of this definition of failure. And I think even with the entrepreneurs that we invest in, we try and hopefully instill that message to, right? We’re like, Yeah, we want their companies to succeed. But like, it’s God’s plan. If your company doesn’t succeed, it’s not because you weren’t trying 1,000% right. It’s because God had a different plan for you and for us as investors. If our investment company doesn’t succeed, that’s not on me. Like I’m doing everything I possibly can to make this thing work.

John Coleman: One You’ll often look back, as you said, on these periods where you thought you were failing, where there wasn’t a fit with something you were interviewing. I see this in careers all the time. I’ve seen it in my career. You know, when you get to our age and our stage in our career, people often look at it and say, Oh, you’ve achieved some success. And it must have been, you know, an upward ride. And they get discouraged about where they are. But I think both of us would say almost everyone we know who’s ultimately been successful has encountered these periods where things weren’t working right, regardless of what you call it. And often you look back on those periods is incredibly providential, right, that you thought something was supposed to go one way, but the failure was actually, you know, either God or life telling you that it wasn’t the right fit, that you actually had a different path to pursue and it was helping to shape you to pursue that. And I love that about your story and how you’re able to learn from those experiences as you weren’t getting the jobs you wanted to ultimately shape, the career that you would then take. I think that’s that’s inspiring. And I think a lot of younger people need to hear that because they’re encountering the same thing right now. And it’s easy to see that as failure rather than as a redirection.

Allison Long Pettine: Right.

John Coleman: So talk to me. One of the great things about your career, and I think it’s a good thing about venture investing in particular, is that there are very few venture investors who don’t have some sort of operating experience who are worth their salt. You know, when you go into a lot of private equity shops, you’ll find folks who were bankers and then private equity investors and never actually spent time in the company. Whereas I think venture investors will often have come from a product management role or CEO of a company, or at least worked within a startup. What do you think you learn from being an operator in startup companies or in venture backed companies that is paid dividends for you as an investor?

Allison Long Pettine: Yeah, well, I think the whole venture ecosystem has really changed a lot, you know, and I think you’re spot on. I think now most people who are venture investors do have operating experience and oftentimes you’ll see first time fund managers who have come from some sort of role that they’ve been successful in on the operating side, on the startup side. And then they’ll translate that into an investment role, you know, for me. So I started Chris and Rich Partners in 2012. And honestly, one of the reasons why I started it is because in San Diego I saw that most of the people who were doing early stage investing, like first there weren’t a lot of seed funds, but then I think a lot of people who were doing early stage investing were individuals who had a passion for helping people succeed. Right. And they had success in some line of business, whether it was like they were a lawyer or they ran a company for 30 years, but they didn’t really have startup expertize. And so I think for me, at the very beginning, when I started Crescent Ridge, you know, I didn’t have that much investment experience per say, you know, in terms of sourcing my own deals and doing diligence and all of that sort of stuff. But I did. The understanding of what it took at the very early stages to build a startup. And I think having that perspective of like all odds are against you. Right? Like day one, you have nothing. Like, you’ve got to basically create something out of nothing. At every step along the way, you’re trying to fight for cash. You’re trying to fight for talent. You’re I mean, it’s everything. And you’re trying to figure out your customer. And so I think really understanding that and feeling that and living through that helped me immensely, just empathetically. But also when I was doing diligence on companies, right? It was like, Well, what characteristics do you look for in entrepreneurs? Because I had been there myself that I wasn’t the founder, but I feel like I was there along the entire way. And, you know, I had been in positions where, you know, I crafted all of our board presentations, but I also did all of the presentations to our investors when we were running on fumes. Right. Like I remember one point in my career, we had literally like one week of cash left and I was the one responsible for putting the presentation together, pitching our investors saying like, this is why you need to invest in our company right now, because we need to make payroll. And I think going through that and really understanding like the ups and downs of it helps me be a better investor because you know, it’s going to be okay or it’s not going to be okay. And I think knowing that and having that perspective aligns me a lot and puts me and the founder kind of in sync as opposed to like, I’m bringing the money you need to be responsible for the money as a founder. Right? Like I’m here with you.

John Coleman: Yeah, that’s great insight. So take us into Crescent Ridge Partners a bit. You’ve mentioned founding it in 2012. You are in San Diego, which is where you’re from. I think you went to school there, which is an unusual place for an early stage. Well, maybe not that unusual today, but traditionally has not been a hub for early stage venture investing, for example. Why did you set up in San Diego and why did you set up Crescent Ridge to do.

