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David Batstone’s entrepreneurial journey begins at his favorite restaurant in San Francisco. As he recalls, he loved the tandoori chicken, but he didn’t realize that he was eating in the center of a human trafficking ring that had brought over 500 teenagers from India into the United States for the purpose of forced labor. 

A journalist and venture capitalist, David couldn’t reconcile the fact that human slavery was happening in his own backyard. So, he decided to do something about it. The result is Not for Sale, a book where he breaks down how business can fix the $31 billion human trafficking epidemic.

Today, he’s with us to share that journey of how God opened his eyes to the brokenness in the world and gave him a vision for how to fix it.

Episode Transcript

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David Batstone: Like I thought, look, I was at the end of a river pulling bodies out as they were drowning and flailing, and that’s compassion and something is very important. Part of my spiritual journey is to practice compassion, but at the same time is wisdom, and that is to look upstream and say, well, how are these bodies falling in? Like, what are the systems and what are the people, the demand behind it? How do we solve the problem there?

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We’ve got a special guest today, David Batstone is in the House talking about the ministry that he started with regards to human trafficking. And, David, it’s great to have you on the program. Thank you very much for being here.

David Batstone: It’s a real pleasure to talk to some brothers about my heart.

Henry Kaestner: So there’s so much to talk about with what is on your heart. And I want to get into that, provide our listeners a context about the industry and the problem that you’re looking to solve and how you as an entrepreneur have gone about solving that problem. But before we do that, love to start our show every time by asking our guests who they are, where they come from, what their faith journey has been, and really bring us up to that moment in your life when all of a sudden this became a big, big deal for us. So what is it like growing up brings up to speed?

David Batstone: Well, you know, I grew up in the Midwest and I grew up in a evangelical background, the Plymouth brother. And maybe some people who are listening are familiar with the Plymouth Brethren. But it’s a small community that very much values the scripture and looked for ways to implement it in the life of the church and in the community around. And I went I went to Westmont College, which is a Christian evangelical school. And in Santa Barbara. Really? Really. Yeah. And I went on to get an objective and studied theology and have a Ph.D. in theology. And so, you know, today I’m a venture capitalist and teach business at the University of San Francisco. I don’t know if I’m probably the only business professor in entrepreneurship that has a Ph.D. in theology.

Henry Kaestner: Then you may be the only one. The only one I know Rusty.

Rusty Rueff: I don’t know any others either. So whether or not that you’re the only one, we’re going to give it to you today. You got that badge, you know.

David Batstone: Yeah, a dash. My dreams. I had one thing I stand up for.

Henry Kaestner: OK, so tell us I want you to take us back to the restaurant that you used to frequent that you later found out was a center of human trafficking. So this is a restaurant, the United States, correct?

David Batstone: Yeah, it’s in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I was a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley at the time, and I was also a professor teaching University of San Francisco. So it wasn’t like I was looking for another gig, Henry. I mean, you know, my life was full and it was just a shock to learn that my favorite restaurant I would go to regularly. You know, I love the Italys and Poppadoms and Teriyaki Chicken. Yeah, but I learned that this restaurant had trafficked young girls from the ages of 14 to 19, over 500 young girls. Oh, my goodness. Into the San Francisco Bay Area for the purpose of forced labor. First in this restaurant, they were being forced to work against their will and then they’d be taken out the brothels and fruit and vegetable fields in California. I didn’t discover it and that was part of my journey. The trafficker kept these young girls and fifteen to twenty in an apartment and there was a natural gas leak that killed one girl and injured others. And when the police showed up, they said, we need to get you away from the gas and we’re more worried about him and pointed to the trafficker. And so front page of my newspaper, I read it and I’ve been going to this place for years. And I was like, how could I not see this? How could have been blind to it? And it’s really funny how, you know, when we often say we pray that God would give us some wisdom or teach us a path or open a door. And I could have changed my philosophy on this because I think God is always putting things in front of us. It’s how we respond to those things. That’s how it builds our character, the way we respond to things that God puts in front of us. It’s not like we need to somehow go out and find it. It’s there. And I can’t tell you why. That was a defining moment of my life. I had to do something about it because I’m sure many other people went to that restaurant. I said, well, that’s a very bizarre experience. But for me, it was a calling. I had to respond to it.

Henry Kaestner: That’s incredible, the size and scope, and it’s just right there, I think that when we think about human trafficking, we think that, yes, we’ve heard about girls coming from Nepal or India, but we generally think that they I don’t know, they go to Amsterdam or they go to some other places. It’s far from us. But that many girls, it’s not two or three or 500 through a restaurant in San Francisco. Reasonably civilized city. That’s incredible.

David Batstone: I’m shocking. So I should call in other people that, you know, if you heard of this and some friends in L.A. said, well, yeah, we just had a sewing factory in East Los Angeles where 112 girls from Thailand were imprisoned and forced to sew clothes every day. And they would then be locked into rooms in the same facility where they were sewing clothes. And then I called friends in the Texas area, Houston and Dallas, and they would tell me of these bars or cantinas where young girls would be lined up with a numbers printed on their chest and a man would come to get a beer and then point to number 30 for who he wanted to buy for a night or weaker. And it was just, you know, just so shocking to me that this was a part of, you know, my country and my reality that I felt like, OK, I need to really understand this. So I took a leave of absence from my university and my venture capital bank. And I went around the world for a year, follow the money. I went from San Francisco to Bangalore and went from Los Angeles to Thailand. I went from Houston and Dallas to Peru and Guatemala. So, you know, basically follow the money to understand this trade in people.

Henry Kaestner: So I was going to ask you, so you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve been a venture capital. You understand it. Entrepreneurs solve problems. You see that there’s clearly a problem. But instead of doing something right away, you say, I want to fully understand the problem, let’s follow the money. So what an incredible adventure that must have been. Oh, you know, I wish that there’s a documentary filmmaker along with you as you kind of leave San Francisco in this restaurant and then you go to Bangalore and you’re in the back alleyways. So you spent a year trying to understand the problem, following the money. And at some point in time, you’re like, I got it. There’s a big problem. I think I have a sense about how I might address it. What was that?

David Batstone: It’s funny how we have an accepted paradigm of how you approach a concern, whether it’s social, environmental. And I’m sure everyone listening today has something that they really care about, whether it’s malaria or global warming or extreme poverty. So it’s very funny, though, that many of us, when we attempt to address these problems, we open our heart and we shut down our brain. At least that’s what I did, because here I was a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. And when I confronted with this problem of trafficking, you know, over 40 million individuals living in some form of forced bondage or slavery, what I did is I started a bad business model called a nonprofit, a charity. And now I do want to clarify, I don’t think charities are all bad or wrong or they’re foolish, but they are not sustainable and they’re not scalable. And if you really want to address a problem of the magnitude we’re talking about, you need to develop a business model that has the scalability to it to actually solve the problem. So what I did is I set up a nonprofit and we would go to churches and rotary clubs and schools and, you know, we get donations and then we build a shelter. And I mean, we were good at it. It was fine. It was great. But it was small and it was very difficult to build something that would actually, I believe, solve the problem.

Rusty Rueff: But you did find a way to release the talents that God had given you. And one of the things I find fascinating about your story, and I think it should be enlightening to all entrepreneurs. And I remember, you know, we were much younger than when you wrote Not for Sale, when you and I first met years and years ago in San Francisco. But I was impressed then and I’m still impressed now that you not only had the heart for it, but as you started to allude and get into. You also had some skills, some talents that you’d been given that all you needed to do was sort of look inside of yourself and say, wait a minute, I can do something with this. And you had these journalism skills. That you uncovered, so take us through that and then take us into, you know, what you ended up doing with those writing skills.

David Batstone: I appreciate that, Rusty, because it is I think many people listening. They say, well, how could I do? I like to do something more meaningful. I’d love to be involved and say works that that would bring about a benefit for the world. And oftentimes they don’t think about, well, what do I know best and who do I know best and what would be the process I would follow. And I guess I started to look at the fact that in Silicon Valley, if I wanted to build an enterprise, what I do is I’d find the best capital, the best talent and cutting edge technology. And I would build a company based on that that would be profitable and would reach internationally. And in the case I said, well, what if I took those same skills, that same kind of formula, and I applied it to human trafficking? And the first thing to do is bring together the best talent, so I got 50 people who, you know, the smartest people I knew, the most successful, you know, the founder of Twitter was one of them. I got the founder of the largest health care online company. I got a you got a baseball player for the San Francisco Giants, like people who are successful. And I said, look, help me come up with a business model or a business plan for a very specific situation. And this situation is in the Amazon of Peru, my nonprofit not for sale. We build a shelter for young kids coming from native or indigenous communities in the Amazon. They’re being trafficked into Lima. Help us come up with a business model. So we had a 24 hour period where we brainstormed and had a competition. The winning idea was to start a company that would source the wonderful assets or ingredients that come out of the Amazon. These super herbs like Mocha Mocha suddenly pay a fair wage, create an economic platform that would provide long term security for the native communities, put into a beverage, sell it in mainstream grocery stores and return profits back to those communities. It’s a wonderful, beautiful idea. Unless you’re the guy on Monday morning that now has to start this company, that’s a beverage. Right. And I knew nothing about beverage. And so, again, I thought, OK, what would I do if I was in Silicon Valley now? What would I do if I was just another charity? Well, I go and find the best beverage maker in the world who could use these herbs and put them into the beverage and make a wonderful product. And that’s what I did. I just found the best beverage maker in the world, hired them, paid them what Coca-Cola would have paid him. I didn’t pay them a nonprofit salary in equity in the company. And, you know, fast forward six years. We are now the number one health beverage in America. Rebel groups extract Barberi leaves rebel, and we have now returned over a million dollars back to those communities through our profit sharing. We’re sourcing ingredients in three countries now and we choose the ingredient based on the most impact, not the cheapest ingredient. But where will we have the most impact on poor communities? So over 30000 families, one hundred twenty thousand people, more or less, are being empowered in poor, rural, exploited communities. So to me, this was like a revelation. It’s taking the same principles and mission that I had a nonprofit, but embedding the DNA into a enterprise, a for profit enterprise.

Rusty Rueff: Well, I got to give you a plug, because unless I’m wrong, Serena Williams is on your side, right, with Rebel, right. I see her on television all the time.

David Batstone: We got we’re fortunate. We have so many. Rubirosa is a great actress. She’s a bit one of our big ambassadors, Michael Franti, who’s a musician. So we get a lot of actually actors, musicians, artists who come to us and say, is there any way I could be an ambassador for your brand? And that’s the great thing about, you know, doing well by doing good. People want to be a part of it.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, that’s awesome. So it reminds me of and we all know the story of Esther did write in the book of Esther. And Mordechai says to her, you know, is it that you’ve been called for such a time just as this? Do you feel like God specifically prepared and equipped you to make the headway into this sort of massive, let’s call it a massive force of evil in this world? Did you have that Esther moment?

David Batstone: Oh, very much so. You know, coming out of that experience of understanding that in my own backyard was this trafficking of hundreds of young girls from Bangalore. I just could not walk away. It was a calling. And to have walked away would have meant for me a betrayal of a character that I was being called to fill. And, you know, I suppose even today, now, 15 years later, people ask me, well, gosh, know, aren’t you just being overwhelmed by this evil or by the enormity of the problem? And I say, you know, for whatever reason, I’m more inspired by what we do achieve and the people we can rescue and save and the empowerment that does happen, that inspires me more than the enormity of what we haven’t done. And I think once you’re on that calling, then your inspiration comes through your daily walk and not through some kind of expectation of how much of it you’re going to solve.

Rusty Rueff: So I’m going to encourage everybody to jump on Amazon and go back and get that book not for sale, because it tells your story and it tells the story of the beginnings of what you tried to conquer. If you were writing an epilog or a new chapter for not for sale, what would it say right now?

David Batstone: I would say I’d say it’s the art of being a rebel and of course, is the name of the first company we started. We now have 10 companies, by the way. And I could talk about some of those if you’d like. But the art of being a rebel, meaning that we’re so much through social media or through advertising or just through our environment that we live in, that we’re so, you know, told to what makes us valuable, what we should consume or what career we should pursue. And to be a rebel, anything in the best sense is to hear a different voice, to follow a different path. And that requires us to have a strong spiritual grounding that we realize that where the world is going and what is named as what is valuable, what will make me a success may not be what’s true for my character. And so I think the art of being a rebel is about choosing a path that you’re going to follow, regardless of what the rest of the world tells you.

Henry Kaestner: So I’m fascinated by, you know, we’ve been around the space long enough to know that there’s this thing of impact investing, and so there are social entrepreneurs that come out of programs like Praxis and others that really have a desire to really make an impact on communities in many cases, work with them on the business side, which I love, which is there’s injustices in this world. Yes, there’s an opportunity for philanthropy. But in terms of providing dignity rather than dependency, there’s a place for the markets in all of this. You teach about social entrepreneurship in innovative entrepreneurship in San Francisco. I’m wondering what you do as you take a 19, 20 year old student that is starting to understand the enormity of the injustice in this world. They’ve got a heart for these things. What is it that you do as you train them, as you give them this kind of alternate imagination and you equip them? What do you tell them? How do you get them trained up?

David Batstone: Hmm. What I find my students is they are looking for a bridge to tie together with their heart. And talent is what they’re really passionate about and their expectation of creating a life that is, you know, financially responsible and maybe having a family. And and they feel like they have to choose between the two. And probably the most helpful thing that I do in my classroom is to help them understand that their skills are needed all over the world. And there’s incredible opportunities for them to deploy investment or accounting or, you know, their entrepreneurial passion in environments that are basically untouched. And so there’s so much opportunity in the world today, the way that we’re rewriting our energy systems and the way that we’re going to be moving into new economies of transport. And this is every area health care is going to transform that. I would say to my students that even though you’re getting the message that, wow, it’s almost like you’re nineteen eighty four, you wish you joined the Beatles, it’s over. There’s nothing new and there’s nothing in the truth of the matter is, is that you’re living in the most exciting moments in history and you can use your skills to build livlihood not only for yourself but for those who typically are being left out of the world economic picture today. So I really do encourage them to think bigger than simply can I get a job at Goldman Sachs or Apple?

