Episode 41 – Innovating Impact in Opportunity Zones with Casey Crawford with Casey Crawford
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If you’re not already familiar with the name Casey Crawford, then you need to be. We had him on the FDE podcast a while ago and even then, we knew he’d be back.
Today is that day. Casey is here to talk to us about Movement Charter Schools and the work they’re doing in Opportunity Zones. As always, Casey’s enthusiasm is contagious, so we’ll let you tune in and hear for yourself.
Episode Transcript
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Casey Crawford: It was five miles to the nearest pediatrician, so most parents don’t have transportation on public transportation. It was five miles from New York’s pediatrician and the health care system came and told us that and said, hey, if you provide a space that will staff and we could really use that. The yeah, we’ll that for ten years. And I guess we saw the opportunity for partnership in these big infrastructures, education, health care, affordable housing. When you can work collaboratively with your state and federal governments, with power institutions that be, you can actually create some really synergistic impact.
And what we’ve seen, again, with a really nice, stable investment returns where it’s sustainable and scalable.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back, everyone, to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. If you’re not already familiar with the name Casey Crawford, then you need to be. We had him on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast a while ago and even then we knew he’d be back. Today’s that day. Casey is here to talk to us about the movement, charter schools and the work they’re doing in opportunity zones. As always, Casey’s enthusiasm is contagious. So we’re just going to catch it and let him take it from here.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome to the future of an Investor podcast. We’re not supposed to have favorites and guests on any of our programs. It’s just not fair. I mean, we’ve got maybe one hundred and seventy five different episodes now across the two properties, and that’s not even counting feature of an athlete. And actually, William, I think Casey is probably the only one would be crossover between all three. Right.
William Norvell: I’ve thought about it. Yeah.
Henry Kaestner: Right now. Yeah. We’ve never spent any time talking to Casey about his athletic career at all. I mean, Super Bowl and all that stuff. And we’re not going to know either, but maybe maybe for some other episode. But what I do want to mention is that the reason why if I were to have a favorite and clearly I can’t because we have so many children as you, well, it’s not fair to pick one up, but if I were to have one, one would clearly be Casey, because last time when we got on the phone with him, we just started riffing on one of my favorite podcasts that we’ve ever done, fill fishers with sharks about identity and talks about anxiety and effectively talks about the fact that, gosh, if you’ve got high levels of anxiety, maybe that’s a chance to really look at where your identity is. And Phil did such a good job of unpacking that. There’s a five minute segment there on Identi, maybe my favorite five minutes of any podcasts. And when we start off last time, Casey, I think appropriately said, dude, I liked it. I think I really liked it. But still, there’s some part of it just doesn’t resonate with me. And Casey, would you say?
Casey Crawford: I think it was haunting me because I so couldn’t identify it when I feel anxious often like I feel like the Lord continues to lead me into places where I’m very anxious and very hopeful that he’s going to come down and save me from whatever you just called me to us again, want to look to scripture. I see that same story playing out time after time with these guys that, you know, lift it up as heroes in the Bible, namely Jesus, who like I mean, the night before his greatest act of work is is in the guard against. And he just stressed out and seems like pretty anxious and seems pretty troubled and seems pretty stressed and stressed as he contemplates, you know, going and laying out his life.
Obviously, you know, half and and so I just I was processing that man that the Lord, I think, oftentimes has led me to these places where in my flesh I do have a lot of stress and maybe some anxiety. And it caused me it focuses me to, you know, look back up to him.
Guy Lord, in the physical, this makes very little sense. And I’m very nervous about it. I’m very anxious about it. It’s caused me a lot of stress. Like, you know, I’m thankful that you are above all of the physical world that you put me in.
And it’s you you have you’ve called me to it. You walk and see me through whatever that may look like. And so you’re that tension man of always being stressed and stressed and called into the battle. I think that God so often does not always want to be. It’s not in the cabana, you know, relaxing under the sun. It’s in the fight. It’s in the. Is it stretching, straining kind of place and that’s, I think, where the Lords will use those places to grow and grow. My hope and faith in him, I agree completely, and I think that that was great.