Allison Long Pettine: Well, the San Diego is another good thing because I was in New York very happy in New York. I love New York City. You know, the energy just the it’s a very special place and I have a lot of fondness for it. But I met my husband there and he got a job in San Diego in 2009. So he moved here several years before I moved here. And it was honestly just we got married. He really loved his job. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do after grad school. I knew I wanted to, you know, probably do something on my own, wasn’t sure what. And he ended up, like we said, let’s just give San Diego a shot. And then I moved down here and I realized that there was actually a lot happening in the startup ecosystem. It was just very it was local, right? So a lot of people didn’t know about it. And it was different than, you know, L.A. was just starting to emerge at that time. Silicon Valley had already had kind of an explosion, but I think San Diego had a different feel and a different vibe. And I feel like investors would come down here and they wouldn’t really get it and then they would leave. And so I identified, you know, like, no, there is something here. And I think that, you know, even though there’s not a lot of capital, there’s a lot of talent. And any time you see talent like, you know that there’s opportunity, at least that’s how I see it. So I started Crescent Ridge thinking actually like, okay, I’m going to have to go to L.A., go to the Valley, go to New York just to find deals. And as I dug more into the local San Diego ecosystem, I realized, no, actually, like there’s a lot here. And because there’s not that much capital, there’s lower valuations. There’s actually a lot of opportunity for an investor if you can find the good deals. There’s a lot of junky deals, too. And so I think for me it was just a matter of like I felt an affinity toward San Diego because I lived here, I wanted to integrate in the community. I saw an immense opportunity, incredible opportunity for the ecosystem to grow and flourish. And so I just started investing here and I think, you know, so one of the things that I’m passionate about also is investing in women led startups and women leaders. And I didn’t actually start doing that until 2018. But I think that there’s a lot of similarities between what I identified in San Diego, just in terms of, you know, kind of under estimated talent regionally. You know, it’s very akin to kind of what I see in women. Right. And I think it’s just there’s certain patterns that investors are used to that don’t exhibit the same. And that’s what we see in Woman. I think that’s what I saw geographically in San Diego. And so. I think for me it’s always like, well, where can I identify, you know, kind of talent where others maybe are overlooking? And I think that’s a differentiator because I don’t have other things to lean on, right? So like, there’s a lot bigger funds. There’s a lot of people who maybe have a better pedigree than I do. Right. And I think for me, it’s utilizing the talents God’s given me in the place that He’s brought me to. And how can I do his work in one of the places?

John Coleman: I love that theme between San Diego and women founders that you talked about. It’s in investing in folks that others have underestimated who still have the same kind of talents and abilities as everyone else right there and undervalued thing in the marketplace, whether that’s because of their gender or it’s because of, you know, their geography or some other characteristic of them or ethnicity or whatever. There are all these opportunities to find people of great potential and underestimated areas, but it does rely on you being able to identify potential and to see that potential. And I think that’s an underestimated part of being a venture capitalist is the people side of things, the ability to look at a founder in an early stage and see potential. How do you think about that? How do you find that you spot potential in these early stage founders that gives you confidence that they have what it takes to fight through this entrepreneurial process?

Allison Long Pettine: Well, being a venture capital investor is it’s a very roundabout path, right? Like it’s not linear. And I would say for a long time, I was like, I have no idea if I’m any good at this. And some days I’m like, I still don’t know if I’m good at this, but I think, you know, like after I passed the 15 year mark, I was like, okay, I feel like maybe I know a little bit like I know what I’m doing. But, you know, I think the tricky thing with venture is it’s about pattern recognition, right? And so pattern recognition, once you identify those patterns, it’s great. But it also is very dangerous because essentially that’s what biases are, right? Like biases are just a very snap judgment based on our patterns. And so I think the best venture capitalists are able to identify a pattern very quickly. Right. Like I will say, like within a few minutes, I know whether or not, you know, company will fit within our investment thesis. But I think for me, one of the things that’s important in our investing work across venture and we do real estate and private equity as well is just making sure those patterns don’t get stale or like we’re not sticking to one pattern. And so we’ve developed this framework that I think helps us do that where so we have this framework called Four Dimensional Wealth. And that really came out of my own experience with investing and feeling kind of this conflict between the purpose of investing purely to create monetary wealth and like what God has put me on this earth for, right? And you know, I can get into that story later, but I think that God doesn’t really care about money, and that’s just my personal belief. And so if as an investor, I’m here to create money, then like, what am I doing right? Like, what am I doing to satisfy God? And so I think this four dimensional wealth framework really helps redefine wealth in a way that for me aligns my profession with what God is asking me to do, like why He’s put me on this earth and because it’s been inspired by God. I would say like he’s at the center of it all, but it’s not a Christian framework, if you know what I mean. So the four dimensions of wealth are one financial and we are an investment company. We’re in the business of making money. We want to generate competitive or superior to competitive returns, and that’s very important to us. But I think in addition to financial, relational, right, so like we’re also creating relational capital and relational wealth and that is essentially building and deepening bonds between people. So how are the companies that we’re investing in? How are we creating relational capital with the founders, but also how are they doing that in their businesses? And then third is social. So we are here on this earth to steward this earth and this planet and the people in this planet. And God really clearly states that in the Bible. And so it’s not enough to just say, okay, well, we’re making money and we’re also deepening connections and building close relationships. Like we also really need to think about our environment, our communities, the people who have been overlooked and how are we creating businesses to actually serve those people. And then finally, it’s intellectual. So intellectual capital of creating an. Electric Apple. And that’s that’s really maximizing the talents that God’s given us know. So I think we’re called every day to show up as the best versions of ourselves, because God has given us these incredible resources and talents. Right? Whether it’s our brain, whether it’s our money, whether it’s our network, whether it’s, you know, just the clothes that we have. Right? Like the fact that we can get up in the morning and walk out the door. And if we’re not, you know, utilizing those to the fullest to serve others, then we’re not doing him the justice and we’re not serving him fully. And so I think really for me, it was almost like an accountability because there have been so many times in my life where I feel like God and God works different for all of us. Right? Like for me, God’s usually like he, like, hits me over the head with a frying pan. You know, I’m doing my own thing. He taps me. I’m like, Thank God he tossed me again. You know, I feel like, hit me on the back and then he’s like, okay, you’re not listening to me. And so this four D well framework we call 40 well, for sure it really is to make sure that, you know, I don’t need to be hit over the head with a frying pan again because I think God leads me to places. And then I’m like, thank God. Like it’s a bus stop. Right? Like, thanks for dropping me off by. Yeah. And that’s not what he wants. You know, he wants us to be on the bus with him the whole time. And even though he leads me somewhere, I think there’s an accountability around my own actions. And there’s always this constant desire to do things for myself and for my ego and my pride. And that’s not pleasing to him and that’s not fulfilling to him. But I think it’s challenging. It’s not easy, right? Like we live in a world where it’s about being the best and it’s about competing and it’s about headlines. And so really, it’s redefining what my definition of success is and aligning it with what would be pleasing to God. I think I went way off what your question was, by the way.