Henry Kaestner: So I think that you’re probably finding this new generation is really, really open to that in a way, not the to options weren’t. Do you ever see there’s a book that we all know called When Helping Hurts by guy named Brian Fisher, talking about some great intentions? And what are things like that might go wrong? What are the unintended consequences? Are there examples when impact investing or social entrepreneurship might also go wrong, where somebody comes at it with the right intentions, wants to really address an injustice, but there’s something that they don’t see that ends up maybe even doing more harm than good. And I shouldn’t focus on the negative side because there’s so much positive that can happen. And yet there are probably some examples where it’s done poorly as well.

David Batstone: Absolutely. The best way to talk about poor examples is start with my own life. You know, when I first started working in social entrepreneurship, I was in Latin America and I tried to create economic opportunities for poor communities and teach them agricultural skills or teach in the show or whatever skills training. And you often find this in the nonprofit or ministry world that we train people to do a job. But some of that we never think about is, well, if there’s no ecosystem, if there’s not a environment where then there’s investment opportunity or there is a supply chain or a demand for the products or services, then really you’re equipping someone for a very disappointing and frustrating life. And I find this is not only within a training program, but say, in well hearted people who want to teach people in Africa how to grow mangoes better. OK, but how do you think about the system that allows for that success, whatever investment that might be for that community? And so I suppose from the start, you need to think about both the demand and the supply and the ability to use your investment in a way that those communities can actually begin to build out an economy and a platform that will sustain itself over a long period of time. Unfortunately, I find that many social impact enterprise groups. What they do is that they have a very, you know, three to five year investment and then it dries up and it goes away.

Rusty Rueff: So, David, I want to go a little deeper into sort of the faith journey that you took. Right. That at the time when you said, I’m walking away from all of this and I’m going to travel around the world and I’m going to go solve or I’m going to try to solve or try to understand sex trafficking, that’s as much of a faith journey is sitting there going, I’m going to solve world hunger. I mean, because it’s a big thing, like you were trying to put your arms around so we can. Call that a faith journey, but let’s also call it a faith journey, you know, with your faith. Take us through that journey that God put you on and share some of the stories, maybe ups and downs of your own personal faith journey as you embarked on this.

David Batstone: You know, it’s really interesting, Rusty, that we like to make heroes out of people when we see the whole narrative. So while it’s very heroic, but everyone’s journey, whether it’s a hero’s journey or not, starts with just one step. And that’s the hardest step, is to say I’m going to leave my security and my comfort to do something. And it it’s scary to take that one step. And I honestly was not thinking of anything beyond, you know, I need to understand how this was happening in my backyard. My one step is I’m going to go to India and Thailand, follow the trail of trafficking from California to Asia and just understand it. It was curiosity. And also, if I made it visible, I was going to go back to my venture capital firm at my university. But what happened is that you made that one step. Then I met this woman who in northern Thailand, she had rescued twenty seven kids who were in karaoke bars being forced to sell their bodies to male clients. And she was living out in an empty field without any resources. And so I went, oh, man, OK, I have a second step. I’ll take. I promised I would build her a home. That was OK. Now I’m going to, you know, write this book about my understanding of what we’ve learned and to build a home. Then I’ll go back to my life. And that just keeps cascading. So, you know, the fact that not for sale does what it does today, if you think, oh, my gosh, it’s wonderful, what you do is that, you know, that I’ve just been stumbling my way toward it now. You know, there’s been a lot of ups and downs and things that I wish we had done differently. And, you know, one saying I learned and gone I really would love is that we don’t mind stumbling because it makes us move forward more quickly. And I think that’s probably than my journey is. Like I’d like to say that there was clarity, but probably reluctantly. I took each step and then you look back and say, well, God really blessed that narrative. God bless that journey

Henry Kaestner: or take us forward in a second to some of the other ventures that you’re involved with and energy and a number of different projects. I want to go backwards, though, first, which is to go into this kind of atwar about understanding the larger ecosystem. And I’m compelled not only about the stories of where these girls come from, but also through to the demand side. And part of me is just thinking, oh, my goodness, if you can have prostitution where people have numbers on their chest and dozens and dozens of girls being sold in the field, what role does the demand side have in the equation on trafficking?

David Batstone: Well, it really is. The preponderance of the problem is that there is a demand for either the use of someone’s labor or their body for someone else’s pleasure or someone else’s greed. So, you know, after five years of my first five years of not for sale, Henry, what I felt like I thought like I was at the end of a river pulling bodies out as they were drowning and flailing. And that’s compassion. And something is very important. Part of my spiritual journey is to practice compassion, but at the same time is wisdom, and that is to look upstream and say, well, how are these bodies falling in? Like, what are the systems and what are the people, the demand behind it? How do we solve the problem there? And I suppose I don’t see there’s enough of that being done within the anti trafficking movement to actually solve the problem of the area of demand and not only the supply problem, that is people who are the consequences of these actions. So I think it’s really important to understand that demand side. And, you know, it’s everything from factories to agricultural fields to brothels to fishing industry, fishing boats. I mean, it’s embedded in so many systems that one thing that I felt as a business entrepreneur, I’m probably the best thing I could do is rather run after every one and kind of try and stop. All of the negativity was to start creating models of desire in the world that I wanted to live in. I’m sure other people want to live in as well. Start designing companies where there’s dignity and goodness at the core of the company in the DNA of the company, thereby inspire other young entrepreneurs to be able to want to live that life and pursue those dreams.

Henry Kaestner: So I want to get into that. But one last thing, the deterrent part, because I’m just thinking right through the demand side. I mean, the demand for lust and all that stuff, I mean, is biblical. We all know it. We all know that it’s inside of us. I’m wondering, you know, some number of people have there’s a debate about whether the death penalty is a deterrent or not. I wonder how, though deterrence enters into the demand side of the equation with sex trafficking, is somebody listening to this? Can you lobby your legislator to be able to have stricter rules? Does that even work? Do you find that rules are just lax enough and that just authorities kind of look the other way even in America, does deterrence and punishment work or is that just a myth?

David Batstone: Deterrence is effective and I think there’s different levels of deterrence. One is simply prosecution and rule of law that actually takes seriously the practice of same sex trafficking. I remember when we first started not for sale. I mean, it was hard to get, you know, local police officials and FBI to believe the extent of the problem in our American cities. And, you know, I’m not trained as a law enforcement officer, but I my team and I, we would have to go undercover with a camera and go into these brothels and massage parlors and the like and then take that footage to law enforcement. And it’s changed now. It is a much more of an awareness and a much more of a compliance with that in the United States at least. But so that’s one of the other is I think probably the biggest deterrence is the public shaming that comes from being exposed. It’s really interesting. I’m in Sweden right now. This interview in Sweden, what they’ve done is they put in newspapers or on billboards and shaming the johns and the demand side. And, you know, all too often it’s the victims is the young women who are kind of shamed or put into the spotlight. And, you know, it’s remarkable the level to which that puts another fear of the social community even more than in many cases, just the being arrested.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. OK, so I want to move forward towards your equipping some of these entrepreneurs to solve more problems, to create these businesses where business is done the right way. You’ve got just business and not for sale was maybe your first foray into that, but you’ve not stopped there. You’re in Sweden right now on an energy deal. Walk us through some of the different projects you’re working on.

David Batstone: Certainly, you know, part of this was it’s an ongoing evolution of understanding how could we scale the solution? And that’s really the objective here is not for me to be able to come on your show. And I could tell you three stories of young women or boys. And that’s a fantastic again, I don’t want to undersell that, but is being able to say, look, now we can impact millions because it’s the size of this, the scope of that. So, you know, I had a great entrepreneur come to me and I’m always looking for entrepreneurs. And he said, look, I have this idea of being able to assist big companies with mobility. And so if you look at the big tech companies or the big pharmaceutical companies or retail companies, they’re hiring people from all over the world. They want talent and they’ll move them around the world. So they’re in mobility. And so I thought about this, you know, look at all make an investment in your company and I’ll get behind you to be able to get the Apple, Facebook, Googles, Nike’s, and those are all our customers today for this company. But you have to take one percent of all the revenue. We generate one percent of the gross revenue and dedicate it to those people who are in mobility, refugees, human trafficking victim. But they don’t have those services. They don’t have someone to help them say when you come to a new city, find a place for your children to go to school or find a dentist. And so basically, we created a concierge service that now is global. This company, we’re the only investors in it, and it’s called velocity. And now we do have Apple, Facebook, Google, Nike, Twitter, all the companies, Nike, Walmart, Starbucks, they all pay us to take care of their employees. And what we’re doing is we’re taking some of that revenue directly to those communities that also are in deep need of mobility. Security.

Rusty Rueff: That’s very cool. That’s actually inspiring, David, that you’ve extended what you’ve done into, you know, organizations that we all know that needed to be shook at their core to say this is something important. And, you know, to that point, you know, on this podcast, you have the ears now of thousands of entrepreneurs, Faith driven entrepreneurs. What would you like to tell them about how they can, even in the earliest stages, you know, use their businesses to do more than just create a bottom line profit? And how would you like to see Faith driven entrepreneurs, you know, solving these types of problems?

David Batstone: I’ve been involved in a lot of faith driven entrepreneurial events. You know, there’s great things like businesses, Mission BAM and The Lion’s Den. And, you know, I could go on and on with faith driven organizations. And I guess my message continually to them is you’re not thinking big enough. You know, it’s almost as if it’s a ministry that we’re stamping a Bible verse on top of or some kind of a mission. But, you know, it’s not about transforming the business. And what I want to see is that we transform business, that we actually redeem the business model to bring about goodness for the community. And that requires thinking, you know, with grabble, my goal is to compete with Coca-Cola. Right. With velocity. I want to be the number one mobility company in the world. Doesn’t sacrifice my mission. My mission is at the heart of all that I do. But I have to think bigger. And I think entrepreneurs are making. Or God too small, they’re making their mission too insignificant and they’re not saying that, you know, this is a warrior’s test, is a lions task, and it’s to start to build the best companies in the world, but with faith and values of the center of the company.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, we had Tony Evans on the podcast recently, the pastor of Cliff Fellowship Bible Church in Dallas, and he had a great sort of calling out to Faith driven entrepreneurs, to King Demised. Their business kingdom is your business, you know. And as I listened to that and I listened to you, sort of what I read into all of this is, look, the core of what we do, we might be out there running a agricultural business or cleaning business or a technology business. But if we’re faith driven entrepreneurs, you know, we are to give back, take our talents and our skills and kingdom is our business, but also to find these areas where we have the skills, talents and maybe resources, maybe financial resources that we need to put to help those that can’t be helped. And I’m going to turn this over to Henry to close this out. But I want to continue to encourage you, David, and thank you for the work that you’ve done in such an important area that’s happening all around us that, you know, we don’t see. You had to look into the shadows and you had to go into the shadows to find it. And I appreciate the courage and the journey that you took to get there.

David Batstone: Well, thank you. I appreciate it, Rusty. You know, now my being in Sweden today, I think the other thing that spiritual vision gives you is the audacity to think that you can start to kingdom eyes the world we live in. And, you know, right now I’m really compelled not only to the work of my own people and dignity of people, but also the planet. And how do we rethink and redesign the world so that the planet is something that has the same dignity. But God made it with, you know, working with all the big car companies, Tesla, GM, Ford, for the next generation of car. We’re recycling all the batteries. We’re extracting the minerals that they need for the batteries. But it’s done all with a new kind of technology that is going to just really remarkably change the way that transport is done so that companies, American Battery Technology Company, we also have a hydrogen company. So rethink the world, redesign it, put values at the very center of it

Henry Kaestner: by saying, that’s awesome. So much more to go to. I think that we could do an episode on each one of those ideas about how you’re looking to solve for them, how you’re tracing the money and the problem, just like you did with child trafficking and understanding how the supply chain works and things like energy and how it needs to be redeemed and what does it look like right down to the end user. So we’re going to come back to that. For now. We want to ask you, as we do all of our guests, what you’re hearing from God through his word and doesn’t need to be this morning. But it very well could be. But maybe the last week or last couple of weeks now, as one of the things that unites all of our guests together is God is at work. One of our guests has said Auslan is on the move and he’s very much at work. And what’s your sense with all that?

David Batstone: I’ve been drawing recently to the Proverbs, I’ve been reading a lot of the proverbs. And one of the problems over the last week I’ve been thinking a lot about is Proverbs 17. Twenty two about a cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. And I just think about what do I surround myself with, what is a cheerful heart? You know, the people around me and I guess in a very glib way of saying is that toxic people really do dry your bones, cheerful people, people who have a good heart, people who are positive, they inspire you. And, you know, I just don’t think a lot about time is precious, relationships are precious. And to surround yourself with people who are hopeful and encourage you, they want to see you succeed. And, you know, if people are a negative force in your life, get rid of them, walk away because they never get better. I know it sounds harsh, but really it’s about building communities of hope and inspiration and faith.

Henry Kaestner: David, thank you very much for being with us. Great joy. Thank you for being one of those people that is a positive force in the midst of all this going on with covid being able to look at some of the challenges that can be solved and getting out there and doing it creatively and then also inspire the next generation through your work in school. That’s super cool as well. Thank you.

David Batstone: Thank you very much. Entrain Rusty really been good to connect with you today.

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Before starting Access Ventures, Bryce Butler was the Executive Director of the BlueSky Network, a venture philanthropy family office in Southern Indiana with activities around the world in microfinance, clean energy, sustainable agriculture, mobile payments, and entrepreneurship/innovation. 

Bryce was also the Executive Producer of a documentary about poverty, gang violence, and those trying to chart a new path through dance set in Guatemala City that premiered at the United Nations in April 2014 called BBOY for Life.

Today, he joined us to talk about one pocket investing, solving access problems, and defining what Faith Driven Investing really means…

Episode Transcript

Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDI movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back. Live to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. I’m here with my great friend and partner in Sovereign’s Capital, Luke Roush.