Henry Kaestner: So a lot of times will suggest that people listen to both of those podcasts now. And if you’re listening to this, you’re probably a part of the faith driven investor community. This is a faith driven investor podcast. And what we’re referring to is a Faith driven entrepreneurs series, maybe one hundred and thirty 140 of them. If you take those two together, the Phil Vishwa one and the Casey Crawford one, you’ll have a great foundation. And I’m not suggesting you stop listening right now and go listeners, but you might want to later. So today, Casey is on the fate of an investor podcast. And there are two things that I want to unpack with Casey. We talked a little bit, not nearly as much as I would have liked to last time about your emphasis on mentoring, because I think that mentoring has such a play as we make investments when we come alongside an angel investment opportunity point in the life of an entrepreneur. What is mentoring look like there? I want to talk about that and then I want to talk about something I think is super cool. We’ve unpacked this a bunch of times, just you and I personally, about how you have taken investment capital and relational capital and a love and commitment for inner city Charlotte to come up with something as super innovative. And one of the hopes that I have is that listeners to this podcast will come away and say, yes, I’ve heard about some really neat funds. I can make some investments there. And maybe, yes, I’ve heard about a marketplace where I can find different angel investments.
But this kind of concept of just how do I take all that I am and what might be unique and individual that God might place on my heart. Well, that’s been your answer. You haven’t just invested in index funds. You haven’t just invested in Eventide and Praxis and Timothee funds. As cool as they are, you’ve done something really unique and innovative. And so I want to get there on this podcast interview, too. But to do things in succession, let’s bridge off of that concept I’ve introduced, which is mentoring. You have this opportunity to mentor the entrepreneurs that you’ve invested in and comes from what you do, what movement, what is it you do?
Casey Crawford: So we try to think about think words are also very important. We try to think about phrases in language that’s relevant to culture and not just to Christendom, but really to the greater culture and mortgage. We have about four thousand employees we’re able to do about one out of every fifty home finance is now in America. So we’re kind of a broad reach and really engaged, lots of different khamees, a lot of different cultures around the US and a really intentional to think about the yes that while some of us are very much living out our faith day to day, that we want to do so in a way that’s when that’s engaging the culture in the culture. I understand. So we try not to use a lot of Christian and Christian words that frankly don’t resonate with even like many millennials who are themselves Christians. So one word that I grew up with hearing was discipleship. And then you should be a disciple maker and you need to be disciple and you need to be a discipleship. And over the last decade of being a business, you have lots of young folks in our company is a loving and engaging.
And about once a day I get an email or a LinkedIn or Facebook from somebody that says, Hey, Casey, will you? None of them said discipling everyone. I’m says, will you? And typically it’s mentor me. Will you mentor me? Will you mention mean?
I think millennials very much have it right and they understand the value of mentorship and maybe even worse than we used to call it, the value of discipleship, having someone that was older, more spiritually mature, kind of helped grow us in faith and understanding of God and who he is and how he loves us. Now we interact with that. And so we came up with Citizen Movement Mentor. We absolutely want to love and value our people. And if they want to grow spiritually, we want to provide them that opportunity to do so.
And so we created a mentoring group and it really came so many things that are borne out of God convicting me of sin, of sin in my life. And we put a lot of emphasis on physical wellness and kind of like loving the whole person in our community and company. I had a really great friend who I put into it who would be in the gym together like four or five days a week for a couple of years. You transformed by. But I was watching makes some kind of crazy decisions, like crazy decisions in his life.
I did not think lined up with the faith. The man that he had told me he wanted to be, the person he was in Christ and man, the Lord convicted me. I mean, I was considered judging him Amen he’s not doing this. He’s not in this these others. And Lord said if you put into him spiritually the way you put into him physically, we wouldn’t be having any of these problems. And I was walking by our gym when that happened, and he and I worked out four or five days a week together and I said, man, if we had that kind of time investment spiritually, where we were really spiritually being minted ourselves by the word and by those, you know, gross material, our faith, I think we’d be in such a different place and he’d be in such a place.
And so right then I called my say, hey, man, we’re still great friends. And, hey, look, I love you and I want you to know that you’re like the legacy you’re leaving. Here is one of mentorship. We’re gonna have a mentorship program that is dedicated, inspired by you and my lack of faithfulness to grow our folks spirits.