John Coleman: No, no, no. That’s fantastic. No, I love your reading in the spiritual component of that. You know, by day, I also work at a values aligned investment firm. It’s a faith aligned investment firm in our case explicitly. And I love your articulation of the four dimensional framework for wealth that you use in objection we often get is that people believe those dimensions are in conflict. So they’ll say, sure, you should have, you know, in ours we even have a spiritual dimension to it explicitly, but we’ll have social dimension as well. And they’ll say, Well, you’re an impact fund, right? Meaning concessionary, because obviously the financial return in the social mission are in conflict. Do you ever get that objection? And how do you handle that? How do you think about that tension?

Allison Long Pettine: I think from the earliest days of when impact investing came around, that was my biggest issue with Impact Investing. And you still hear it where people say, well, if you’re an impact investor, you’re basically sacrificing returns. Right? And I think that to me, really, it’s like nails on a chalkboard, because I don’t think that’s the case. And I think one for us, it’s framing our time horizon, right? So, yes, if you want to juice returns and you want, you know, the highest IRR in the shortest amount of time, then maybe you can achieve all four dimensions. But our definition of success is actually sustainable companies over the course of, you know, ten, 20 plus years. And if you want to build a company that lasts, it is actually essential to focus on all four dimensions. You can’t not. So our investment thesis is basically by focusing on the non-financial elements of wealth, dimensions of wealth, relational, social and intellectual, you strengthen the financial case. So the financial case has to be there to begin with. But if you’re investing in the other three, the financial actually becomes greater. And what happens is a lot of times people will disregard investing in the three, right? They’ll say, oh, those three things are nice and they’re nice to haves, but we actually really just care about financial and we’re only doing those three in order to get the financial. And then it’s not authentic, right? Then you’re just back to one day, you’re just trying all these things in order to create one wealth. And so for us, it’s really, I think, this authenticity around the four dimensions. And if you really care about deepening relationships, that is going to pay off at some point, maybe not in this year, maybe not in the next six months, but it will. And we’ve seen this time and time again. So one of the things that we’re trying to do actually is prove out this investment thesis. And so we’re embarking on this journey where we’re developing actually scorecards. So we’re developing 40 scorecards. All our diligence is going to start the process. Any time a company goes through diligence with us, we’re going to take this assessment and we’re going to spit out a 40 wealth score, and that’s going to help us essentially underwrite the company. And once we invest, if we decide to invest, then we’ll actually do a case study with these companies and say if they opt into it right. And say, hey, if you want to build 40 wealth, let’s see if what we believe actually holds true. We’ve got some companies in our portfolio anecdotally that we can point to, and we’re going to do some retrospective case studies as well. But I think this is where, you know, having data to back it up is really helpful. Part of it is for us, I think, just to say like, okay, is what we’re saying actually true? But I think also part of it is so that other people who aren’t necessarily early adopters are interested in pursuing this type of investing. And I think the 40 wealth, I mean, a lot of people have something similar. So it’s not proprietary to us. I think for us it just helps us give us a common language because I think there’s so many people who want to do the right thing, but it’s so abstract. What does it mean to do the right thing? And the four DS can look different for every founder, every investor. But at least we have some sort of commonality to say like, okay, well, we’re pursuing 40. Well.

John Coleman: Yeah, I love that. And we don’t have the 40 framework ourselves, but we are similarly trying to prove out a framework that says, look, we actually think the incorporation of values along the lines that you’re identifying not only aren’t in conflict with financial return, but like you said, they’re essential to building great long term companies. And there’s especially in the private equity side. And I want to get to how you diversified your investing a bit before we we kind of circle back to the spiritual side, especially in the private equity side. You’re always going to find firms that are able to juice returns through excessive amounts of risk or through transactional behavior. Right. But it doesn’t create long term sustainable companies, typically. And it introduces a lot of risk to the equation where in both the venture and private equity worlds and likely in the real estate world or even the public equity world, if you have this more forward approach to to a company, you’re building a culture and a foundation for that company that’s sustainable long term and ultimately sets up a greater competitive advantage. Right. Which can reinforce the financial return that you’re getting over time. And so I’d love to see the results as you start to get those back. We’re all, I think, engaged in our own little exercises, trying to make sure we quantify that. But I think, well.