Luke, welcome. And it’s good to see you, brother. We are doing this on both audio and video. We’ve got Bryce Butler in the house and we’re just coming in as we’re getting live online. We’ve got Bryce, who is sharing with us right before we went live, about what it looks like for him to have four daughters who are learning about Faith Driven Entrepreneurship and doing that out on a farm and some really neat e-commerce businesses. And we’re going to put some links up there and in the show notes. But we wanted to go ahead and talk with Bryce about what he uniquely does and some of the gifts he has and some experiences he has with Access Ventures. This is, of course, a podcast for an audience of people that are getting really intentional about storing their investment capital for the glory of God. And as we do that, we like to have stories. Luke and I like to get out and interview people that are being faithful and being innovative with the way that they’re deploying capital in a way that they are loving on their communities and looking for investment returns. And Bryce has done just that, and he’s done it for a long time. We oftentimes think about Faith Driven Investing and being in three buckets with the funds we look at. We think about funds that have existed with some level of spiritual integration in them. We think about the funds that are starting up and there’s a great new group of men and women that feel called by God that have operating or investment experience, that are launching new funds. And then also there’s a fair number of funds that are being retrofitted, funds that have been run by Christ followers and have had great success and are getting more and more intentional about how they love on their portfolio companies by bringing in things like chaplaincy and faith driven employee resource groups, et cetera. Bryce is very squarely in that first camp. He’s been very serious about his faith and investing for a long time. And one of the people that we look to and talk in at the conferences that were involved in and so we’re grateful that he’d spend time with us today, sharing with us what God has done through his life and Praxis ventures, what he does, why he does it, where he does it. You’ll get a sense that place is really important to him. So, Bryce, super glad to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.

Bryce Butler: My pleasure. Thank you.

Henry Kaestner: We love to open by hearing how our guests have their stories, what your origin story is, who you are, where do you come from to tell us a bit about who you are and and how you got here and how God and in your faith has led you to Access Ventures.

Bryce Butler: So my journey a little circuitous. I’m the son of an Army officer. My dad actually this summer retired after 45 years of federal service. Twenty three with the army, sixteen or so with the US attorney’s office and and recently as a judge. So I moved around a lot, actually, when I was growing up. I moved eight times in twelve years and so lived all over the place, lived six of my years overseas. And really the military is a big part of my life. My great great great grandfather was a sergeant in the union cavalry. And so ever since, as far back as I can track, there have been members of the military in my family. So it was one of those things where that’s what I did. So when I graduated from college, I got an undergraduate degree in economics. I went into the army. That’s what paid for my school. And so the timing was like 2003. So the ground war started in April of 2003 in Iraq. And I was commissioned in May of 2003 as an Army officer. So I was on tanks and I actually found myself being deployed to Korea. And so I spent two years on the DMZ in Korea before being reassigned to Fort Knox in Kentucky. And that’s what brought me here. So I actually live in Louisville, Kentucky. I’ve been here for about fifteen years now. It’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere. But I married a Kentucky in I am deeply planted here. I actually inevitably got out of the military after four years on active duty and went to seminary. Are calling from the Lord to step into ministry, didn’t know what that was. Didn’t really know if it was pastoral ministry, international missions, but really at heart for just learning more and applying my faith more deeply. And so I went to seminary, but I wanted to work in a church while I was doing that to actually put that into practice. And so I found myself at a church plant and this was two thousand seven. That was really on a pretty steep cliff trajectory of growth. They went from 400 to three thousand in my time there in about two years, one campus to four church called Sojourned Community Church in Louisville, Kentucky. And I just honestly, it was more I was in the right place at the right time. The more I use the gifts of strategy and logistics and operations that I had. But I became the executive pastor for about five years and kind of in that process learned a lot about church, church dynamics, church growth. And that brought me into kind of like, OK, Lord, I’m here at seminary. I enjoy preaching, I like teaching. But it’s not that doesn’t drive me like a lot of the students that I see around me. I really get jazzed by working on these complex problems of organizational dynamics and leadership. I started working with the Entrepreneurship Initiative at Redeemer, got involved in their effort as a judge, spoke at a couple of their conferences and just really got turned on to business for the common good.

This was probably two thousand, ten or so.

And just really it activated a lot of just my own gifting and desire. And it was then that I was like, I really feel like the Lord is leading me back to the marketplace. So I finished up my masters. I do a master’s in theology, and then I ended up leaving the pastoral ministry and working at a family office and so worked with a family that was doing pretty innovative microfinance internationally, also investing in India and East Africa and also their foundation. And kind of through that work, I learned a ton and kind of over the course of four years, kind of took those learnings and built what has become Access Ventures.

Henry Kaestner: So tell us about Access Ventures. Tell us about what uniquely does.

Bryce Butler: So Access Ventures is, you know, so technically it’s a 501c3. It’s a private operating foundation. So we’re not like it when you hear the word foundation. A lot of times people immediately jump to grant writer that, you know, just this endowed capital that is investing its resources to maximize financial return and then turning around and writing grants to organizations that align with their charitable purpose. We don’t do that. We are an operating private foundation. So we actually kind of are a hybrid. We function much more like a public charity. We run programs. We’re strategically looking at things like program related investments, things that are aligned with our mission. So we don’t write grants. We do activities as a charitable entity, but we also are endowed. So over the course of the last seven years, I went from kind of this idea on the back of a napkin to what is now a fully endowed private operating foundation with about fifty million dollars. And then what we do is we look to take all of those resources that we talk about this idea of a one pocket mindset. And so we really have been since the beginning saying like it’s not the charitable dollars that should be achieving our values and purpose. But how can we align all of these investment dollars across a multi asset strategy, whether it’s real estate, whether it’s private equity venture? How can we take these tools, i.e. capital tools, resources and identify fund managers, identify entrepreneurs, identify real estate opportunities, identify partnerships that are in line with our mission and that get us across that board a blended strategy, a blended portfolio, a blended return. And so we do charitable work. We do a low market lending. We do non concessionary direct investments. We have a block change strategy. We have a lot of other asset classes as well. So we look to take that entire portfolio and invest it in line with our purpose. And it’s a lot of fun.

Henry Kaestner: So that’s really interesting. I love this idea and I hope that we’re going to be able to unpack this a lot more during our time together of this one pocket mindset. And I think that many of us can kind of understand it intellectually at one level, which is that we have bifurcated our giving from our investments and maybe there’s an opportunity to bring them both together. But that’s hard work. And even though I obviously are maybe not so obviously, but I obviously believe in that. Just understanding how to do that is something I really want to understand more. And so tell me if I’m getting this right. Traditionally, Christians have thought of I want to make as much money as I possibly can over here in my left pocket. And then to the degree that I understand the biblical message of generosity, I want to give away as much as I possibly can over here with my right hand or my right pocket. And you’re suggesting that the very process of investing capital might accomplish the same mission’s goals that we had over there on the giving side. And so we need to be thinking about storing that capital in the same way. And yet it goes. Backwards, too, which is that sometimes when we might otherwise think about investing, maybe we should be giving. So how do you think so? You stored a large sum of capital. How do you go ahead and say, gosh, I need to have a certain return on this? What’s a framework you use to be able to process all of this? Is it just the impact now?

Luke Roush: How do you create buckets and you decide kind of what goes and what bucket?

Bryce Butler: Well, I think you have to start by asking yourself a lot of questions like what is the purpose of capital? What is the purpose of this capital? What do I need as a return? I think we need to be unapologetic about what we’re trying to accomplish. And so if it is outsized returns or market returns, that’s fine. Put it on the table and let’s talk about that and then say to what you’re saying, Henry, I think the old adage of like, make all you can save, all you can give, all you can. I do think there is a notion like make all you can so that you can give all you can. So we still need to do charitable work. We still need to do philanthropic activities. We need to support local churches, ministries that are sharing the gospel in places that are unreached. But in the course of making all you can, how do we align our values and who we are as people and our understanding of God and his universe and our responsibility in that universe? How do we align that with the making? Because I do believe that there are unbelievable fund managers, there’s Sovereign’s Capital and others that are intentionally trying to align various return profiles with Kingdom or impact orientation. And so as you think about your own personal net worth or your own organizational purpose, make all you can. But in the making, the one pocket mindset is thinking through. It’s really fundamentally. Do you believe that money is a tool? It’s a resource. And so how do we deploy resources? Right. When you’re building a house, you don’t use a screwdriver where you should use a hammer. And so you fundamentally do have to ask your question, what is the purpose? What is the purpose of this capital? Do I need this to be non concessionary? OK, great. In the pursuit of a manager or an entrepreneur that’s going to help me achieve that financial outcome. Can I. Is there a way that I can work to align that with someone also pursuing a business model or intentionally leading their company in a way that honors the Lord? And so I think your point on chaplaincy or the way we lead our companies, the way we think about resources and the stewardship of those resources or time off, or when you start to unpack what it means to really understand the dignity of the person and how that’s manifest in our companies and how we care for people, it gets really exciting. And then you get to work with these entrepreneurs, these fund managers that are really trying to think creatively about things, you know, like the tent making. Right, T1-T4. I think sometimes people look at like the ones that are the business models in unreached people, groups that aren’t financially sustainable as lesser businesses. I like to put it up and say, well, if that was their intention, it’s not necessarily bad. There are places where we should go into those countries and the business model may just be sustainable, i.e. we’re covering our costs, but it’s allowing that missionary to be in a place that they otherwise wouldn’t be. If we’re achieving our intended goal, our intended outcome with the financial return and we’re able to bring about human flourishing, the Imago Dei know that’s a beautiful thing. If the goal is outsized returns and also to invest in Kingdom-oriented entrepreneurs, great, let’s do that. But I think what we’ve got to do is start to look at what was the financial goal, what is the impact, and to look at that and not compare a nonprofit return on community activity that’s charitable and supported through grants against a technology company that’s scalable and looking for venture rate returns.

Luke Roush: So I think that’s good. And, you know, I always love examples when you talk about Access being inclusive and creative and resilient. You know, we recently had Jewel Burks on the show and she talked a little bit about less of a pipeline problem, more of an access problem. How have you kind of seen that playing out within Access in the mission that you serve and then maybe just elucidated some of what you’re pointing to there, Bryce, with a couple of examples of how you’ve seen that play?

Bryce Butler: Yeah, Jewel’s great. And it is an access problem. So, I mean, our name Access Ventures, I think at the end of the day, as Christians, I’m not surprised by inequality or Jesus as the poor will always be among you. So the issues of inequality that exist aren’t surprising because they’re products of the fall. It’s not as God intended, it’s not as it was to be. And so in our role as his created image bearers, like what does it look like to participate in rolling back right. To roll back these injustices? And so I think the notion of an access issue is true. There are things in our world that are unjust. And so I think as Christians, what does it look like to right the wrongs? And so I think for entrepreneurs of color specifically, they have an access issue like less than two percent of venture capital goes to founders of color. When you have white families in America, that average over one hundred thousand dollars in net worth and the average black family is seventy six dollars in net worth. When you talk about who has access to financing, that’s an access issue, right? There’s a capital I as a white man in America, I can go to my family and friend network. And more often than not, it’s the first place an entrepreneur goes. And I’m not going to have of a time finding capital to support my business. Whereas a black founder, they may have great social networks. Oftentimes communities of color have unbelievable networks. But when those networks, because of wealth inequality has existed for centuries, when that network doesn’t have financial capacity, it makes it very, very difficult. And you look at issues of redlining around housing and the modern day redlining around business financing and access to just debt through traditional means. It is an access issue. So I think as Christians, we’ve got to look at solutions, i.e. companies that are solving for problems, i.e. one of our portfolio companies is a company called SoLo Funds. So SoLo Funds is a technology company venture makeable. Just close the series a based out of L.A. and they’re a marketplace as an alternative to payday lending. So by nature, the product itself is helping to solve for a community issue, which is the crazy payday lending system that we have in America where people are paying two or three hundred percent to access a loan that you used to get at a community bank on a signatory. Right. You can get a signature loan for less than a thousand dollars. You can’t do that anymore. And so what happens is low income people are pushed to these check into cash places and it’s just this vicious cycle. So SoLo is creating a marketplace where the borrower can actually set the terms on the loan and then the lender, individual, peer to peer, can go on and accept that term and in two weeks. So it’s a great win win. And so that product itself is doing an amazing thing in solving for some of the injustice that exists. But then on the capital side, we’ve got to say there is an access issue related to capital. So Jewel, for example, with Collab, is looking at how do we get more money into the hands of black founders, female founders, because historically they haven’t had the same opportunities with regular mom and pop businesses, not your impact oriented one, like a solo funds, but a great company where there’s a decision bias because most of the people on the investment committee look like me or look like you and don’t understand perhaps the business models that they’re bringing forward or the type of capital they need to scale is different than traditional venture. So I think it’s our responsibility then to reimagine what it looks like for the capital itself, to meet the needs and to help solve for some of that injustice as well. We need both. And new models. New businesses.

Luke Roush: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And as you think about the capital that you guys are in charge of shepherding. Fifty million dollars, a lot of money, but the access problem is certainly a lot bigger than what’s going to be solved by 50 million dollars. How do you think about catalyzing others to step into that gap, particularly in secondary market cities, not the big three or four or five that capture 80 percent of the private equity?

Bryce Butler: Yeah, so this kind of hits a little bit of Louisville, Kentucky. So Louisville is one of those cities. And I think what we’re trying to do, we created a new regional fund called Render Capital that sits under Access Ventures. And really, it’s a strategy. It’s not a fund, even though it’s about 15 million dollars. We have portions of it that are managed traditionally like a traditional venture fund, because that’s what some entrepreneurs need, but actually trying to create the capital structure in a way that meets the needs of the entrepreneurs. So we actually have a portion that’s focused on partnering with banks, because what we found in our market is banks aren’t lending. And, you know, especially with what’s happened this year with covid and what’s just happened over the last 10 years since the housing crunch of 2008. So what we’ve seen is banks have retracted from startups. And so if you don’t have collateral, don’t have a personal guarantee. Good luck getting access to capital from a bank, even though they’ll tell you all day long. Yeah, we’ll work with you. And so what we’re trying to do is actually create guaranteed pools. We have a guaranteed pool that we created to try to attract local banks. Where you do the underwriting, you help them build credit. You build this relationship with the traditional bank and we’ll guarantee that loan because we believe that the entrepreneur is good for it. You know, it’s really an access issue. It’s a capital access issue. So can we put our money at risk and help support that entrepreneur by parking it at that bank and working through the bank to lend to that entrepreneur? So we have that going, looking at alternatives to equity, profit sharing or revenue based financing, which are some new kind of creative models on how to deploy capital. But then also because it’s a strategy, looking at a market like Louisville, we have to acknowledge we’ve got to be on some level as a market builder. So I’ve got to look at below market lending. I’ve got to look at even some philanthropic work through universities to spur innovation for future next gen entrepreneurs. And so what we’ve done is we’ve built a actually a pretty robust blended strategy that has philanthropic work, traditional equity, alternatives to equity guarantees with banks, main street lending. Because the other thing we found, too, in a place like Louisville, as you do work literally in a grassroots community like that, Main Street supports high growth, tech enabled companies. Talk to any high growth company. We were just talking about it before we jumped on the podcast. Austin, Denver, these entrepreneurs are attracted to. Places where there is a thriving cultural scene, they want local food, they want something to do with the outdoors, they want their people, their talent to have a place to go and be excited outside of work. And so if we only solve for the capital access issue of this high growth, tech enabled company, i.e. venture, and we ignore the issue going on in Main Street, how are we going to create an environment where that tech enabled entrepreneur sees this as an opportunity to grow and thrive? If the local coffee shop, the local ice cream store or the local brewery, whatever, is struggling to find capital, nobody wants to go where there’s, you know, tons of fast food chain restaurants. So we need all of that. And so we we’ve got to get really created around the structure of capital.