And so I hired a buddy of mine who had been in ministry for like 20 years. I played football with. And so I I need some help on some adult supervision in this because I’ve never put together a mentorship program. And Steve Macfarlan came in and he became our CTO or chief pastoral officer and he wrote a 40 week curriculum that our organization is completely voluntary, all volunteer based. And we have about five hundred folks now in our organization that are actively engaged in mentor groups. And as mentor groups go on for 40 weeks, you know, it’s a really in-depth commitment of four or five members of our community to just be open and vulnerable with each other and go on a spiritual journey to grow in their faith. And some folks come into it really far from God, maybe never setting foot in a church, not really knowing what this is, who he looks like, how I can relate to him. And some folks come into these groups having walked with Jesus for a number of years and a lot and being really close in that. And it has been true. I’ve been in small groups kind of my whole life. I can tell you doing them in the workplace has been one of the most transformative, powerful things I’ve ever done in my life, because the bottom line is we can’t hide from each other at work. And we have just seen, oh, my gosh, we’ve seen incredible life transformation happen in and through our mentor groups. And honestly, we wanted to keep it small because we didn’t know we were doing it. First of all, we just like 40 or 50 people and see how this goes and kind of iterate expand. We’ve had such a hunger for people that want authentic, intimate relationships with each other. And now during covid even more so and so, the groups have really exploded, expanded with about 20 other companies now that have picked up this mentoring program and done themselves. It’s not no rocket science to it, but I think there is a beautiful nuance of doing it in the workplace that makes it easier than anything I’ve ever done in the church. In church, I see maybe once a week, maybe four, five or ten minutes before the service that we all get up and sing and listen and don’t talk and go home at work. And we have 40, 50 hours a week where we are locking arms with each other. We’re providing for our families. We’re like living out, missioning, calling, or at least just our vocational occupation together. And we have some really deep beliefs. And you can see people laugh and see him crying and when they’re hurting. And so it’s so easy then to get into those really intimate mentoring groups where you can be open, vulnerable. And if you have some great material to go through, mean we just see people grow like crazy spiritually. So one of those powerful things we’ve ever done, that’s awesome.
Henry Kaestner: OK, so I want to get back to that here in a second. And I want to unpack a little bit more about what a chief pastor officer does when he finished writing it. Figure it out. Yeah, he’s still there. Is he still working? Oh, yeah.
Casey Crawford: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s yes, he is going in a thousand directions. I mean, again, he was doing church planting time in the Redeemer Network on the West Coast. And what he would tell you is that he’s disengaging more people now than he ever did as a pastor, reaching kind of more folks are really far from God because, you know, folks in greater degrees will not darken the door of church.
They will not go into a church, but they will come into work. And he kind of jokes nice. You know, I used to beg him to come to church for an hour week and then I’d ask him to give me money because now I get him for forty hours and we’re buying them a paycheck at the end of the week. So this is a great deal.
So yeah, it’s been really, really neat journey with Stephen, what he’s been able to bring to our culture.
William Norvell: I just want to comment on that real quick, because we talk a lot about investing and we spend a lot of time talking about money. Right. Of course, on this podcast, I got such an incredible story, though, of, you know, you get the resources you had, the organization you had and decided to invest in that direction. Right. Not taking your money and putting it in. But I don’t think that’s such an interesting thing. You know, as you peel back the parable of the talents, I think a lot of people can narrowly end up talking about rate of returns and money, but God gives us so much more stewards, relationships, employees, suppliers, all of these relationships. And I just love that you took that and said, well, this is a place to invest my time and my energy and the resources.
Casey Crawford: Well, also leverage to write what you think about money and how we’re going to invest. And I know lots of folks who I will share Stephen’s salary, but it’s not like the biggest salary in the company. Something I mean, he’s kind of paid like our middle level managers. And yet we have one chief master lost and almost four thousand employees. That’s awesome. Leverage the material he puts out. You got seen. It’s up on the Web. Any one organization can access it. And now, again, over 20 other organizations, we have churches that are using this stuff. And so as I think about Kingdome stewardship of resources, I’m always thinking about leverage and what is a great use of leverage. And, you know, we’ve had corporate chaplains of Americans. Those were neat and were good. They definitely serve a cool role. But, man, we found incredible leverage in a role like this because all of our mentor groups, they’re. Volunteer, nobody’s paid to lead a mentor like no one goes to church because, oh man, William, I’ll pay you X dollars to lead your small group. That’s not how it works. So, yeah, it’s been a great investment to your point and a great use of leverage and scale.
William Norvell: It’s amazing to think about that. And I know you’re telling us, right. Probably jumped on about the first day of school. First day of school. Yeah. Yeah. I got to hear about this. So you’ve also leveraged this into movement charter schools. Tell us. I came about where that is.