Allison Long Pettine: Maybe there’s even a collaboration that I’m I think my mind always goes to like, how can we help each other? Because I guess also part of it is, you know, we’re doing this for God. Like, I think for us it’s not I would love for several people to work on something together. Right. Because I think it’s just the more we are able to prove this out, I think the more we do his work. Right. You know, also part of it is just we identified on the financial side that financial metrics often are lagging indicators. Right. So, yes, I think what would be fascinating and for you as a who we were in private equity because you have that you as you venture and private equity but I think on the private equity side you have more data right venture so early and so volatile but private equity like you’ve got a lot of data and I think you can potentially look back and see like okay the years that were really good. Like those are actually a result of investment in the other three dimensions, right? And then like one of the things we talked about is if you could look at like stock market data and see companies like a blockbuster, right? Yeah. Why did that happen to Blockbuster? Like they were probably low on a few of the other dimensions of wealth. Right. And because they didn’t invest and you could argue maybe intellectual, maybe relational, right? Like because of that, they ended up going out of business. But I think there’s ways to kind of put all of this stuff together. But I think it’s also a matter of perspective. Like you can’t like to your point, you can never prove to someone that’s looking to juice their returns over a three year period that 40 wealth is going to work. It’s not going to work.

John Coleman: Actually, it won’t work. Not net one.

Allison Long Pettine: Fan. Exactly. So I think it depends on if you’re talking about apples and you’re saying like, try this orange, it’s delicious. It’s like you’re just speaking a different language. So I think it’s a matter of also really understanding like what’s our definition of success over the long term? Over the short term, right? Like what are you aiming for?

John Coleman: Well, so I want to touch on one topic and then maybe circle back. We always ask everybody at the end what you’re learning from scripture right now and why that’s important. I’d love to talk to you about a million other things, including digging into the idea about female founders and female venture capitalists and getting deeper. So maybe we’ll have to get you back on some time. But my impression is now you have expanded your remit again. You’ve got a great passion for founders, but you’re also doing private equity and real estate investing now? I think so. Your dad told you never to do real estate investing and you actually are touching on that now. And if I understood correctly, you’re actually working with your father to some extent now on some of that as well. Talk to us about that transition. And is it different at all to be working with a family member and how you navigate that as an investor?

Allison Long Pettine: Well, I work with my dad. I also work with my husband, who technically is the one on the real estate side. So okay, so maybe following that rule. But no, my dad and I have come full circle now. We work together. And then I also work with my sister who runs our family foundation. So now I work with my whole family basically. And her brother in law runs the solar finance company, which we’re invested in. So yeah, I’m deep in it. But, you know, I think part of it is, you know, that’s the position that God has put me in and he’s allowed me to. And it’s been incredibly rewarding. I mean, there’s challenges for sure, but I think that I feel honored to kind of. Serve my family and be in this position where we all share the desire to serve God, right? And we all have the same perspective around capital and our talents and our resources, which is like we’re stewards. And that’s really unique, I think. I think a lot of people who are investors don’t have that luxury. And so I’m just grateful that I’m able to do what I do in the context of my faith, because, you know, I have people who are aligned with me in that. And I think, you know, you guys probably feel the same. It’s all runs. And I think it’s a gift that God has given me.

John Coleman: Yeah, I totally agree. And especially the more the diverse, the more diverse the environment. I think the more important a shared sense of mission or values. Right. Because you need things that hang together or the greater the potential for interpersonal conflict, the more that shared mission matters. And that’s so interesting in the context of a family dynamic, too, which is even more complicated than than your typical organization in a lot of ways, but that that can hang true for you all and that you’re able to work so smoothly with that similar perspective on wealth and a similar perspective on the reasons you’re investing, not just what you’re investing in.

Allison Long Pettine: Yeah, I always say like if I can deal with these interpersonal dynamics in my family and it’s a great training ground for other people, it’s like the most sensitive first, you know, relationship.

John Coleman: And you can’t get rid of them with your family. You know what.

Allison Long Pettine: I really mean? I know. Okay.

John Coleman: So talk to us. The last thing maybe to touch on, you’ve been very open about your own spiritual walk. We love to conclude just with what you’re maybe studying in Scripture now or something. You’re learning that you’d love to share with everyone else.

Allison Long Pettine: Yeah. So I feel like God always gives me themes for the year, right? So one big theme that I was working on a few years ago was surrender. So I think for me this year it’s identity. And a lot of my life I’ve struggled with my own identity around like ego pride, not being good enough inadequacy. And this year really just God has placed on my heart this desire for a sense of peace in knowing like my identity is actually found in being a child of peace. Wow. And that’s a very powerful thing. It’s like I’m able to receive that, but I think sometimes it’s hard to receive that, you know? So I’ve been trying to integrate that into, you know, all aspects of my life as a mom, as a businesswoman, as a wife, right? Like as whatever else we do in our community. And I think that it’s also allowed me to experience God’s grace, and it’s been very, very profound. So continuing to listen to him, make sure my intentions align with his intentions and redefine and reshape my view of myself and the world in his life.