Henry Kaestner: So when you talk about the structure of capital and you’re talking about the different sources and different purposes, you alluded to something there that I want to look at a little bit more, which is that you find out that as compelling as some of these opportunities for impact investing are or more market return investing might be, there’s this third area, which is grant capital, that’s also part of the battery or the areas that you have in your quiver to address a particular societal need. So tell us about know Faith Driven Investor in a lot of people think, well, guess we’re going to be focused on impact investing, we’re going to be focused on market return investing. And yet what makes us unique in this podcast is that we’re all Christ followers. We’re trying to understand how God might have us allocate his capital, and that absolutely needs to include grant capital. So if you’ve got a large sum of money, you may be called to writing a large check where you don’t get any return back because of the ultimate return. In addressing the particular issue, you feel called to say, how did you do that in this instance? Because you talked about a number of really compelling investment opportunities. And yet at the end of the day, you said it’s probably not enough. We also need to invest in the next generation. How do you decide which programs to support, how to decide how much to put in that program versus what you would otherwise put in the investment pocket?

Bryce Butler: It’s a great question. I think some of it’s driven by the strategy, some of us driven by what you’re trying to accomplish. So for us, I’ll give you an example. I was talking with some folks recently about opportunity zones. So we’re part of an opportunity zone fund. We help incubate one call blueprint local that is now in Texas and Maryland and across the southeast. And it was kind of incubated off of some of the real estate strategy we’ve deployed in Louisville. But what I was sharing with this group was they were really interested in attracted to this idea of the opportunity zone funds. Right. This equity investment predominantly in real estate, in under invested communities. And this is a great financial opportunity. And it is it is a great way to grow wealth. But the real intended purpose of the opportunity zones is to reinvest and to build wealth, not just for the investors, but also for the community. And so what I was trying to help them see in which a light bulb finally went off with them, I said, what are you doing philanthropically? As if because if you look at the communities in which you’re deploying your opportunities zone fund, they’re all below market neighborhoods, they’re all low income neighborhoods. By definition, they are an opportunity zone. And so as you look at your donor advised fund, as you look at your own foundation, as you look at your own charity, who in that community is already doing good work that would support the work that you’re doing on the real estate side? You know, think about like the businesses, right? The Opportunity Zone Fund doesn’t allow for debt financing, but every single business that you want to go into that brick and mortar shop is going to need tenant improvement financing. Well, if the banks aren’t lending, what are you going to do? Can you create some sort of debt vehicle that supports businesses that might be willing to establish their presence in that community? Who’s doing early childhood education? What churches are in that area? What other local ministries are there that are supporting the needs of those neighbors so that as you’re doing the work in the opportunity zone, you’re working philanthropically or in other creative ways to support that work. But ultimately, the community wins because that’s the goal. The goal is to build wealth for you, but also to build the wealth of that community and the the flourishing of that area. And so leveraging that tool, but then wrapping around it some other ways that you can bring about some shalom that doesn’t exist or hasn’t existed there for a while. So, you know, as an example of a way that we try to think about it on the investing side, the render capital side, we’re just looking at and saying, look, we’re trying to solve for this problem. The issue is access to capital, regional entrepreneurship. And in order for us to do that, it has to be a longer vision. And so how do we create opportunities for the entrepreneurs that exist today? But if we want a thriving economy, thriving community, how are we setting the stage for next gen?

And so it got us kind of focused earlier and looking at high schools, universities and saying, OK, for us to be successful five years from now, 10 years now, we’ve got to be thinking about that. And that’s not something we’re going to get a financial return from. So we kind of start to build back. Into kind of how much capital, what type of capital, that kind of stuff.

Luke Roush: Yeah, so, you know, as you’re talking about Eco-System, which really resonates with me and it’s mirrors some of what we’ve seen in markets where we’ve invested, it’s not just sort of one thing that needs to get done. It’s actually a whole ecosystem of things that need to get done. Love to understand just how you think about sequencing. When you were first starting access, how did you think about what do you do first? You’ve been really active in real estate. You’ve done some other things that are exotic, like Bitcoin.

Bryce Butler: Well, I think I would like to at least start by saying we kind of made up a lot of it as we were going along. I mean, to be to be frank, like when I started Access Ventures, it was a side car project. I was working in a family office. I was working at a manufacturing company. I kind of had this idea to take some of the lessons learned that we were doing in India and East Africa and say, look, there’s some problems here. Could we just get creative around the financial structure? So I built this real estate holding company, basically borrowed patient debt from a couple of high net worth individuals that caught the vision and started putting it to work, worked with some homeless shelters to create jobs in the renovation of those projects. And so it just started working. And then like a year later, we had to ask ourselves the question, like, OK, what is this? And that’s when it started to become a thing. But even as it became a thing, we realized that much like ecosystem building, the real thing is these problems and these solutions are so connected. Housing is connected to capital, is connected to jobs, is connected to transportation. I mean, so when we started working on housing, we realized very, very quickly, I can give somebody a better home, a more stable home.

But if they don’t have a job, if they don’t have any education, you know, so we found ourselves in other areas, we started doing micro lending because the banks aren’t lending.

And so we just kind of as problems emerged, we tried to think creatively about how to solve for that. And then over time, as the capital grew, we were able to kind of build more of a cohesive, cohesive strategy. But, you know, it’s been the last six years journey to kind of learn some of those hard lessons and try to figure it out.

Luke Roush: Yeah, well, the idea of kind of making it up as you go along or at least kind of doing the right next thing is certainly not unfamiliar territory for us. So that resonates. And, you know, just the idea of not having to necessarily have a grand master plan on day one of how the next 10 years are going to roll. But you’ve got a vision and a calling and a mission that God put on your heart to sort of do one thing and then you do that one thing that leads to others.

Henry Kaestner: So it resonates with me as you’ve proceeded, as you’ve done this, though, and done the right next thing. What are some lessons you’ve learned along the way? And I know enough about you and your story and what actually adventures has done and how God has worked through that, to know that it’s been really successful and you serve as such a great model for people to be intentional about the local communities. But you probably have learned some lessons along the way. Like, for instance, in the early days of Sovereign’s Capital looking, I learned that you really actually should have a cap for every convertible debt loan that you set out. Right. And so we won’t make that mistake twice. But what are some of the things you’ve learned as you’ve gone out there and kind of just rolled up your sleeves?

Bryce Butler: Yeah, I think so. We used to be heavily invested in real estate. We’re not so much anymore. So that’s one of the things that we learned rather quickly. One, it’s like, what are you good at? What are you not good at? And I think we were successful in what we set out to accomplish financially. We got better returns than we had anticipated. And I’m very proud of the work that we did. But we’re not a real estate development company. You know, we worked with a general contractor. We worked with different partners. But a couple of years ago, we looked around and said, where is this going? And are we uniquely gifted in order to do this at scale? Or are there better ways for us to apply our team and our talents to address some of these community issues and what are those underlying issues? And so as much as we did a lot of real estate early on, we actually don’t do that as much anymore. You know, that’s what Genesis to the opportunities own fund and different things. So those are some lessons, I think.

Another one is being flexible, especially this year with covid, one of the things one of the passages I love is like we planned to God determines our steps, Proverbs 16:9.

And so I think there’s an important like we do need to plan the God term. So we need to hold these with open hands. But like, I didn’t plan any I mean, I had plans for twenty twenty, but the things I planned haven’t manifested in the way that I thought they would. And so how were we flexible? How are we looking at the impacts of the market and saying, look, what are we not doing now because it just doesn’t make any sense. And instead of being dogmatic and pressing forward on something that’s just not going to work, we’ve got to be flexible and adjust in order to meet the needs of our community. Ultimately, what’s the mission? What are our values? And the path might be different and circuitous. But ultimately, if those are the things that are forefront, then I think then we can get pretty creative. So I’ve learned a lot. I think evaluation is an interesting thing. We’ve talked about this before, Henry, and can I just run? I think defining at the outset what you’re trying to do and then how you’re measuring towards that, because I think in this exciting world of impact and Faith Driven Investor and Faith Driven Entrepreneur ship, it gets pretty sexy, but it also gets pretty squishy. And so we’ve got to get real about what we mean by that.

Henry Kaestner: Give us an example. What does that look like as you look to measure success and understand that indeed we’re making the progress that we think we’re capable of or that needs to happen? What is success look like for you?

Bryce Butler: Yeah, I think it’s having a conversation at the beginning so that it’s not assumed. You know what else Faith Driven Investor mean for you? And I think because the unfortunate thing is, if we don’t have these conversations, what happens is sometimes it can become unbelievably tribal. And so I have a conversation with my faith tribe, my denominational tribe, about what Kingdom impact means. And so that might be chaplaincy, that might be conversions or church attendance or, you know, dollars donated to homeless shelters or whatever it might be. But how do we expand that and make it more of an accessible conversation for Christians of all stripes to come to it and say, well, here’s my faith, here’s my values, here’s how I think about Shalom, human flourishing Imago Dei people, planet profit and how that’s reflected. And I think what happens is you have a more you have a more full conversation. You help an entrepreneur understand, maybe expand their understanding around what it means to be a gospel centered entrepreneur or Faith Driven Entrepreneur because they’re thinking as well. I need chaplains. Well, that’s great. That’s a great first step. But like, how are you paying your people? How much time off are you giving? Are you allowing for them? Do you have adoption services to help support families? Do you have I think as we start to imagine what this could be, it gets really, really exciting child care on site services for women to be able to work and to grow in their profession, but not have to sacrifice their profession for families. They start to make those choices, like what does that mean for you? And then once you define that as an entrepreneur, having those honest conversations with your aligned investors to make sure, because I think what happens sometimes where I’ve seen it go kind of squishy is one, it’s not defined. And on the other side, it might be defined, but there wasn’t a conversation and so there was an expectation that was unmet. And so the investor might get frustrated, like, I thought you were going to do this or why aren’t you doing this? This is what it means to be kingdom oriented. And I think where those conversations can be thoughtful, consciously determined, collectively understood, I think we’re going to see a lot more, I think, exciting future for both the entrepreneurs and the investors.

Luke Roush: And, yeah, the idea of the conversation up front and being clear about how do we want to think about impact. Otherwise you can kind of become whatever we want it to be over time. And we’ve seen investments that started out being for profit, investments at market that become concessionary investments.

You know, it’s could be on the financial return. Yeah, it could be like I’m just the definition of what it means to be Christian. Right. So I think because even in our modern world, it’s like a lot of people culturally are Christian. What does that look like? And so defining that and ultimately, what does that mean for you? What does that mean for me? Are we aligned? Yeah.

Luke Roush: How can we have that as a conversation that you and I have had, I think in the past, is this idea of how do we invite people in? You know, and you and I and Robert Kim had this conversation at some point about how do we engage within even SOCAP, which is a decidedly secular environment. And yet there are some common ground points that we can kind of reach with people. And so this idea of having a conversation up front and also being open minded about what impact is, it’s not one size fits all.

It’s one size fits one. Maybe just one thing I’d love for you to share for two minutes. And then Henry’s going to wrap us is if you could just maybe just offer an encouragement to the other Bryce butlers who are out there who are thinking about really wanting to have an effect and be used by God to effect change in their city, but are unsure kind of how do they get going? How would you encourage them to kind of lean in and start down this road that God’s taking you on over the last eight or ten years?

Bryce Butler: It’s a great question, a verse that I’m reminded of often is 1 Thessalonians 4, the goal of a Christian life is to lead a quiet life. And I think sometimes in scripture, God is this interesting, awesome, awesome thing, you know. So he has passages in the Bible about ambition. Right. And he has passages in there about patience and rest and waiting on the Lord.

And on some level, you could think, well, those are you know, there’s a paradox. But I think what I love about, like First Thessalonians four is like let’s pursue again, much like the planning and God determining our steps. I’m always asking myself, what’s the difference between complacency and contentment? And am I being complacent with the prayer that I have oftentimes is am I being complacent, i.e. burying my talents, not doing the things that I should be doing as a follower of Jesus, or am I truly just living into, like, resting, you know, be still and know that I am God? What does that look like to be still? And so I think as people are working in local communities, they’re going to have to wrestle in that tension. And because it’s hard work, it does require persistence. And so where I’ve seen people go awry oftentimes is they press into these ambitious goals and they forget to rest or they get a little complacent because they’re comfortable in the work that they’re doing and they don’t take some of the opportunities that they might.

So what does it look like to live in that tension of saying that I love is like how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I think some people hear my story and it becomes overwhelming because I hear it sometimes like, oh, my gosh, I don’t have 50 million dollars, so I can’t go do that. And what I would say is like, what small incremental steps can you take? You know, I started with a half a million dollars. It didn’t have to be that. It could have been far less. It could have been one home and just partnerships. And so what is a very small step that someone can take in investing in a strategic fund manager that cares deeply about the kingdom, adjusting their allocations, looking for real estate investments that have some value alignment, aligning their charitable dollars with something that’s different than just traditional philanthropy. So I think what are some of those small steps instead of getting overwhelmed by the enormity of it?

Henry Kaestner: That’s very good. And then you also touched on some of the things I wanted to ask in our final question. We like to finish off every one of the podcasts that we do across Faith Driven Entrepreneur Faith Driven Investor by asking our guests what they’re hearing from God through his word. And then also something we can pray for you about. Our hope is that this will be a podcast that will be an inspiration and encouragement to many, and it will be passed along and shared with other people that want to be intentional about loving people in their local communities and that people will listen to this and be able to lift up a prayer for you and Access Ventures and what you’re doing. But tell us what you’re hearing from God and his word. And yes, of course, let us know how to pray for you.