Casey Crawford: So, you know, we were founded really as a mortgage company in a bank. And when we got to do that and really my vision, you know, seven or eight banks had been at the epicenter of the greatest really acts of financial violence perpetrated against the world in decades. And I mean, they were known for a lot of darkness, a lot of greed, a lot of destruction in our nation and even reverberating around the world. What really convicted me on was like, hey, what would it look like if a bank actually became known for how it loved and serve the marginalized? Know how a bank. Yes, maybe the wealthiest of those are able to afford homes, were able to even have bank accounts, but they took the profits and reinvested it to transform the experience of the marginalized. Maybe those who weren’t customers maybe would never be customers. And I got really expensive. Man, that would be a cool, cool story. Lord, I would actually love to be a part of that. That sounds like something like you would do it. It sounded insane. Crazy. There’s a whole law deal with that. But part of that call did we kind of stepped into this was like kind of like to go into land. I will show you something that sounds exciting. But how how how am I going to take resources and reinvest them in ways to see your kingdom come and love the marginalized? And that’s a tough question to wrestle with an answer. And I talked about that with Aton. I’m sure lots of listeners grapple with that, how to steward these resources. And I mean, I think all of us that are followers of Jesus are going to say, hey, first and foremost, look, if the Lord calls you to something that’s like kind of a do not pass go, don’t you know where to go do that? Thankfully, I think with my background in football, I didn’t have the brains and some of you all do to really deftly kind of evaluate all these different investment options and how we’re going to do these cool ways to just kind of gave me some stuff. And the first thing you gave me was this concept of a charter school. And a woman had written her doctoral thesis on why Christian schools, the only inner city serving the report. Four pages later, I’m going to save you the reading. They run out of money. We run out of money. At some point, they run out of money. Christian schools work really well. The wealthy suburbs where parents have the means to afford them. When they’re serving the poor, they run out of money. But there is a new structure. This is like fifteen years ago. It’s called a public charter and it’s a faith based, not for profit, buys a building, buys real estate, leases it back to a public charter. The faith based not for profit can own the building control. What goes on in that building? Twenty four hours a day. Seven days a week. The return on the investment can be created by the lease with that public charter school, the public charter, to faithfully secular curriculum. If kids want to come in at eight and leave it to no problem, they will do so. However, you can offer faith based wraparound services in that same building that the school occupies before school, after school and on weekends. And I read that thesis and it was like a lightning bolt that went through me. I understood it. I got leverage, I got scale. I understood real estate. I knew that, hey, we’re in the business of financing homes. The first question people ask, what are the schools like with the schools? Like when you bring world class education to a neighborhood, you actually lift the entire neighborhood, you bring all the property values up. And we were Amen, you know, churches these days are kind of starting to understand that like a 20 million dollar building to be used three hours a week, not the greatest use of investment leverage and scale. And so, I mean, why not occupy another space that had a really redemptive purpose to it for the other six days of the week? Right. And so we kind of imagined that we could bring churches in to come and to leverage space for multiple uses, create a return on the real estate investment. So lift the neighborhood, have this wraparound redemptive purpose and provide this incredibly needed service to children in America of education. And so that was the vision. And it was, man, it was big and scary because this is when we were teeny. We had five, ten employees and was one man. But it seems like those are 10 or 20 million. How are we ever for this? Do it so many questions. And so yet, I guess it’s ten years later now we’re opening up our fourth school and today is our first day of school. So we just welcome four hundred new, bright, smiling faces onto our brand new elementary school. It’s kindergarten and first grade on the east side town in the middle of covid. And we are so incredibly blessed because every kid is suffering a little bit with their lives, have changed a little bit, but by far the most impacted or the most marginalized if you’re living at or below the poverty line, covid has devastated a lot of things in your world. About two thirds of our kids in school get their meals at the school, so we serve breakfast and lunch at the school. And for many mothers, the meals they count on every day. And so we’re literally we’re balancing two. We have our kids come in in person and be able to eat or do we risk exposure to this infectious disease. And so we have an incredibly courageous group of teachers and administrators who have an amazing church partner who built a big, beautiful church in there. And yet we welcomed in our kids for the first day of school, a brand new school. We have two others that are up and running already. The new one was today. So we’re thrilled to be in this business and thrilled with God has done it and through it.