John Coleman: When it’s ever finished. She always heard working through that. Like you said, just reshaping his life goes on. So that’s a great word, Alison. This was a fantastic discussion, really excited about what you’re doing in the investing world. I excited to see the results of your data on the 4D approach and hopefully we’ll get to have you back some time. Thanks so much for joining today.

Allison Long Pettine: Thank you for having me. Sounds like we’ve got a lot more to talk about.

John Coleman: All right. Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. This is John Coleman. And today I am joined by a fantastic guest, Jimmy. Right. Jimmy is the president of Launch Capital Partners in Louisville, Kentucky. And he knows a wealth about investing, particularly about the idea of built communities and redemptive real estate and everything in between. So please join me in welcoming Jimmy to the show. Jimmy, how are you?

Jimmy Wright: Good, thanks, John. Glad to be here.

John Coleman: How are you up in Kentucky today? Is everything going well up there? You on the road?

Jimmy Wright: It’s finally starting to break here. The weather is it’s getting a little bit warmer. It did this to us last week. It does this this time of year is rough here in Kentucky. You get really hopeful and you get 70 and 80 degree days and then boom, you’re back to forties again. But yeah.

John Coleman: I feel it. I think we’re all anxious to get into spring and summer here. You know, Jimmy is we just dove in. You know, I’ve gotten to know a little bit about your background, but just for the benefit of folks here, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? How did you get into investing? What was your path to this point?

Jimmy Wright: Yeah, so I was born and raised here in Louisville, Kentucky, still live here in Louisville. My wife, Dana, and I’ve been married for 14 years. We have five kids in the house. They range from ages 11 down to five months old. Oh, wow. We’re pretty busy at home. We just moved a little bit outside of Louisville to a little more rural community, which is fun to have bunch of dogs and cats and whatever the kids catch in the creek and the moved out to a little country church. So it’s a lot of fun. Yeah, we’re having a good time.

John Coleman: That’s fantastic. And how did you get interested in real estate? Was this where you kind of entered or were you interested in the faith aspects of this previous to getting into real estate?

Jimmy Wright: Yeah, I mean, this is really it’s really a story of God’s providence all the way through because it’s definitely not a planned past that I had really thankful for and glad to be here. But it wasn’t my plan at all. So we started this journey about 12 years ago when I started really considering integrating faith and work together before I just I had the two separated and went to church and put on my work and went to work, but I went on a mission trip. Had two pretty important points during this time. I went on a mission trip to Indonesia and helped some missionaries there do some work on water. And while I was there, I noticed that I couldn’t help them with language, I couldn’t help them with anything, except I had project management experience and I was like, Well, you could do this or that in your business and I think improve it. And I think you could get more production and more clean water to people in the response that I got was, Yeah, that’s great. We don’t really need business improvement here. We just need and I’m like, Well, what do you need? And can you go back and just make money, give them assistance, and then and then we’ll do the mission. They said it in a very kind way, but that’s what I took from it. And even talking to some pastors, it’s like, well, you know, like make all you can and then give, or which was just really, really unsatisfying because I didn’t feel called to vocational ministry, but I was serious about my faith and learning more and wanting to apply it in every way that I could.

John Coleman: Yeah. And you know, what we hear commonly, Jimmy, around here is this separation of faith and work where people have work on one side and they think I’ll just make a lot of money and then do philanthropic activity for the things I want to support or the churches I want to give to you. And that that activity is over here. And really, I think there’s an emerging consensus among folks that it’s really the integration of those two things. It’s most powerful. You know, you mentioned your mentor talking you through that. What did that look like as you transition from the corporate world? There started to evaluate your position in the corporate world to this idea of potentially starting a new venture like Launch Capital Partners.

Jimmy Wright: I mean, Ross McGarry mentored me and he was really great about is a former pastor but also at work some in the business world. So he was able to kind of bridge that divide. And one thing that he just did really well was be able to speak into your business. So he had a pastor’s heart and he had a heart to love the world and love neighbor and see that worked out everywhere in life, but had some of the acumen and some of the background to be able to speak in to broad categories in your work. This again was not planned, but I started into real estate by another guy that worked at the corporate America with me, and he said basically like, why don’t we get into some real estate, be good for retirement? And that was the plan. That’s how I got started into real estate.

John Coleman: And so this was entirely. Of a side hustle, so to speak, in modern terms. At the beginning where you had a job in corporate America, it sounds like project management and other things, and this was in a friend deciding real estate could be a really interesting path to secure retirement, to generate extra income.