Bryce Butler: Well, I think I hit on a little bit, but just this notion of rest, I mean, 20, 20 has been this crazy year. And I would say 80 percent of the plans that I had, the things I’m doing are not the things that I had planned to do this year. I am unbelievably excited about the future. I’m resolute on the work that we’re doing and love it. But I think for me, the complacency and contentment, resting, trusting in the Lord, patience, balancing that, though, with this push for doing as much as I can. And so I want to be faithful. So the prayer is kind of tied to some of my own. Wrestling with First Thessalonians four. And this notion of proverbs and planning and God’s direction is I don’t want to be so content in what I’m doing that I miss out on something that the Lord might have for me.

So I do covet prayers that relate it to just wisdom for myself and for the work that we’re doing that we are pressing forward and the things we should be pressing forward into. We didn’t talk about it much, but I have four daughters, married 14 years and four kids, and they’re getting into that age of just curiosity and maturity and that I would lead them well, give them good direction as they venture out into this crazy world.

Henry Kaestner: And for you, too, buddy, not north. That’s right. Good good byes, Baker into divinity and beyond. That’s right.

Outstanding. Well, thank you very much for your friendship and encouragement and partnership in the Movement and Access Ventures.org is a great website that goes through what you are doing and what God is doing through you. And may God bless you and everything that’s going on in Louisville and and beyond.

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Jewel Burks Solomon is the Founder of PartPic, which raised over $2million before being acquired by Amazon. And that was just the beginning of her entrepreneurial journey. 

Now, she’s a managing partner at Collab Capital—a group working to provide a viable pathway to sustained wealth for the black community. She’s an incredible story, a fascinating entrepreneur and investor, and someone we can’t wait for you to hear from…

Episode Transcript

Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDI movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.

Henry Kaestner: Very, very glad to have you on the show today.

Jewel Burks Solomon: Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.

Henry Kaestner: So we’re going to talk all things Collab and the things that God has uniquely equipped you to do going forward. Really excited about the journey that you’re on as you start with Collab Capital. But as we’re trying to do with anybody we talked to on the show, as we’re trying to understand a little bit about your background and who you are and where do you come from. And how is God worked in your life from the very beginning. So tell us a bit about your story, please.

Jewel Burks Solomon: Sure. So I was born in Mobile, Alabama, which you may be able to pick up on a little bit of a Southern drawl. And raised primarily in Nashville, Tennessee, and was fortunate to be born into a family of great people, entrepreneurs, both my parents. And so I always tell people I got that part on this because that’s what I grew up around, but was born into a family that was a really faithful family. And so I started my faith journey at a very early age and can remember, you know, Sunday mornings were spent in church. My grandmother, I’m sure, will listen to this podcast. And she made sure that I was in Sunday school and always right there, you know, front row for a service. So that was a great foundation for me. And then I think, you know, speaking about the faith journey, I was in a routine growing up of being in church. I grew up in First Baptist Church, Capital Hill in Nashville, Tennessee, which is important because there was a lot of history in that church. It was. Training ground for a lot of the civil rights leaders during the 60s working on the national sit. And so I think that growing up in that church planted the seeds in me that I didn’t even know were being planted. But it actually was not until I went to Howard University and started getting involved in the chapel at Howard that I really sort of developed my faith. So that’s little background.

Henry Kaestner: That’s good background. So, you know, this is one of these unique times where we actually do a interview that is going to be released on both Faith Driven Entrepreneur and faith driven investors. So much of your background is on the entrepreneurial side. And then also, what you going to be doing now, What you are doing now is on the investor side. But bring us into the Faith Driven Entrepreneur part. Talk to us about Partpic. Tell us about the problem or actually the opportunity that you saw and how that worked out.

Jewel Burks Solomon: Yeah. So set that foundation to kind of let you know about my background and growing up. But as I mentioned, I grew up in a house where asprin ownership was seen as a great thing. And so I always knew that I wanted to become an entrepreneur. I didn’t know what the path would be to get there, but it was on 12, 12 twelve that I had. What would be the idea for what would become part pick? And I sent my mom in an email on that day and told her, you know, I want to create a technology solution for part search. And the idea came to me because I was working at a company called Amen McMaster Car, where I was managing in the call center. And I was the person who received escalation. And so basically that yell that she so for the majority of the day and wanted to find a better way to help customers. And so I was experiencing the problem of people being frustrated with searching for replacement parts, industrial part everyday. And then I also had a personal connection where my grandfather, who was running our family farm in Reston, Alabama. He was in the middle of a harvest and his tractor broke down and he called me to help him find a part for the tractor. And I could not find this part. And so that was, for me, sort of a sign to say I actually need to pursue a better way for people to find parts, because it was one thing for it to be my customers who were having the problem, but it was another thing for my grandfather to be also having that same problem. And so I sort of thought about, OK, what would be a better way to allow people to search for part? And the idea just kind of hit me that you could do it with a camera search and leverage, you know, computer vision technology, which I didn’t understand fully what that meant at the time, but learned a lot about it and set out on our journey to build this technology and build a company around the technology, which became part Picon. We had a really interesting journey in building that business, ultimately selling it to Amazon into 2016 and integrating the technology into the Amazon mobile app.

Henry Kaestner: That must’ve been really exciting. Tell us about the journey up through that and maybe just take a second before we end up talking about more on the investment side. Take us through some of the lessons that you learned at Partpic. And I’m going to presume that is called Partpic was you probably didn’t go toe to toe across the negotiating table with Jeff Bezos. But if you did, I want to hear that story. But tell us about some of the lessons learned.

Jewel Burks Solomon: Yeah, I mean, there were so many lessons learned during my Partpic journey. One thing to point out is that I was 23 years old when I came up with the idea and started the company. And so I was very young entrepreneur and was learning a time during that time. And I would say, you know, the top things that I was able to work with and perfect with. Really circulated around building relationships and trusting that even when things were difficult and they were often very difficult given the fact that we were building this kind of novel, new technology and particularly building it in an industry that is pretty old school, I would say pretty archaic as it relates to technology, or at least it was at that time.

And so trying to convince, you know, decision makers that large companies that they should trust a young CEO and also a CEO, that look quite different than probably most of the folks that they were. You saw receiving pitches from them, a little intimidating. But for me, it was a huge learning experience and one where I would really have to rely on my faith to kind of push through some of the obstacles that I was in channeling along the way. So obstacles, everything from, you know, how do I attract the right team to help me in building this and how do I want it? The white investors that actually believe in the vision and believe that I can execute the vision. And then even now to the point of showing the company, is that the right decision? Is this the right company? You know, Amazon is a huge menace. And going through that process of having to sell across the table from a more powerful and mighty entity was obviously daunting for me.

So I had to really rely on my faith through all of that. And I was fortunate that that worked out, that I did not leave me at any point in the journey. So I’m really thankful for that. And I know that my faith was certainly increased through my entrepreneurship journey.

Rusty Rueff: So what’s really cool about your your background is, is that, you know, you go through the sale of the company and then, you know, you find your way not only to Google as the head of Google startups, but you also, you know, have been involved in venture capital yourself. And we’ve shared about CoLab capital. But I want you to talk a little bit about Google startups and what you do there. But then I want to go into CoLab capital because the problem that you’re trying to solve there is we know is an important one and we want to make sure that we dove into that. But tell us about Google startups.

Jewel Burks Solomon: Sure. So I think about my role as head of Google for startups, for the U.S. as a really big full circle moment for me. I started my career at Google. Eleven years ago as an intern, you know, summer of 2009. And at that time, I could only imagine that, you know, at this point I would be leading a team that’s focused in an area where I’m deeply passionate, which is around leveling the playing field for underrepresented startup founders across the country. And this year, we have a special focus in Atlanta, which is where I’m based. And I was led to this role really because it was a bit serendipitous that I came into this role. I actually just went to the Google office to have lunch with a friend, and I ran into a member of this Google started team and started talking to her about, you know, how she was doing, what was going on. And she let me know that this role was going to be coming open. And when she called me about it and I continued to talk to other people and learn more about it, I thought, wow, this is exactly what I would be doing. Even if I didn’t have this job, I would be working with startups and early stage companies and trying to help them get the resources that they need anyway. So it’s really a blessing for me to be able to do it as my day job. I would say and we’ll talk about collabs, which is my second day job, but it does allow me to leverage, you know, all of the resources of Google and make sure that they are adequately distributed to early stage startup founders. And particularly we focused on working with black lab mix and veteran founded companies, helping them make inroads and grow their businesses so that they can impact the communities that they reside in.

Rusty Rueff: And then I know a lot of our listeners know Google Ventures, right, because they want to raise money from Google Ventures. Just distinguish a little bit between Google startups and Google Ventures.

Jewel Burks Solomon: Sure, we will. Ventures, which is now known as G.V., is one of the investing arms of Google. There’s actually a few investing teams, but G.V. is probably the most well-known. And they actually sit outside of Google proper for their part of Alphabet, which is the parent company, but are completely separate from Google, whereas Google for Startups sits inside of Google and it’s not an investing team. So it is really about getting resources, connections, you know, connections to the right product and people, mentorship, working with partners throughout the country. So we do a lot of work with organizations and coworking spaces that serve entrepreneurs in markets throughout the U.S. and actually globally. The team is a global team. And prior to me joining in. Back in December, the focus actually was in emerging markets outside the U.S.. So there are campus locations that serve as kind of startup hubs in places like Sao Paolo, Brazil and Televisa and London. And so when I joined, this was actually the first time that there has been this concentrated effort in a whole team focused on the U.S. based startups and particularly looking at what we consider to be an emerging startup ecosystems within the US. So the role that I had is not an investing role, but I do get to get resources to founders that are in need of them the most.

Rusty Rueff: That’s fantastic. I mean, here we are on a Faith Driven Entrepreneur faith driven investor podcast trying to equip both entrepreneurs and investors. And we have a Faith Driven Entrepreneur who’s equipping a lot of investors and entrepreneurs through Google. And it’s great work that you do there. But you get the investment side on CoLab Capital. So take us through that.

Jewel Burks Solomon: Yes. So we started Collab Capital because we felt that there was a pretty wide gap in need as it relates particularly to black entrepreneurs. I’m sure you all have seen the statistics, but it said that less than one percent of venture capital funding goes to black founders and black founded companies. And we know that particularly black founders and black women founders are some of the largest growing segment of astronauts. So there’s a disparity there that we thought needed to be addressed. And instead of just saying, OK, we’re going to invest in black founders, we really wanted to explore, you know, what is happening. Why is it that. Black founders are not receiving the same rate of funding in relation to how many of them are starting businesses. And so when we thought about that and we really explored our own journeys and also took the data from all of the conversations and meetings and mentorship sessions that we’ve had with black founders over the years, what we came to see is that actually we think there is a need to create a new vehicle and a new structure that is designed with black entrepreneurs in mind. So we created what we consider to be sort of an alternative capital structure that really thinks about the alignment between the entrepreneur and their goals. And as as the investors and also considers this kind of macro problem around the wealth gap in this country. And so we think that is very important for entrepreneurs, particularly black entrepreneurs, to maintain equity and ownership in the businesses they start, because that is one way that we can start to counteract this gaping wealth gap that we have in this country. And so we built this model so that black entrepreneurs don’t have to raise a lot of rounds of funding and therefore potentially give up quite a bit of equity and perhaps lose control of the companies they start. But instead, they can have an option to maintain ownership in those companies, pass them on in their families if they so choose, and then start to create real wealth in the black community, which we think can kickstart a lot of other solutions to the problems that we see in those communities.

Rusty Rueff: That may be one of the most fascinating and impacting insights that I had never thought about around investing in black and minority owned businesses, that when traditional venture capital goes and invests, it’s one round after another, another, and it’s just dilution, dilution, dilution. And by the time you’re done, that equity could be little to nothing. And there’s nothing to carry on. That’s awesome. That’s just awesome. So if you look ahead 10, 15 years, if we can look that far. What do you hope is true for black entrepreneurs and investors in America? And what would it take to make what you see as a vision, a reality?

Jewel Burks Solomon: Yes. So I think about this a lot. I want there to be access and options for black entrepreneurs. And what we present at collab, we’ve considered to be an option. We don’t think that it is an all encompassing solution. But we do think that it will help jump start and hopefully there will be many more funds and people who are thinking about sintering the communities that need the resources the most. So that’s a vision for 10 years from now, I think about what the change will be and the impact will be on the communities where the businesses that we invest in are located. I think about something that we’re already seeing happening just with our first investment. We invested in a company just a few months ago and the asprin were recently posted, a picture that showed her and five of her family members in her warehouse where she’s shipping out her orders. And she said that, you know, this is really changing her family dynamic because she’s now in a position to hire the people that she knows and trusts. But also that may not have had that type of opportunity. And so we’re already seeing it. And we just think that in ten or fifteen years, we will be able to showcase a whole plethora of entrepreneurs that have done the same things in their communities and in their families. And we really are excited about the fact that, you know, in our mind, this is all for the kingdom and offer glory of God in the end and thinking about that society that we want to live in, where people have access, they have opportunity. They’re able to realize their potential. So that’s the vision that I have was in the 15 years down the line. And I think to get there, it’s going to require people to think differently and to invest in different ways and to be open to new ideas and new models that would break the norm of what we’ve seen up until this point.

William Norvell: Jewel, William here. Thank you so much for sharing that story. I’ve gotten to hear parts of it from you before. And it’s just it’s encouraging every time. It’s exciting every single time. And it brings something new as you think through your faith. It sounds like a little bit all encompassing for you and your founders. Did you think through your faith and the work you all are doing at CoLab Capital? How do you see those intersecting each other in your investments? You do and the way you’re raising money right now? All the different facets of how you’re going to run that organization.

Jewel Burks Solomon: Yeah, I mean, I think that because of how we’ve started in. I can share a little bit about our origin story as it’s myself and two other partners. And because of the fact that we started in a way one that was kind of driven by conversations that we had outside of church. And when my partner Barry and I shared with each other sort of the experiences that we had starting companies and actually being depressed after we finished our startup journey and then using that moment to come up with this new idea. And really, the idea is steeped in the notion that we don’t want founders to go through some of the same things that we went through. And we want to think about how do we make it so that they can achieve their goals and achieve whatever success looks like for them in a way that is well supported and where they have safe haven as they are going through all of it. And so the fact that we started with that kind of central idea, I think has blessed the journey so far. And, you know, we think about how do we continue with where we started? And how do we grow it? And as we bring new people in, how do we make sure that they have that same conviction and passion about what we’re doing? That’s the challenge that we have today, is thinking about the growth of this and how do we just continue on this path that we’re on. But that’s where we bring in great folks. Like I know you all have Lecrae on the podcast and other people that we are surrounding ourselves with who we think share our vision and share our faith as well. And we think that by doing that and bringing the right people into what we’re doing and finding entrepreneurs who also have a passion and conviction for doing the right thing for their communities, that for us is really what wakes up every morning and helps us to continue on doing this work.