Henry Kaestner: That’s amazing. That’s just a beautiful story. By the way. I love the fact that William and I are ascribed to being deft evaluators. I think I’m trusting you, man. I’m. Oh, yeah. Amen. Yes. No, thank you. That’s right. Maybe I should just own it. No, that’s definitely William is one of those one of the things that is really just trying to put myself in the shoes of some listeners right now who are saying, that sounds awesome.
Henry Kaestner: You’re suggesting that I can go ahead and I can take some investment capital and I can do a partnership with a public charter school. I can get a return on my investment by leasing the facility out. I can control some level of the of integration. And with that, I can do some amount of partnership with the local church. Sounds like you do that with local health clinics, et cetera. I don’t know if I have the same and maybe I shouldn’t say that. Same background, same resource.
Maybe they do just want to make it back. And I can assure you of that. That provides some great resources to go do this, no doubt about that. But you couldn’t have a less qualified background. I had there’s no teacher in my history that would have put money on me opening the school.
William Norvell: Well, what I love to I mean, I think this is such a big thing. I don’t think you’ve talked about this in the podcast. Right. I mean, I also hear in your story, I mean, you’ve got this vision, if you will, a long time ago. And one of my favorite quotes, I think it’s a tribute to Bill Gates is always most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in ten. And mean when you’re talking about that is investment, that is leverage. That is like watching something grow compounded interest every single day, working on it, making it a little bit better. Of course, I have to talk a bit about football. But, you know, Nick Saban, they don’t strategy is tee shirt for like years when he got there, was outworked yesterday. You know, it was just like to do a little bit better, just do a little bit better. And by that twelfth game, we’re going to not be tired in the fourth quarter. And I hear that it’s like, yeah, I didn’t do this all tomorrow. I didn’t have ten million dollars. When I set out on this journey, I took a step and and ten years later, I couldn’t even imagine what it would be. And it’s bigger than I even thought. And the Holy Spirit.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah. William, I think you hit on that really well with a great quote about overestimating the one year underestimating the ten year walk back through some of the details about how you got started. So I’m listening to this right now. I’m an investor. I’m in Milwaukee. I’m like, oh, my goodness. Of course, that’s a no brainer. It’s education, it’s health care, it’s the church. It’s all those different things. And I think maybe I know some different people to do it. But what was it? You did so some of the particulars, for instance, you know, it’s old big box and old came out, right?
Yes, yes. The real estate first, right?
Casey Crawford: That’s right. I mean, to billions when we start small, we had this big vision, was committed to it, but then started looking sort of survey research like you would in any investment register to understand who are the good operators in the space and how do we want to emulate these folks and could they make the numbers work and what that look like?
And I was blessed to find a model right in my backyard in Charlotte, North Carolina, that was making the numbers work. They were getting no outside investment. They had ninety five percent of kids were minority. Ninety five percent of kids were at or below poverty line. And they were having three hundred percent better academic performance than their demographic peers. And they were doing it at a surplus every year. So that surplus and they were paying down five percent. Note on that facility, too, because they got no investors and they said taken out a loan. And so I kind of looked at them well, and they’re actually if I kind of strip this out without thinking about any appreciation, they’re creating like a six and a half, seven percent cash on cash return right now, serving twelve hundred kids in an incredibly redemptive way. And that’s kind of like that whole picture to me was a great return. When I think about the six and eight percent, I think about the stability, I think about the fact that it’s really underpinned by federal and state dollars ought to do is attract the kids and educate them well is doing something for sure, but that’s a pretty predictable source of income. I like the underline credit. Right. I kind of think and then think about wow.
And now I get to Steward a thousand lives for 12 years and pour into these kids because we educate our kids year round because they need that to catch up. And I get the point of all year for 12 years when we can actually start to change the trajectory of lives. And here’s what gets really exciting to me when I looked at it. This is a big pull to plan. And if we can actually raise the bar with our schools, we can raise the bar for every school because the market chases excellence.
And so there are a hundred and some odd schools in Charlotte. I don’t have to own and build one hundred some odd schools is the kind of tipping point concept. If I build 10 that are having three hundred percent better academic performance than the rest, I believe we now have a platform from which to speak. By the way we build our schools. About a third of the cost of the traditional public schools are built. So we’re already having architects come and go. We you built that house. What, your cost per square foot. What? Because we share a parking lot with a 70 million dollar elementary school. We just opened up our lives. When we’re 70, it’s going to house the same number of kids. And so already we’re starting to affect and impact the way school is done just by setting a new standard of excellence.