Jimmy Wright: That’s exactly what it was. So we listen to podcasts and learned real estate and then on the side nights and weekends, we would go and buy these houses and rehab them and refurbishing them and then put them in bank financing and put a tenant in. And we just we started cycling through that. And then at the same time, a co-founder of Lunch with me, him and I, our families, moved into the same neighborhood in Louisville. And that neighborhood was a historically refugee neighborhood of immigrant nutrition and really which was born out of both of our desires to do outreach. So we were just trying to do community outreach and looked around and noticed that all the nations were around us. So I got on the board of a local nonprofit. We did backyard bible clubs, we did an apartment complexes in the neighborhood, and then we also did homework help and some after school care for kids and just started working with and loving the refugee community. And out of that, Ben Hedrick is his name. Ben and I’s relationship came word launches and it came about through really serving the refugee community and being an advocate for them.

John Coleman: And had that been a passion of yours forever, or was this something that you kind of moved to the neighborhood for that reason or it just kind of happened as you coincidentally moved in? Like where did that passion come from for you?

Jimmy Wright: We moved into the neighborhood because it was where you could get the most house for the money. Yeah. So my wife thought Spanish. She was involved in missions and had a heart for the nations. And I did too as well. So we had that bent a little bit, but we didn’t really get involved until we found ourselves in the middle of it.

John Coleman: That’s amazing. So you and Ben were building this business, flipping houses. How did that evolve from the two of you kind of rehabbing houses, putting in tenants to this idea of launch capital where you’re starting to aggregate capital and it becomes more central to who you are. It’s not just a side hustle anymore, but it becomes central to who you are.

Jimmy Wright: Yeah, great question. So we started we were rehabbing the houses. We started working with resettlement agencies to place tenants. And we thought about a business model that could really cater to the immigrant immigrant community. And as we were developing that, we just continued to grow. And God blessed it in several ways to where we were able to scale pretty quickly. We then brought on some private investors who came in and gave us financing. We then rehabbed and refinanced these properties out and managed them and scale it that way. And then really the turning point was we got a few tenants in. And so just how well the ministry aspect was going and I just decided that I want to do this full time. So I was saving up money for to launch out, so to speak, and go full time. And at the time my company was going to get bought. So I had a severance package that supposedly was in line for me. And what is happening was it never came through. We never got bought. So Oh wow. And in the meantime, my boss moved apartments and my job was on the innovation side and wasn’t core and the company was cutting costs at the time. So what ended up happening was I got let go and rather than having six months of runway, I got let go. And they’re like, your insurance ends tonight and see, wow. So we just prayed at that point and we’re thinking like, what do we do? I want to pursue launch, but I have a growing family to provide for and didn’t quite get my savings up to where I wanted to. So Dana and I just prayed and decided to just go for it. And when we did, literally, it was two weeks after we decided to go for it full time that some bigger investors came through. They’re now partners and then a portfolio of about 150 units that needed a big rehab. And this was in 2016. So exactly the time where there was a big refugee rush, all that came through at exactly the same time to where I could pay myself as a general contractor and have a job and get going. So it’s yeah, it’s really amazing how it all came through.

John Coleman: It’s amazing how providential that process is sometimes. You know, we’ve heard versions of this. I have a version of this myself where. Crying situation turns into the thing that helps you to catalyze, to move into something that really is a calling for you and that ignites you. And at the time, it can feel hard. But I think looking back, you often see the providence in that and see the word you’re getting from God about what you’re intended to be doing.

Jimmy Wright: We never would have been able to buy that property, and I may never have been able to even go full time had that not happen.

John Coleman: And talk to us about. So this started as a thing where it sounds like you were doing standard real estate by house for a good price rehab it get a tenant and launch has really transitioned into something that’s deeply spiritually integrated or that incorporates a lot of meaning and value into what it’s doing with communities. How did that arise? It sounds like partially organically, and what does that look like now for many of our listeners, this idea of redemptive real estate or communities is new. So talk to us about what that looks like for y’all and how that came about.

Jimmy Wright: Yeah, so we had planned to do it from the beginning. We wanted spiritual impact baked into what we did. So traditional property management tends to automate, tends to distance itself from the tenant, all in the name of efficiencies. So what we were doing is the opposite of that. So we went backwards in time and hired resident managers. So we have one resident manager onsite for every 50 units that we are interesting and 1400 units right now. So these families live on site and they’re like the old building supers. So if a tenant needs anything, they have a door to knock on, which is really helpful with language and cross-cultural dynamics. So they come to the door. These are often families that are connected to local churches. Some of them have been overseas. Some of them want to go overseas. And we have many that are now overseas and they yeah, they just care for the tenant and they can’t care for 50 other families like one family can’t obviously care for 50 others. So the nonprofit that we initially volunteered with, we now have a deep connection to and we’ve helped them to expand out to work with 50 different churches here in Louisville. So we have volunteers come in and they’re connected to our resident managers and they deal with some of the overflow of needs that come through. So the nonprofit will do homework help. They have a ladies tea. They have on after school care, some ESL programs and different programs on site. And since we don’t need the office space because we have resident managers, we use that office spaces, community centers that the churches do program out of.

John Coleman: So that’s a core model. You basically set up and align Capital Partner or partners with a nonprofit that’s dedicated to impact in the community with a residential model and people on site who are dedicated to the health and well-being of the residents. And it’s at the center of those things. You can really enable this model that’s meaningfully different than others that you’d find in these communities.