William Norvell: I mean, that’s amazing. And as our listeners are here from both communities, how best can we support the work you all are doing right now? What are some ideas?

Jewel Burks Solomon: Well, I think one of the things that we are really big about is access to networks. We believe that access to capital is incredibly important, but it’s actually being able to walk in to a customer that we’ve been trying to land for a long time or have someone we can call who knows the right decision maker. That for us is a huge part of our model as well. So we really invite people, and particularly folks that are faith driven in these corporations who understand the vision and see the benefit of maybe taking a risk on an early stage entrepreneur or, you know, putting their neck out for someone who is building something great. We invite people to let us know if they’re looking for solutions, technology, solutions to problems that their organization is facing or if they would be willing to mentor a founder if they have expertize that they can win. We’re open to talking to folks about how they can get involved with what we do and also, more importantly, with what our founders are doing, because we think that there is so much that can develop and grow from these legal fees that we’re planning. And we just want to continue that growth as we go march toward that bigger vision that we talked about in 10 to 15 years.

William Norvell: That’s amazing. Well, as everybody is listening, we’ll obviously be posting links to what they’re up to. So just hopefully we can rally around them. One thing I want to jump back to. I know we’re kind of come to a close here, but I want to jump back to use a big word. Earlier when you talked about selling, your company used the word depression and you said one of your co-founders shared a similar sentiment and he may have gone through that. Did you go through that journey of selling a little bit in the emotions that you went through? I think it will give our audience an amazing idea, both just how they can approach something like that, how they can live with someone who may be going through that, and then also just further empathize with founders and how they go through these varying sets of emotions that maybe someone like me who’s never founded an operation like that maybe can’t quite figure out.

Jewel Burks Solomon: Yes, it is a big word. And I will tell you, I was afraid of the word for a while. And it wasn’t until I sold my company and found myself in a situation where, you know, the day that I was supposed to go and sign and the next day and the next day, I really had a hard time getting. Bed and I was crying, and it was just such a emotional time for me. And I did not understand what was happening and I had to go to the doctor because it was weighing so heavily on me. And I did not have the language or the tools to deal with it at that time. And it wasn’t until the doctors said, you are clinically depressed and encourage you, me to go to a therapist. And you think about my diet and my exercise and really examine what did self care look like. And for me at that time, I didn’t even know what that meant because I had spent so much of my life, my time, my energy, everything pouring into this company. And I did not know how to look at myself without having this title, you know, Feo of Perpich attached to my name. I just didn’t know how to deal with all of those emotions. And so I had to do a lot of things. I had to pray. Of course I had to pray about it. I had to ask God, who am I? Who am I to see you? What is my life about now? What am I here for? I had to ask these really big questions and seek guidance on how to step forward and realize that actually I’m purpose for life as you know what I built and that I was, you know, that that first year going from this bell and then my first year at Amazon, I was a really challenging year for me, but I just had faith through it. And I use the tools that God gave me, as well as the tools that the doctor gave me. And I was able to get into a much better place and so much so that I could be in a place where I could actually recognize it in someone else. So when I had the conversation with Barry without a partner in the lab, it came about because I recognized that something wasn’t going right with him. I knew that there was something a little bit all. And so I just asked him a simple question of how are you? And that’s what started him sharing and me sharing. And I think for everyone who’s listening.

If you have people around you, and especially if you are in the presence of entrepreneurs or in a relationship with an entrepreneur, I think that periodic check in just to ask, how are you? Is there anything that I can do to relieve some of the pressure that you may be feeling? That is a great thing that you can do. And also, just checking in with yourself if you are the entrepreneur who’s listening. Really trying to understand. Are you OK? What is happening with you? Have you checked in on yourself recently? So these are all things that I learned and unfortunately, I learned it when I hit a pretty big wall. But I’m just grateful that I had that experience. But now I think it’s powerful to talk about it and also just to have the tools to deal with it, especially in a time like we’re in right now where there are so many things happening. You know, we’re having so much loss and we’re having to deal with things that we’ve never had to deal with before. I think it’s very important for us to talk more about what does it mean to be depressed, to go through emotional turmoil, to feel lonely, to feel lost? I think it’s important for us to, in the Bible, talk about women things. And that is that is something that is actually encouraged. And I think we shy away from it a lot. So I’m very open to having this conversation. I thank you for asking the question. And I hope that it encourages the listeners to talk, to seek guidance, to seek help and to not be afraid of having these types of conversations.

Henry Kaestner: That’s such a powerful aspect and one that we haven’t explored as much as we should on the podcast. We did have a really neat interview with Max Anderson in which he talked about mental illness in the life of an entrepreneur. And it was all start to a different editions with time, but it really hasn’t gotten this concept. I think it’s really it’s a postpartum type of depression. I’ve had two questions come after that. And he partially answered one of them already, which is the part about limitations. But you mention the fact that you did seek professional help. You didn’t look at things like diet, but also that there is an aspect of your relationship with God and maybe his word that walked you through it. Once you speak a little bit, then I’ve got a follow up question as well.

Jewel Burks Solomon: Yes. I really had to dive deep in to a word, I had to dive deep in to my practice of spending time with God because I had gotten away from it, even though I was faithful throughout the astronaut ship journey. I was not spending the right amount of time on my relationship with God. And so one of the things that helped me to get to a better place as far as my mental health was making it a daily practice to spend time with God, to spend time in the world. And it really did work on that relationship. I think that sometimes I know in my life I’ve taken it for granted and I’ve always known that God will be there. But I haven’t necessarily been the person that I should be for him. And so one of the things that has helped me and to this day still helps me and has helped me honestly through the time that we’re in right now is just making sure that every single day I am spending time with God and and thanking God and being full of gratitude for the fact that, you know, I’m waking up each day. I’m getting to do the things that I want to do and live in what I think is my purpose here and be helpful to people. And all of these things that is just amazing to me are the blessing. But that for me has been really, really critical as far as my journey is concerned. The whole thing has been recognizing when I am not spending the right amount of time in trying to get back on track and then having people that can hold me accountable to that as well.

Henry Kaestner: So that’s really important. The accountability part and bridges into actually the follow up question, too, is that as you’re invited into relationship with entrepreneurs, that you invest in entering a community with them and have some level of accountability. And investor holds the entrepreneur accountable for things like keeping them in the loop with how things are going on in the business, among other things. What does it look like for you? Having had that experience to be able to talk about things like identity and mental illness? Have you and your partners at Collab talked about what it might look like to be able to love on your entrepreneurs, knowing that these are things to watch out for and knowing that an entrepreneur, his life is full of anxiety and I’ve told it to somebody the other day, feels like an eye opener is always selling something to somebody. You’re selling to your customers, you’re selling to your investors. You’re selling to people who are going to join the team. You’re selling people to stay on the team. And then when you think you’re finished with sound for the day, you come home and then you talk to your spouse and they’re asking how to go because they’re wondering why you left a really good job at Google or Apple or fill in the blanks and you feel like you have to tell them about things through a glass half full type of lens. And that really just weighs on somebody having come out of that experience yourself as an astronaut. How are you all thinking about loving on your entrepreneurs and being really conscious of that and looking out for that?

Jewel Burks Solomon: Yes. I think this is one of the things that I enjoy the most about the seat that I’m in, where I have a chance to spend time with both the entrepreneur that we have invested in, as well as the entrepreneurs that I meet through the various roles that I hold. And one of the things that I’ve really spent a lot of time with over the past six months is checking in on those entrepreneurs were our Google program. We’ve even made therapy available and free for the entrepreneurs in the program that we run. So it’s something that I’m very open to talking to them about. And I know because I’ve experienced that way can look like to just pour everything into the business and not care for yourself, lose connection to God or whatever higher power you believe in. And so I make it a point to make sure that I’m checking in on entrepreneurs regularly and probably more so right now, because I know that it’s very tempting to just pour everything into the work and leave and forget about yourself. But for me, it’s very important to look on the entrepreneurs and make sure that they are OK, because, you know, the business can’t be successful if the founder is not operating from a space of wholeness. And so that’s something that I’m really committed to. And I think my partners are as well. And we practice it with each other. You know, we’ve all had some level of personal pain over the past several months. And so it’s really been stepping up when one person is down or going through something, you know, taking the reins and carrying a bit of the load. And so we do the same thing with the entrepreneurs that we work with as well.

William Norvell: Thanks so much for walking us through that as we come to a close. We’ll highlight one of the pieces you mentioned, how we loved to always ask our guests whether they are God’s word and what God may be telling them today. And the season could be something you read this morning, could be something you’ve been meditating on for a while. Would you mind just letting our audience into where God has you and a scripture and how it’s taking you further on the journey?

Jewel Burks Solomon: Sure. So I have been doing morning devotion around anxiety because it’s something that is still very real for me. And so I wanted to share a scripture that was just in. I think maybe this week I wrote it down and have been meditating on it. And it’s John, 16, 33. And it’s hard. I’m not really alone. Or the fathers with me. I said these things to you so that you will have peace and me in the world. You have to stress but be encouraged. I have conquered the world. And for me, that scripture is encouraging. It’s especially helpful right now. The notion that as lonely as things may feel, I can’t sink into that concept because God is with me. And that, for me, has been a big comfort.

William Norvell: It’s great words. Great advice. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for spending time out of your day to come tell our listeners the story that God has you on and the ones you’re trying to encourage. And I always really appreciate it.

Henry Kaestner: Jewel. Thank you. Thank you very much for sharing your story. Excited to see what God will do through you and Collab.

Jewel Burks Solomon: Thank you so much.

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Hear Aimee Minnich, CIO, Founder, and General Counsel for Impact Foundation, share about how her personal history led her to a career dedicated to helping families steward resources for the glory of God. 

In this episode, she challenges the common understandings of risk, reward, and time horizon in investing and posits “the only meaningful risk we can take is to disobey God’s commands or ignore His invitations.”

To hear more talks like this, join us this year at the 2021 Faith Driven Investor Conference on September 9th.

Episode Transcript

Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDI movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.

Aimee Minnich: I was 17 when my dad died. My inheritance was a baby blue plastic trash bin full of quarters. My dad seven years sobriety coin from AA and his prayers. My parents marriage had dissolved when I was seven and I lived with my mom after that. But my dad had done his best to share with us five kids the faith that he discovered on his journey to sobriety. By the grace of God, I went to college and law school on a full ride scholarship, and while I was in my first year of school, first year of law school, my mom and stepdad took their company public. It was a fast, wild ride from nothing to IPO. And since then I’ve sat through family meetings with wealth helpers to discuss the portfolio, and I’ve suffered through the painful estate planning meetings. I tell you this to say that I have seen and personally lived through both ends of the wealth spectrum and it’s given me a lot of opportunity to think about what it means to live a successful life. Is it being able to buy a Lamborghini or a yacht so that I can demonstrate to the world that I made it that I was a success? Is it being able to leave as much as possible to my family and pay as little as possible on estate taxes? You might be wondering what in the world this has to do with the conference for investors. You see, I’ve decided that the best way I can spend my working life is to help families like mine steward their resources, financial, spiritual and social to the best of their abilities and to the glory of God. For families with significant wealth, a lot of it looks like investing. It’s what compels the work that I do now at Impact Foundation, where we help families invest charitable capital in businesses that create jobs, share the gospel and contribute to human flourishing. So what’s the measure of success? I think we all want to get to the end of days and here. Well done, my beloved child. And we’re just doing our best to figure out what that means. We want to be excellent in the craft of investing, but I’m afraid sometimes I and other Faith Driven Investor used the wrong definition of excellence, just as the kingdom of this world misses what it means to live a successful life, so too it gives us an inadequate definition of what makes a successful investment portfolio. The world says, minimize the risk of losing your capital, maximize financial return and invest for the time horizon of your own life and maybe the life of your kids. But risk reward and time horizon have very different meanings in the kingdom of God. Jesus says if anybody wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross and follow me. It’s pretty risky on its face, but God’s omnipotent and good, his time horizon is eternal and we’re really just his money managers, which means the only meaningful risk we can encounter is to disobey his commands or ignore his invitations. So let’s ask then whether his word gives us any indication of how we should invest in scripture. We see at least four uses of capital commended. We’re familiar with the first three charity tithing and traditional investing for return. And to be clear, those are all worthy of our time, effort and money. But I want to focus on gleaning. It’s the most misunderstood and unaddressed but really important uses of capital. Remember how Ruth gathered around the edges of Boaz’ field in the Book of Ruth? Boaz was following the command from Leviticus 19 and 23 to allow for gleaning. The Theology Work Project explains gleaning is a process in which landowners have an obligation to provide the poor and marginalized access to the means of production, which in Leviticus was the land. And to work it themselves, unlike charity, does not depend on the generosity of landowners. Also, unlike charity, it was not given to the poor as a transfer payment. Through gleaning, the poor earned their living the same way as the landowners did by working the fields with their own neighbors. It was simply a command that everyone had a right to access the means of provision created by God. Our economies may not be agrarian anymore, but gleaning nevertheless is instructive for all of us because it has to do with provision rather than harvesting crops. I’ve observed sometimes it’s easier to practice gleaning within our own companies than it is to understand how to do it as investors. I think many of us are afraid to consider investment gleaning because it seems that accepting less than full market rate returns is the purview of the unsophisticated. If I lend money at eight percent and somebody else gets 15 percent. Doesn’t that make me the chump? Plus, people fear that it provides an excuse for lack of excellence from an entrepreneur. Those things certainly could be the causes of poor returns, but that’s not what gleaning entails. True gleaning involves excellence, access, work and sacrifice. In ancient times, a farmer there was leaving some of those fields and unharvested. It meant that he had to be even more efficient, more effective with the portions he was working in order to make enough to feed his own household and follow the command to allow room around the edges. A follower of God had to be the very best farmer around. Excellence is always a hallmark of gleaning. David Simms and John Halverson, at Talanton, are doing an amazing job as they back small and medium sized companies in Kenya and other parts of Africa. They’re demonstrating excellence in their company selection and management, even as they expect less than market rate returns. The next two parts of gleaning access and work, they go together gleaning access to the poor and marginalized for the poor and marginalized. And it’s not the same thing as a handout. Access to the means of production means work for wages. I wouldn’t ever, ever advocate eliminating charity, but I do fear that if we aren’t creating pathways to employment through our philanthropic capital, then we may be doing more harm than good. If you’ve been to Haiti, you’ve seen this firsthand. There are instances where aid given to the poor and marginalized can create access. Scholarships for education or career training are great examples. So as aid in the context of a natural disaster or mass displacement. But at some point we have to begin asking ourselves when does access and helping me find a job rather than another handout for Garfield Produce in Chicago, Access looks like employing former gang members from Chicago’s South Side to grow micro greens, which they sell to restaurants or they used to before covid. Their investors are expecting maybe to get their original loan back, but with no interest. That’s investment gleaning. Sacrifice is the last hallmark of gleaning, and it’s also the scariest until we actually do it. Gleaning means the difference between an eight percent return that creates 100 jobs or a 15 percent return that creates 50 jobs. What looks like sacrifice to others often feels like simple obedience to the person making the sacrifice. If the God of Heaven instructs us to do something, following in obedience is probably the safest bet when we get to the pearly gates. I don’t think he’s going to ask us whether we got a 15 percent IRR or beat our benchmarks. But I am confident that what we do for the least of these, the ways in which we take care of his children who are poor and marginalized will be remembered. So next time you’re looking at an eight percent return that creates a hundred jobs, how might you respond?