So when I look at the capital return, the spiritual return and then the reverberating impact, the leverage that excellence creates in a massive space like education, public education, for me it was just easy, no brainer stuff of where to allocate resources.
Henry Kaestner: So what are you going to do with that from here? What’s it look like? You’ve got a playbook. Are you sharing it with others? Are you going to run?
Oh, gosh, we have zero secrets and we’re learning as we go. So our plan is through ten schools in Charlotte.
We think if and when we do ten, we’re having two or three hundred percent better academic performance than our demographic peers.
We’re doing it, by the way, for only 70 percent of the dollar. So the traditional public schools will get almost twelve thousand bucks per kid. We only get eight. So we’re doing we’re actually saving the state money on every single child we educate and doing it two or three hundred percent higher rate of academic performance, and then we’re making it a sustainable investment. And, you know, we didn’t talk about this much, but we’ve also partnered with our health care providers to carve out pieces of our school to bring health care to serve the urban poor. It is a major problem right now is being a big shift in Medicaid. And so we go, gosh, we already have this space. It doesn’t cost us that much to carve out twelve hundred square feet, 30, 600 square feet and bring world class doctors and physicians into the neighborhood to kids that otherwise have a tough time getting to our first school, it was five miles to the nearest pediatrician. So most of our parents don’t have transportation on public transportation. It was five miles from new the pediatrician and the health care system came and told us that and said, hey, if you provide a space that will staff and we could really use that. The idea was that for 10 years and I guess we saw the opportunity for partnership in these big infrastructures education, health care, affordable housing. When you can work collaboratively with your state and federal governments, with power institutions that be, you can actually create some really synergistic impact. And what we’ve seen, again, with a really nice, stable investment return where it’s sustainable and scalable.
And that was our real hope, Henries, that we could build these redemptive projects in such a way that they could attract major investment capital because we know the is going to allow us to do it. We’ve been able to invest about one hundred million dollars and we’re thrilled with that. And we might be another 50 million this year. We’re thrilled with that.
But this is a massive problem that way outstrips our balance sheet, whatever that might ever look like. And we’re going to need to attract capital to some of these problems. So we kind of our thesis was made if we build these in a way, they can create a four, six, seven percent return in a really collaborative, synergistic way. We can attract some major institutional capital that might just like the return. I mean, you go by CBS for a lower cap rate than that. So we go, hey, if we can do this and have major, major impact, it’s a scaled amplify lever that we can pull in the marketplace.
William Norvell: So it’s super compelling. What do you think are the barriers to seeing this scale? At one point, I guess you get to 10 schools and then maybe does the governor said there are charter networks out there that have gone pretty fast.
Casey Crawford: Like one hundred know there’s some great ones out in Texas that go like one hundred two hundred maybe. And that’s great. So we’re that’s what we’re on track to do.
William Norvell: I’ve done that with the faith integration, though. Have they done that with their partnership with health care?
Casey Crawford: No. But you know what? They’ve blazed the trail, right?
Like there was no one that had done one hundred networks when they started. So that was kind of their battle. How do we scale this to one hundred? Two hundred? And they’ve given us a roadmap for how to go do that with kind of scaling of the leadership. So now we’re just adding a few elements, right? We’re adding it. I mean, I would say they’re really critical because the faith can be a critical and integral one. But we John Machel’s right in our leadership curriculum for our kids right now. So we’re going to have like kind of Maxwells sort of five leadership academies where kids are going to get all his stuff growing up for 12 years in our life. And we’re teaching the kind of values we have an after school program that we kind of developed with the faith centered after school program that’s against totally voluntary. No one has to be leveraging the faith based programs they don’t want to. And then the integration with the different health providers is stuff that we’re learning as we go. We stole that idea from Ben Novarro down in South Carolina who worked with a South Carolina hospital system to bring health care in his school. So, yeah, we’re trying to add kind of our own contributions to the movement as we move along.