Jimmy Wright: I imagine it is, yeah. It’s highly relational, highly impactful and really focuses a lot around building the community.

John Coleman: Was there ever a concern? I can imagine that one of the reasons people have automated is cost, right? Is making the financial model work. How did she think about the business model underlying this impactful group that you’ve set up and were you ultimately able to reconcile the idea that this could actually be a better investment as well as the right thing to do?

Jimmy Wright: Yeah. So normally on apartment complexes of the size that we buy, there’s a leasing agent on site and a property manager on site. And what we’ve done, the math kind of works out to where if you divide the leasing agent out for 50 units, then that pays for the resident managers and then the rest of the property management staff. We have a central back office and we have centralized maintenance. So the resident managers aren’t typically doing maintenance activities, they’re doing leasing it like property management. It’s whatever they call it. So economically it’s neutral on the cost side. But as far as the model, typically our tenants stay about twice as long as national average. So the turnover rate is about 45%. We’re at about 22% on our stabilized. Wow. So part of that is the community development and the word of mouth advertising that happens. So once you go into a community and start to improve it, word travels and then good tenants refer other good tenants and you get a. Virtuous cycle there. So we’ve shared a lot of meals together. We’ve shared stories with each other of different heartaches. We we’ve walked together to life. We have Yusef, who’s a Syrian, with him and his family, still connected closely with, and he makes waffles every Monday. It’s the best waffle round. And so you can go over every Monday news that will be out there frying this waffle. We have Elizabeth from the Congo who arrested me and your family arrested very deeply with she’s now a member in our church. So we see her here for her regularly. There’s so many stories of the resident managers stepping into people’s lives in really extraordinary ways. As a hunter, for example, is a resident manager and apartment complex. It’s primarily Cubans and an elderly Cuban gentleman who he built relationship with ended up being taken to the hospital. It’s very, very serious for him. And so he called for his property manager to in his deathbed. And he wants to see his property manager. He’s he’s known for several months. And it’s just a beautiful example of these people living out there. Common.

John Coleman: That’s awesome. And it’s such a great representation of the church as well. You know, the real church, the global church, the body of Christ, where it is every single person on this planet, you know, from different backgrounds, with different experiences. And I think it’s so easy living in any community to get in a bubble of your community right here in my little part of Atlanta or in your little part of Kentucky. And yet because you’re able to live in these diverse communities with people relocating, dislocated from their places of origin and united only in this common experience or hopefully in their dedication to faith that you get such a cross-section of the world right. And of what the body of Christ can look like. How have your kids responded to that? I can imagine. It’s been an amazing experience.

Jimmy Wright: Yes, they’ve loved it. My oldest is 12, so it’s 12 down to five months. I don’t think they quite appreciate it as much as they will, I think, in the future. But yeah, they have friends from many different cultures and hear different languages all the time and are asking their friends questions about their home, where they’re from, and yet they love it. And as parents, we’re really glad to give them that experience and exposure that normally you pay thousands of dollars for, go overseas, but the nations are coming here and we as a church have to learn how to receive them.

John Coleman: That’s awesome. As I think through what you’re describing, I also think, wow, you’re just so invested in these communities. You have such a dedication to them. At the same time, you’re trying to build a business, right? A commercially viable business. Do you find there’s ever a tension there between the kind of care that you have for these communities and making this business economically sustainable and successful?

Jimmy Wright: Yeah, sometimes there is a tension. We have been really fortunate to be able to find property that we can preserve affordability and also have some quality to the housing. And we have a dedicated maintenance staff that’s really experienced and goes above and beyond to give tenants a good quality property. There are and we try to have we have as much grace as we can. There’s tension sometimes with a tenant doesn’t pay, then creates conflict and difficulty. Fortunately, there are actually the refugees. Immigrants are really committed to paying rent.

John Coleman: Yeah, I mean, that’s fascinating that I would have thought that refugee communities would actually have greater problems as tenants with delinquency, with financial troubles, with stability. And yet part of your model seems to be that those folks are actually really great tenants, that they’re thoughtful, that they pay on time that’s stable. Talk more about that. What makes these communities such good tenants and how does that feed into the model?

Jimmy Wright: Yeah, so the model works great with immigrants and refugees because what they’re missing is that cross-cultural peace. And a lot of times there’s misunderstandings and inability to communicate. They cause tensions and it’s not a lack of willingness to pay. And think about these people have come over from. Many of them have lived in tents or in conditions. And the first thing they’re going to pay this is the roof over their head. They’re really committed and family oriented. So they pay well. They are also are great workers by and large. So Homeland Security does a lot of checks. There’s no drug issues. They generally get employed here in Louisville. The market is like the UPS. It’s a big hub here. So there’s a lot of warehouse jobs that pay pretty well that translate to affordable living conditions here in Louisville. So it works well in this market. Also, they’re just generally overlooked because they come over with no credit history, no job, and then they’re putting their application down in a market that’s already short. Millions of homes now at this point. So they’re constantly beat out on paper.