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Money is a fact of everyday life. We earn it, spend it and save it. We’re tempted to worship it and to trust it to provide for our needs. While much has been written about the power, danger, and stewardship of money, little has been said about what money actually is and whether or not money itself is moral. 

Today’s guest is here to change that. Jimmy Song is a bitcoin advocate, developer and author who has been contributing to open-source bitcoin projects since 2013. 

On today’s episode he explores the ways in which the current monetary system is broken, what can be done to fix it, and how the ongoing transition to sound money may be a source of hope for a broken world.

Episode Transcript

Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDI movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.

Jimmy Song: So Esau had what we would call in between high time preference, right, like he was very impatient, didn’t have much prudence. Jacob had low time preference. He was willing to wait. He was patient. He was prudent. He was wise. And that’s what I wanted to point out about Bitcoin is there’s an ethic of being willing to wait because Bitcoin is very volatile. It does sort of like turn your stomach. There’s a lot of emotional disturbance in the price going up and down that you kind of have to go through that a lot of people simply can’t take. So for a lot of people, they would rather live for tomorrow and be more like Esau, who cares about my estate? That’s like 30 years from now. I’d rather have the suit now rather than being like Jacob. OK, I’ll forgo the suit now, but that means that I get this huge treasure later on. And to me, that’s at the heart of what both Bitcoin is about and what Christianity is about. Our God promises us treasures in heaven for doing the things that aren’t necessarily rewarded in this life. And that’s for me, what the ultimate in low time preference behavior looks like.

Rusty Rueff: Welcome back, everyone. You found us once again at the Faith Driven Investor podcast. Money, money is a fact of everyday life. We earn it, we spend it, we save it. Sometimes we give it away. We’re tempted to worship it and to trust it, to provide for our needs. And while much has been written about the power, the danger and the stewardship of money, little has been said about what money actually is and whether or not money itself is moral. Today’s guest is here to change that. Jimi Song is a Bitcoin advocate, a developer and an author who has been contributing to open source Bitcoin projects since 2013. On today’s episode, he explores the ways in which the current monetary system is broken, what can be done to fix it, and how the ongoing transition to sound money may be the source of hope for a broken world. We can’t wait to hear what you think of this, but let’s go mine this subject right now.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. We’ve got a really special episode. I say that at the beginning of every one of these look and at some point in time that’s going to ring hollow, but it’s not going to ring hollow today because today is actually super cool. We have our first ever Asian cowboy on the podcast. We’ve never had that before. We never had anybody who was wearing a cowboy hat to a podcast interview. And we may even be able to do a video clip of this in the promo reel. But Jimmy’s song is a really special guest because he’s going to take us through an asset class, Luke, that we actually participated in a little bit, but we don’t know very much about, right?

Luke Roush: That’s right. And it’s a hot asset class, right? It’s garnered a lot of notoriety and a lot of interest in the last few months. So never had an episode on Bitcoin been more appropriate.

Henry Kaestner: I agree. We’ve got Jimmy Song on the podcast today. Jimmy, welcome.

Jimmy Song: Thank you for having me. It’s very exciting for me to be on this podcast. I’ve done a lot of Bitcoin podcast. I haven’t done that many Christian ones. So I am super excited to talk about my faith and how Bitcoin relates to our faith.

Henry Kaestner: So it’s great having a is a real treat before we get going. One of the things that we like to do with every one of our guests is to understand who they are and where they come from and just share with us a bit, you know, who are you? Where do you come from? Where did faith enter into your journey? And then, yes, absolutely. We can tell about all things talking about the money system. We going to talk about greed and corruption and government and crypto and it being a force for good, all those different things. But who are you? Where you come from?

Jimmy Song: Sure. I was born in South Korea and I immigrated to the United States back in nineteen eighty five as an eight year old. So my dad was transferred to an office in New York because at the time he worked for a textile manufacturer and back in the eighties that was where a lot of clothing was made in Korea. But of course the designers were in New York and they wanted to see what materials factory could make and so on. So he was the representative for that company. He worked in the Empire State Building. I still remember going to his office, you know, on the sixty sixth floor next to the diamond exchange and everything. Anyway, we immigrated in nineteen eighty five and one of the things that happened when we came was my parents just kind of missed Korea and though they weren’t religious at the time, they decided to go to church as a way to meet other Korean people. And we started attending church maybe a month after we came to the US and part of that was me growing in faith and learning about God. I went to a summer overnight Christian camp called Word of Life in upstate New York. That was where I was saved. And it’s been a journey since then. Also, around that time I got into computers, I didn’t really even know what they were, but I had like this natural affinity towards them. And I begged my dad to get me one. He got me one from Toys R US as a fourth grader. It was a Commodore sixteen, not the sixty four that everyone knows was a sixteen, which only had like three games. So I learned a lot of programing on that thing, mostly because I wanted to play with this machine and I’ve been programing ever since. So I’ve been a programmer all my life and I went to a startup right out of college. I’ve been doing startups for a long time, pretty much since I graduated college, which was back in ninety eight. And I learned about Bitcoin back in 2011 when I was reading tech news site that said Bitcoin has reached parity with the dollar and I couldn’t even pass that sentence. I was like, what does that mean? How do you get parity with the dollar? And then I found out that it was a digital currency and so on. And yeah, I’ve been doing stuff in the Bitcoin space, contributing to open source projects, writing various books, speaking at conferences, teaching people I’m also a Bitcoin fellow at a venture capital firm and things like that. So. Yeah, it’s been quite a journey, and I’m excited about this podcast because it is sort of talking about two things that got integrated into my life and it’s something that only God can do.

Luke Roush: Jimmy, some of our listeners don’t have a ton of exposure to Bitcoin, maybe they haven’t actually spent the time that you have to really understand the currency and kind of how it works. But pretend we know nothing about Bitcoin, would you mind just kind of walking us through kind of a crash course for dummies, myself included, on how Bitcoin functions and what our listeners might want to know or pay attention to as we’re watching this universe unfold before our eyes?

Jimmy Song: Sure. The easiest way I can describe Bitcoin is as digital gold, and it’s digital, I think, which most people understand. But it’s also like gold in the sense that it requires no permission to go and gather it. So gold has always been like that. If you own some land, you can go dig in your backyard or whatever to go search for gold. That is everyone’s right to do. You don’t need permission from anybody. So in that way, Bitcoin is what we call decentralized. There’s no central authority that determines whether or not you are allowed to create that or find that particular commodity. This is unlike the US dollar, for example, which is centrally controlled. If I tried to produce a one hundred dollar bill and managed to make it look very realistic, I would get arrested by the Secret Service because the production of US dollars is controlled by, well, at least the physical notes by the Treasury, but really most of it by the Federal Reserve. So a lot of things are centralized, including concert tickets, coupons for online stores or whatever. What’s unique about Bitcoin is that it’s digital and decentralized and this usually blows people’s minds. And honestly, most of us in the computer science field didn’t think that that was actually possible until Satoshi Nakamoto showed that it could in 2008. And that was a big breakthrough in Bitcoin was the fact that it was both decentralized and digital. That is, it had no central authority, but it was also digital. When most people think of digital things, they think like MP3 files or Web pages or e-books or something like that, something that can essentially be infinitely copied with perfect fidelity. But with Bitcoin, you have something that’s decentralized, not infinitely copyable because there’s a ledger and this is what’s called the block chain. And that block chain holds essentially every transaction that’s ever been done on Bitcoin. It’s not very different than, say, the ledger at your bank, which for them has the record of every single transaction that’s ever been done by their customers of that bank, except that block chain is completely distributed. Everyone that runs the software can check exactly that. The ledger balances, for example, that no one’s overspending that noone’s overdrafting, that the rules of the ledger are being kept up and not violated and so on. And that’s essentially what it is. We also call it digital gold because of this process called mining with gold. I’m told that you need to scour something like 40 tons of dirt and rock before you find about one ounce of gold. So there’s a lot of dirt and rock that you have to process. You use chemicals on before you find that one ounce of gold. Bitcoin also has that same process for bringing new Bitcoin into existence, except instead of dirt and rock, what you have lots and lots of numbers. So you process as many numbers as possible and you’ll find that sort of one ounce of gold, if you will. And much like gold, that process of finding that gold is much more difficult than verifying that ounce of gold is genuine. The chemical test is much cheaper than actually digging up an ounce of gold in the ground. Similarly with Bitcoin, the process of finding a number that satisfies a particular property is very, very difficult. You just have to brute force lots and lots of numbers, the equivalent of 40 tons of dirt and rock. But when you find it, it is very easy to verify. In fact, your cell phone can go verify that it’s been done, whereas the actual process of finding it requires many, many thousands of thousands of machines.

Luke Roush: Yeah, that’s fascinating. And a whole bunch of other questions you go off in terms of who the miners are, where they live, how they mined. But now I want to go over actually to an argument that you make in your book that it could be really interesting to our listeners, maybe resonant given the environment that we’re currently living in. It’s around the moral argument for Bitcoin versus currencies that can be printed more readily. Could you just kind of articulate that view on the merits of Bitcoin relative to fiat currency?

Jimmy Song: Sure. The thing about the current monetary system, which is central bank backed fiat money, it is extremely corrupt for the lack of a better word. There’s a lot of theft in it. There is what we would call huge moral hazard within the fiat money system. And this is because there exists a money printer. Unfortunately, not that many people know how money works. I’ll just briefly describe it. When the government has a budget of 4 trillion and their tax revenue is three trillion, you have a one trillion dollar deficit. So where do they get that money in the past before central bank back fiat money? What? The government had to do was to go borrow that money from people that actually had it. So King John, for instance, wanted to borrow a ton of money to fund the war that he wanted to do as a part of England. The merchants that lent to him charge them two hundred fourteen percent interest because they were pretty sure that they wouldn’t get the money back. So at least after six months, they’d get some of it back and interest and then go from there. So that’s how money used to be nowadays. That one trillion dollar gap, it sold US Treasuries. There are other central banks that buy it. There are people in the public that buy it. They’re hedge funds and various pension funds that will buy it. But there’s usually some left over. So say they sell five hundred billion to various parties, but they have five hundred billion left. What happens? Well, the central bank is called the lender of last resort. For that reason, they will buy up the other five hundred billion dollars through money that they created then. Er so it’s essentially monetary expansion through debt insurance and that’s how the monetary system currently works. And it’s not just at the government level, it’s also at the corporate level and it’s also at the consumer level. So if you think about corporate bonds and whatever bond buyers know, you can get tremendous leverage. You can actually just get the spread. There’s questions about, OK, who’s buying these like one and a half percent bonds. Right. Like that pay like nothing. Well, it’s because you can go get loans for one hundred percent of that amount. It just becomes sort of like a money generating machine. And even if you’re getting paid like 20 basis points, if you’re getting loans at five basis points to 15 basis point spread is all profit and you can leverage the heck out of it. So you borrow a billion and you get 15 basis points on a billion dollars. That’s still a significant amount of money. So that’s how the current system works. It’s based on that. It’s based on money printing. It’s based on monetary expansion that can be sort of like game by the people that are in control. And that means that there is a huge moral hazard or the people that are printing the money because they can use it to benefit themselves and their friends and their family at the expense of everybody else. Every time you expand the money supply, you are essentially stealing from everyone that has saved in that currency. So if you have money saved in the dollar and the dollar expands and supply, then your dollar has a little less purchasing power. And you could kind of see that in the asset inflation bubble that we’re in with stocks and even bonds and real estate and maybe even gold to some degree. But every time the money expands, you are stealing from everybody else that’s holding the dollar. And this isn’t just people in the United States. A lot of those people are in third world countries. They use the dollar as their store of value because their own currency is even worse than the dollar. So in essence, every time money is being expanded through debt creation, we are essentially stealing from everybody else that has money stored in that fiat currency. So from a biblical perspective, it is immoral and it is doing something that God detests.

Henry Kaestner: Hold on saying this is the almighty dollar. If this is the greenback, you’re saying that there’s something just wrong with the system and then maybe you’d even suggest that because we are all transacting in dollars that we may even, by extension, be morally complicit in this.

Jimmy Song: Yeah, yeah. I mean, every time we take out a mortgage, for example, I mean, think about this. You take out a mortgage for, say, a quarter million dollars, two hundred fifty thousand dollars, and you get three percent, 30 years or something like that when most people think with that mortgage is OK, some that is on the other side of that trade that’s lending out two hundred fifty thousand dollars for three percent for 30 years. And that’s simply not true. If you were an investor, you would never take back 30 years, three percent with some credit risk. And so, like, nobody would do that. The only reason that happens is because they print that money into existence. And that mortgage in turn is actually insured by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So really, there’s no risk for the bank at all. And the government’s the one that takes the risk and they print the money for your benefit. So we’re all complicit in this. And I’m speaking as a person that has a mortgage, so I’m complicit in this as well, and that we are expanding the money supply. Clearly, the borrower is benefiting because they’re getting access to a lot of money at once. The bank is benefiting. They’re getting paid interest. So who’s it actually hurting? Well, it’s hurting everyone else that’s holding the dollar, including people in Nigeria that are holding dollars because the Niros inflating very quickly. So how do you even for them, I mean, we’re stealing from everybody through this monetary expansion. And the US is the most guilty of all because we got first access to that dollar, whereas people in Nigeria, for example, get last access as a result of what’s called the Cantillon effect. They get screwed more than everybody else being convicted.