William Norvell: He’s one of the things I’m struck by when I hear your story. As you mentioned, Charlotte, that’s where your company is. Obviously, your your company has employees other places as well. But that’s kind of your hub. And you explain in your story, right, of God working three, working out with a buddy and convicting you of something else that sort of sponsors and moves into something else. And I’ve heard you tell stories before and you’re so good at it. That’s why we love having you on God’s giving you that gift. I’m really interested in how you encourage people in investing specifically to think through their story. Right. What God has put in front of them, because I think it can be overwhelming sometimes you can listen to a podcast.
Yes, I need to integrate my faith of my investing. Like, what does that mean, sell all my stocks? Like, put it into something good, take it out. I realize I mean, you’ve mentioned two or three huge concepts. Right. But like, they’re unique to you. And that’s exciting to me that I don’t think that story gets told a ton is it doesn’t happen. And it’s great to piggyback on other things sometimes. Yeah. But other times for you, like.
Casey Crawford: Yeah, right. Right. I am. We do. And I do love to piggyback and love to amplify. The great work that I feel like I’ve got is others too. We’re getting to do a little bit more of that now, which is amazing. I’ll tell you, a part of our story is fascinating. And again, I didn’t grow up doing that a whole lot, afraid of what or whatever, didn’t spend a lot of time fast and growing up. But man, the Lord Rusty in season right now, a company like everyone, a mentor said, hey, man, I’d love for you all to join the other Muslims fast and pray together because they were in such a season right now of it’s kind of overwhelming. Let’s make more business than we could imagine because the federal government is using the mortgage industry to subsidize credit across the United States. So every mortgage companies just have a. They can imagine a stimulus that appropriate for like is this really bad history of God’s people when they received their blessing giving it. And so we fast and pray. And I would say you even the to start the company was a time of fasting and praying and then in working and thinking about how am I supposed to reinvest redemptive Lee and, you know, kind of understand what this look like, redemptive banquets that mean to look like and may God has been faithful every time to kind of bring the right and next project to us. And I know that’s not everybody’s story. And I hope it’s not a frustrating answer for some folks. I can hear folks going, I’ve certainly been a great man. God didn’t drop in front of me. This answer the first I say, I mean, just being honest with yourself, did you really spend some time fasting prayer over it and really seeking in that that he would like? Because I’ve certainly sometimes gotten frustrated while Lord, you direct me and then good friends that love me would convict me that process again. So I’d really move fast and pray over your investments the way you would over any other decision that you’re really wrestling with in life, because I think it’s precious. That resource that he’s entrusted us with is so precious and there’s so much potential wrapped in those resources. I don’t think his believers were called to invest like the rest of the world.
And we really, I think, better be thinking about that maximum Kingdome impact that that treasure is going to have is maybe sometimes that an alpha return or whatever, but great. But it’s so that I can take that return and do something internal with it. Right. It’s always got to have some kind of internal purpose to the investment. So, yeah, that’s always been our hard that’s been our story and it’s kind of God’s to test me in this game. It’s not the type concept, but like I would just say testing and test and testing this really cecum bass, Craig and Resler beg him to show you what to do next. And then if he let you down, email case you your movement dotcom and I’ll I’ll go talk to him.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah. Yeah. So this has been awesome. A whole bunch of different things and a whole bunch of different things I want to talk about next time. I think we’ve already established fact there’s an opportunity to talk about your story as an athlete and how this all works in as well with this new property we’ve got. But we need that next time. And just grateful for your partnership. One thing that we always like to do in cash, I’m still on something from Williams script, so I’m going to hand it actually right back to William. William, what’s the one thing we want to ask of all of our guests?
William Norvell: I’m going to say that’s all I get guaranteed to me. I can’t believe you’re going to steal my heart. Do that. You can’t do that. Like, say, hey, we’re going to send the kicker out. But sorry, but this time we’re going to let the quarterback take that one, too. He just he’s been warming up. He looked good in warmups. We’re going to let him take this. It’s just an extra point. It’s just an extra point. You know, what’s the point we love and you just fasting and pray.
Gosh, really love you pointing us back to that. And I love your urge to gently. Have you really done it? You know, but with that, what we do love to close with, we love to watch exactly what you’re talking about in weird ways, how our guest and our listeners get linked together through the word of God. It’s amazing when we hear the stories of, wow, I just really needed that word from the Lord. And while your other words were fantastic and we want to hear what God may be doing through your life, through his word right now, that could be the season. It could be today, it could be months, maybe something you’ve been meditating on or something God divinely gives you right now in the scripture to tell our listeners, well, I’ll go.