John Coleman: That’s fascinating because it is it is this overlooked group for exactly the reasons you mentioned. They don’t fit neatly within the categories that we typically have for renters with a credit history, etc.. And yet all of the intrinsic qualities that would make them great partners as tenants in a community are their right, and they understand what it means to be in a more stable and safe environment and how valuable that is. You know, as people are listening, they’re probably wondering, A, how they could potentially get involved with the work that you’re doing at launch, or B, how they might serve immigrant communities or refugee communities in their own part of the world, wherever that might be, either here in Atlanta, for example, or also in other cities. You know, if someone were asking those questions, what would you say to them about ways in which they can support your efforts or potentially even stand up their own?

Jimmy Wright: Yeah, our effort. We’re constantly raising funds, so we’re always raising new funds. We also are looking for like minded property management so that as we’re getting ready to raise a large fund and we’re looking to different cities for property management help because it’s difficult to export property management, it’s a hard to take across the country. So we’re looking for that. I would just say that there’s many cities that have thriving refugee ministries that are connected to churches. We’re not special, unique in that way. Our innovation is tying all these things together. So feel free to reach out to me. I’ve spoken to many of them and I’m happy to connect you to different ministries.

John Coleman: That’s awesome. What cities are you moving into?

Jimmy Wright: Jimmy Well, we’re looking at Dallas right now. We’re looking at Raleigh, North Carolina and the Triangle area, actually, and also where the fund will take on it, probably another Midwestern city or two like the Midwest. It’s a great place for people to settle, and it’s where a lot of people go for secondary migration. So they land somewhere and then realize that they can’t afford to live there or they sort of resort and talk to each other. And the Midwest is growing a lot.

John Coleman: That’s awesome. Good luck in that expansion. I want to end with a couple of questions. You know, we always end and I’ll circle back to this in a moment with what you’re learning from scripture right now or what God is teaching you right now that might be relevant to our audience. Before we get to that, though. I would love to know, is there anything you feel you’ve learned in working with either a particular refugee that you all are serving or with these communities that you would want to share with others that you think could be valuable?

Jimmy Wright: Yeah, I’ve learned to be less ethnocentric. I’ve learned that I felt like my world and my culture was at the center of the map. And in working with refugees and immigrants and learning how they do things and how they approach things, how they generally think differently has really opened my mind and a lot of the people here at launch to new ways of thinking and really broaden our perspective. It’s been a real joy to work with them and I think we get as much as we’ve given in a lot of different ways.

John Coleman: One of the lessons I feel like I come back with every time I travel and spend place in a somewhere that’s culturally different than my own is just how much there is to learn from different ways of thinking, how different people operate around the world, and how ours isn’t the only way. Right. And in fact, there are ways other places in the world and other communities that are better that we could learn from. And being surrounded by that every day and this melting pot of these refugee and immigrant communities has to be a really powerful experience. I’m sure, as we talked about, it needs to some tension sometimes, but it’s also a really powerful experience.

Jimmy Wright: Many of the warm cultures that I’ve learned a lot from like so are and are super hospitable and put me and my family to shame and how welcoming and appealing giving they are and how, you know, there’s never a closed door. I think that we can learn in the States a lot from that.

John Coleman: And it’s a lot of this idea of welcoming the strangers among us. When you’ve been a stranger, it’s probably a lot easier to kind of empathize with the stranger in that experience that they’re going through. Must be so powerful about being disconnected from their communities and having to form a new community and must forever change the way in which you work with others and empathize with others. So, Jimmy, I want to conclude with something we ask everyone, which is just a lesson you’re learning in Scripture right now, or that you feel that God is teaching you that you’d want to share with everyone here.

Jimmy Wright: Yeah. Sort of two quick things. So my wife and I have been praying and thinking about loving our neighbor and who is our neighbor. And as we’ve been reading scripture and praying, it’s been on our hearts to care for widows, orphans, materially poor, and continue to care for the soldiers. We call them the wops, jokingly. But that’s throughout the Bible. You’re never going to go wrong caring for those groups that we’ve been praying and thinking through that. And then also, I’ve been reading Ecclesiastes recently and kind of thinking about the concept of beginning with the end in mind. So we’ve been thinking through both the winds of the widows and orphans and the truly poor and sojourner, and where do we want the end to look like in life and working backwards? Because there’s so much that is so distracting in life that I’ve come to think about a lot of distractions recently, and our world is just full of distractions. And I think if we’re not super intentional now where we’re going. And I think the Book of Ecclesiastes really comes with a fine point. And then if we focus on where we’re going, keep our eyes on Christ and our eyes on the target, then we’re able to eliminate distractions.

John Coleman: Jimmy, this was an amazing story. You’ve mentioned it a few times, but Jesus obviously told us the two greatest commandments are love, God, and love your neighbor. And it’s hard for me to think of a better way to do that than building communities like you’re building that reflect the love of God and that serve the people who are most important to Him and whom He loves and creates a community among these people who probably wouldn’t have thought of themselves as neighbors, but now are, and they’re neighbors with you. And I just think it’s really powerful what y’all are doing through Launch Capital and really, really grateful for the work and the service that you’re doing there. So thank you for joining us today and telling us about it.