Luke Roush: And my guess is that many of our listeners are also being convicted based on that last 60 second report, which is good. I think it goes over a lot of people’s heads and just kind of passed us. But we don’t. Realize that we’re living in it, so I appreciate you shedding light on that, one of the things that Indonesia, where I used to live is known for is having the most expensive coffee in the world, which is Kopi Luwak coffee and I won’t go into all the details of it. But my understanding is that you may be an expert on some of the most expensive beef jerky in the world. And switching gears, I got to ask the man we need to hear the beef jerky story, most expensive beef jerky ever produced in the world. Jimmy Fallon on the show today.

Jimmy Song: Yeah. So 2013, there were a lot of different companies that were allowing came in and bitcoin. And this is sort of the mistake that I made. I want to support this company that’s now taking Bitcoin. And it was online and I decided to order some beef jerky from that company. At the time, Bitcoin was about four hundred dollars. So I bought one hundred dollars worth of beef jerky and I was like, OK, it’s a quarter bitcoin. It’s not that much. I’ll buy it. They shipped it to me. It was delicious. I don’t think it was like twelve thousand dollars delicious though because currently Bitcoin is up forty eight thousand. And this is kind of what happens with a lot of store of value assets is that I’ve known people that worked at Dell or something early on and they had stock options. They decided to sell them for a couch and it turns out that the stock kept going up or whatever, and that couch is now ten thousand dollars or something instead of eight hundred or something like that. So you know this. I regret spending Bitcoin on that beef jerky. Yeah, there was also a sewing machine I got from my wife, which costs like a tenth of a bitcoin that’s now like five thousand bucks. So, yeah, some regrets.

Henry Kaestner: So when you’re referring to store value, you’re referring to beef jerky as a store value. So tell us you’ve written a book on this. Tell us about the book.

Jimmy Song: Thank God for Bitcoin. Yeah, it’s all about the moral case for money. And it comes from a Christian perspective. I got to write this during covid as a result of Bible study that we started doing on Zoom. So basically I had gone to this conference that Russell Cohen put together. He’s the left tackle for the Carolina Panthers and he also wrote the foreword for our book. And his brother in law, George was one of my coauthors, is a Christian, and we started talking about it and we decided, OK, you know what, let’s do a Bible study of just some verses in the Bible that talk about money and oh, my goodness, there are so many verses in the Bible that talk about money. So we started doing that. And as we finished, he expressed some interest in learning more about the economic aspect of it. And I come from the Austrian school and I’ve read a lot of stuff on it. And we decided to open it up to some more people. And we had about ten different Bitcoin ers that have known through conferences and so on that I knew were Christian. And we got together. We studied two books, The Ethics of Money Production by Guido Huelsmann and Honest Money by Garry North. And both of them treat the monetary system from an ethical perspective. And we ended up doing studies of both books. And at the end we were dissatisfied because both of them ended with, hey, we need to go back on the gold standard and we need to get a political action committee together and convince enough people so that the dollar can go back to being backed by gold. And, you know, I mean, we’re reading this and thinking, OK, this is completely unrealistic and this is never going to happen. But we have this thing called Bitcoin where each individual can opt out. We need to write a book to lay that out. And that’s how the book started. We wanted to make the moral case for Bitcoin and we wanted to do it from a Christian perspective. So there’s a lot of verses in there. We definitely take the Christian world view in this book, and the hope is to give that moral perspective, because for a lot of Christians, I think what they think of when they think of Bitcoin is OK. It’s like the money used by drug dealers and traders that just gambled their money or something like that. And for us, it’s very much not. It’s a more moral money. And that’s the argument that we wanted to make in the book, and that’s what it covers.

Henry Kaestner: So it’s very interesting. I want to get more into the rifts that you’ve had with friends in Bible studies about faith as it comes through. And I just you got one of the most entertaining Twitter feeds of all time. And the other day you talk about Esau and Jacob and their take on Bitcoin. Selling Bitcoin: Esau’s soup, buying Bitcoin: jacob Father’s estate. Please explain.

Jimmy Song: Yeah. So Esau had what we would call in Bitcoin high time preference. Right. Like, he was very impatient, didn’t have much prudence. Jacob had low time preference. He was willing to wait. He was patient. He was prudent. He was wise. And that’s what I wanted to point out about Bitcoin is there’s an ethic of being willing to wait because Bitcoin is very volatile. It does sort of like turn your stomach. There’s a lot of emotional disturbance in the price going up and down that you kind of have to go through that a lot of people simply can’t take. So for a lot of people, they would rather live for tomorrow and be more like Esau. Who? Cares about my estate, that’s like 30 years from now. I’d rather have the suit now rather than being like Jacob, OK, I’ll forgo the suit now, but that means that I get this huge treasure later on. And to me, that’s at the heart of what both Bitcoin is about and what Christianity is about. Our God promises us treasures in heaven for doing the things that aren’t necessarily rewarded in this life. And that’s for me, what the ultimate in low time preference behavior looks like.

Henry Kaestner: So I want to do a slight pivot here because I’m thinking through this. I’m going beyond the moral implications of the monetary supply and I’m going to be thinking about that for a long time. I know our listeners are, too, but one of the things that has stuck with me is when you talked about the Nigerians being the last people kind of in the stream, so to speak, what is Bitcoin mean? And maybe I’m reading too much into your comment or just this general thought, but what is Bitcoin mean for people in places like Zimbabwe where they’ve got to take wheelbarrows of cash just to buy food? You know, is their role here for Bitcoin and poverty alleviation? Can that happen or or do those governments shut it down? Because that’s their last stranglehold on the people. Just riff about what that means a little bit in developing economies.

Jimmy Song: Yeah, and it’s been a tremendous in developing economies. In fact, one of my coauthors is Jordan Bush, and he actually inspired that Esau tweet. He is a missionary in Uruguay and his congregation is actually largely Venezuelan and they love Bitcoin. They think it’s something that is very important to them and in part because they can actually send money back home. A lot of these regimes, when they get in power, what they do is they impose strict capital controls and so on to make it very difficult to do anything monetary because they are spending their own money in hyperinflation. That the previous book that I wrote is the little Bitcoin book. And one of my coauthors there is Alex Gladstein, who’s the chief strategy officer for the Human Rights Foundation, and he’s really interested in Bitcoin, in large part because a lot of human rights activists in these countries, the first thing that happens to them, once the government finds out that they’re doing something against the government’s interests, is they get their bank accounts seized, they get financial, they get their financial access sort of cut off. And Bitcoin for them is a life saver. So there’s that aspect to it. But there’s also that other aspect that you are talking about, which is, you know, being able to store value. So one anecdote that I like to share is that one hundred dollar bill, a crisp one in a lot of third world countries, will trade at a premium to a wrinkled one. And you might be wondering, why would that be? Why is the crisp one trading at a premium to a wrinkled one? Well, the crisp one is more valuable because they’re given as gifts at weddings and so on. So when you’re presenting a gift to the bride and groom or something like that, you want a nice crisp bill. So the wrinkled one trades at a discount because these people are using these as stores of value. This is you’re starting off your new life. Here’s some money and that’s how they store it. So for a lot of those people in Third World countries, the US dollar and so on is a lifeline to being able to store their wealth. And if we’re thinking about like what’s happened to the US dollar in the last year, then two money supply, for example, has expanded by thirty five percent or something crazy. For a lot of people in Third World countries, it’s even worse. So they have their own currencies, which through legal tender laws and monetary injustice of all kinds, they’re forced to use. But it’s inflating at such a high rate that they need something else. They want to store value in something else. And if you go to like the black market in Venezuela, for example, you know, no one takes bolivars or if they do, they have a quick way of getting rid of it because no one wants to hold on to them, because an hour from now, it’s going to be worth less than what it is right now. So that whole process is very detrimental to their living and it makes all sorts of economic calculation crazy. It generally devalues labor and so on. So Bitcoin definitely has a role. The country where Bitcoin is most popular besides the United States is Nigeria right now. And it’s because the Naira is expanding fairly quickly. They have a pretty technical population. One of my coauthors from the previous book runs an exchange there, and he’s trying to comply with the central bank of Nigeria’s mandates and so on. But yeah, it’s a life saver for a lot of them because they can actually store value instead of having it just sort of like frittered away. And a lot of the injustice that we see in the world is actually monetary injustice. And honestly, a lot of that is because of the dollar hegemony that is over the entire world. And this is something that I think as Americans, much more so than, quote on quote, social justice or whatever that we have to think about as a nation. There’s a monetary imperialism that is over the entire globe. The US can more or less unilaterally enforce sanctions on Iran because of the dollar, all international transactions. These are settled in the dollar and so on, so. You know, that level of control, that level of ability to affect people in Third World countries, this is something that we need to really face up to as a nation because we’ve been abusing it for the last 70 years or so since Bretton Woods.

Luke Roush: So the concept of monetary imperialism is a powerful word, picture that I’ve never thought through that before. But this is really, I think, brought that to light for me and will be impactful for others, too. I’ve got one more question and then a closing question. But one more question is, we all have friends who have waded into Bitcoin more recently trying to make a quick buck. What counsel would you give the folks who are seeing this more sort of short term trading opportunity rather than a long term?

Jimmy Song: Yeah, I know a lot of people that have been like that, and those people have existed since 2010. So there were people that got into Bitcoin at a dollar and sold at eight dollars and said, you know what, I made eight times my money. I am out. And they have never come back since. So my counsel to those people would be understand what Bitcoin is. It could be a trade thing, a plaything, a gambling thing. In which case, I think as a Christian, you should really look into whether or not that is something that is corrupting your soul or not otherwise. Once you’ve learned what that really is, whether it is this incorruptible unsensible store of value that we argue in the book, then you’ll understand like just how much it means to have that store of value available so that we can build a better civilization instead of one that’s leaking all over the place with the current fiat monetary system that we’re in. So for those people, learn what it is before you keep going with this sort of like speculation. A lot of people do come in for no go up, as we say, in our space. But a lot of people end up staying because they learn what it is and read books like mine or say things the Bitcoin standard or many others and learn, OK, all right. This really is a better money. And it is in many ways incorruptible by human beings because it’s run by computer code. And as a result, they become convinced, OK, this really is superior to the current monetary system. And I want to opt out of the current monetary system into this thing. And that’s what brings a lot of people in. So, you know, learning about that is not easy. I’ve seen people take many years before they got into it or understood it or realized this implications. And like we’ve been talking about, the implications are enormous and they are global. And it is no small thing to be changing out money. It seems to be one of the base layers of civilization. If you change that out, you affect absolutely everything above it, including governments, including trade, including companies, including our lifestyles, including our how we view debt and things like that. And all of those things will need to be changed as we transition more to a Bitcoin standard. In my opinion, that’s inevitable because fiat currencies are just sort of temporary by nature. I think a study of all fiat currencies that have ever existed, like the average life span, is like twenty three years. The US dollar is about 50 years old in fiat terms. And so it’s fairly old, but we’ll see where it goes. But that’s what I would implore your listeners to go and understand.

Luke Roush: Most impactful episode for me and I think for all of us. But let’s just close out with the way we always close out. So I’d love to hear, Jimmy, how God is speaking to you and teaching you. Now, what have you found in his words that has stuck out to you recently?

Jimmy Song: Yeah. So the verse that I’ll go to is in the book as well, but it’s Ephesians 4:28. He who steals my steal no longer, but rather he must labor performing with his own hands. What is good so that he will have something to share with one who has need. And I love that verse first of all, because it says don’t steal. And I think at least in the fiat economy, I think we’re all guilty of that, whether we know it or not. And stopping from that and working with our own hands, creating something that is good. So he will have something to share with one who has need. That to me sometimes is interpreted as go and make money so you can give alms to the poor. For me it means go make something with your hands so that you can contribute something to civilization, to someone else in the market that can get value from whatever it is that you create. And the verse is really about money and the role of money, which from a spiritual sense is a signal to you, to each individual to know how it is that you can provide most value to other people. And when the money is not corrupt, it’s the purest sort of signal for what we should be doing because it tells other people, I find what you’re doing, your goods or services more valuable than the money that I am willing to give it up for. So for me, that’s what it is. The other thing I’ll share is that this book for me is sort of like, as I mentioned before, the merging of two huge passions in my life, Christianity and Bitcoin. And I was at a conference last year, a big block boom. It was Bitcoin conference and it was in Dallas. And I gave a talk and somebody asked a question and I revealed that I was a Christian at that conference. And I also told the audience at the end, hey, I’m writing a book about this, if you’re interested, please. Talk to me afterwards, no less than 30 people throughout the next two days came up to me and told me that they are Christian, that they are Bitcoin. They were afraid of saying something. And for me, that was a huge validation of what God was doing, because it was clear that there are a lot of Christians that don’t want to be known as Christians. And a thing for me when I think about that is, wow, how sad is that? Because according to the Bible, these are Jesus’s words. He says, if you are ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you before my father. And my hope for your listeners is that they learn to be bold with their faith. And, you know, we tend to think, OK, God doesn’t want me to be ashamed of him, but then I’m going to get embarrassed. That’s not the way it is, at least for me. My experience has been that God has blessed me, that he wants me to be bold so that he can bless me and what I am doing. And this book has come out as a result of that. We’ve got a lot of reviewers from that conference that were able to chime in on Bitcoin and Christianity and give us some really good feedback that we incorporated. But for all your listeners that are thinking about investing better in these industries where, you know, it might not be cool to talk about Jesus, take a chance people about it, because God wants to bless you.

Henry Kaestner: Amen. Wow, that was really, really awesome. I love what you’re talking about in terms of being able to deliver value. We should be about being used by God under his power for his glory to bring about his kingdom on Earth as it is in heaven. And we need to be creative and adding value to the marketplace, creating goods and services to bring about his kingdom and to love our neighbor, and in that process, superimportant. So that’s a great word to leave us on. And then the admonition, of course, to be always ready, willing and able to be able to boldly and yet with gentleness and respect to share the reason for the hope we have. So great word for me, a great word for Luke, Justin and the entire FDE team and our listeners. Jimmy, we’re really grateful for you. Thank you very much.

Jimmy Song: Thank you for having me.