Casey Crawford: Just two hours ago, we had our mentoring phone call and there’s a number of us that are kind of taking Mondays to fast and bread. And Steven failed that test. Will also I mentioned to is leading us through. OK, so we were Daniel for like, it’s never gonna happen his dream. And he’s asking Daniel, what does this dream mean?
And Daniel’s basically down payment. You’re full of pride. You take in all God’s glory. And he is about to humble you, buddy, in a big way and never assume here will not doesn’t have ears to hear.
He’s being told like humble yourself doesn’t have to hear. He’s going to keep taking guts. Glory. That was today of Suku processing that with community. And we talk about the mentoring group and the importance of the community in the workplace, a crisis in our community and how God uses that. And so I’ll share with the guys today that my first ever play in the NFL first ever play.
Maybe we’ll touch this the next with him first ever play kick off the ball game on kickoff return on the way, if you remember the way only do to allow you to do this anymore, just like human cannon fodder. I just run back and throw yourself into the other day.
Sorry, I’m on the wedge and I’m running up to protect our ball carrier and I just smash into this like human fire hydrant.
And when I hit them like everything’s black for a minute and I kind of woke up and shook my hands and like, instinctively grabbed his shoulder pads and ran, ran, ran and whistle goes, that’s all kind of off me.
And I mean, I was, you know, when you were playing, I was on I looked down on my shirt and a white jersey and he’s just covered just a big red bloody mess all over my jersey.
And now, mind you, he had just about knocked. Me out, turns out here broken my nose, not both snaps off of my chin strap first. I was so arrogant football player I shoved him looking at you bleeding all over me.
William Norvell: He says those exact words, the arrogance piece of that sorry.
Casey Crawford: I guess that is one area where I leave and now I run to the sidelines, of course.
And the train, which he’s made your nose broken. You’re an asshole to me, man. Sometimes in life don’t we just need a community to look at us and tell us how you got a problem?
Hey, you never, never needed it. You couldn’t hear it from there. My dad was like, Anchorman, you got a problem. It’s all over. We all see it bleed all over you.
You’re full of pride, you feel, and God would stop it. And then the beauty of a crisis to me in the workplace, I think, is that we have those other brothers and sisters that can come around us like let and know we got a mess. I right. We’ll take care of and clean up. And that’s been the greatest gift I’m sitting in. I was almost in tears looking like 40. My teammates were just coming alongside the fast and the crying to see the Lord encourage each other and challenge each other and make sure that we are being humble and given God all the way.
That is his and his alone only he deserves that. None of us rob from that. And I need that in my life. And I think what God really revealed to me is just the power of that in the workplace.
Man, when we can have brothers and sisters in Christ, the workplace is weird and 40, 50, 60 hours a week with and they’re point things like that. That is an incredible, incredible gift.
Henry Kaestner: Indeed. Indeed, it’s a great word always says Casey Yurok, thank you for being our friend and our partner in the overall mission and really going to be fascinating to follow what you do over the next year. I think that you are an exception maybe to what Bill Gates has said. I think that you’ll be able to get those things done. And if there’s anything we do to help you to get that and then have you back on the show, if you have, God might use you to not only transform the mortgage industry as he’s done through you, as you’re intentional about giving him the glory, if he might use you.
And some of those that I know that are friends and partners with you on the real estate side to do the same thing with real estate investing in education investing, that’d be an amazing, amazing thing. So continue to want to watch your story. Grateful for you. Thank you, brother.
Casey Crawford: I love you guys. Honored to be on here. Man, it is so much fun. Just walk this out with you guys. So glad we got connected.
Henry Kaestner: Thank you so much for joining us on today’s show. We’re very, very grateful for the opportunity to serve the larger faith driven investor community. Hey, the best way for you to stay connected is to sign up for our monthly newsletter at faith driven investor Doug. And while you’re there, we, of course, want to hear from you. We derive great joy from interacting with many of you. And it’s been very rewarding to see people join the discussion now from all around the world. But it’s also very important to us that you feel like this is your show and that you’ll help make it something that best equips you on your journey, one that you’re proud of and one that you’ll share with others.
This podcast, it wouldn’t be possible without the help from many of our friends. Executive producer Justin Forman, program director Johnny Will’s music by Carl. Well, you can see and hear more of his work at Summer Drugstore.com and Audio and editing by Richard Bahle of Cornerstone Church in San Francisco.
