Episode Transcript

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. I’m here as always, or most of the time, at least with Luke. Luke. Good morning. How’s Nashville?

Luke Roush: Nashville’s beautiful, beautiful spring morning. Tulips are coming out.

Henry Kaestner: That’s awesome. We’re taking the show on the road today. We’re going to the amazing, amazing, amazing country of Israel. And it pains me that I’ve only been there once. Most of our listeners probably will have been there if you haven’t. It’s just amazing. It’s great culture. The weather’s great, the food is awesome, scenery really great. And then to walk in the footsteps of all of our biblical heroes is just it’s amazing. It’s otherworldly, almost literally. And our program today is taking us to Israel, to Michael Eisenberg, who is a crazy, successful investor coming out benchmark time on the Midas list, made lots and lots of great investments over the years. Maybe the most impressive thing that he’s done is the fact that he has written a blog called Six Kids and a full time Job, even though he has eight kids. So now under selling, under promising overdelivering. And I think that’s what he does as an investor as well.

Luke Roush: He’s got to make it more approachable. You know, eight is just completely unattainable for most individuals. Six makes it at least kind of within spitting distance.

Henry Kaestner: That’s right. You know, if it’s eight, then they think it’s a work of fiction. Six kids will bring people in. And then, you know, with time, he says, yes, eight. Michael, you do have eight kids, correct?

Michael Eisenberg: I do have eight kids, yeah. In fact, when our eighth was born and, you know, and the blog didn’t have a scalable name, one of my partners from Benchmark wrote Maybe you should rename it. Eight is enough. Those people are old enough to get the idea. Yeah.

Henry Kaestner: I’m a child of the seventies. That was a great show. I remember that.

Michael Eisenberg: Me too.

Henry Kaestner: Very cool. So, Michael, thank you for joining the program.

Michael Eisenberg: Thank you so much for having me. Henry, Luke, appreciate it.

Henry Kaestner: So give us we’d like to do this with all of our guests, of course, but give us an autobiographical flyover. You haven’t spent your entire life in Israel, but you’re doing some incredible things there and do the autobiographical flyover. As we’re doing this, I’ll just tell our listeners why Luke and I are so fired up about having you on the program. We’re talking about a guy who serves on the board of an organization in Israel called Yeshivat Har Etzion. It’s a Bible study. He’s fascinated by the Word of God and what it means for his life, but what it means also for his professional life. And the fact that we’ve gone this far along and Faith Driven Investor and having connected with Michael through our great friend Evan Baer a long time ago, I’m embarrassed that it’s taken this long. But we’re going to learn from Michael about what he’s heard from God and how it informs his investing. Before we do that, give us a fly over who is Michael?

Michael Eisenberg: Yes. As you hear from my accent I am not originally from Israel, I was born and bred and raised in New York. I’m fond of saying on the island of Manhattan, I was born in Manhattan. I went to elementary and high school and college in Manhattan, but I took a detour after my first year of college, and I went to study at that same Yeshivat Har Etzion when I was 18 years old, after my freshman year of college and one year turned into two years of Bible and Talmud study in those amazing halls and under the tutelage of the two heads of the Yeshivat, this house of Torah and Scripture study and I had a transformative experience right about this time here today may actually even be the anniversary of when it happened, because it happened a week after the Jewish holiday of Purim, which fell last week. And it was the year of the first Gulf War in 1991. And the war ended on Purim Day. And Scud missiles had rained down for like two months in Israel. And I found myself in a room with the head of the Yeshivat, a rabbi who was a Holocaust survivor. And I asked him a following religious question. And your listeners will appreciate this, because as religious people, we want to follow the laws, the religious laws. And so I asked him if he thought there was a greater religious fulfillment of commandments, if I moved to Israel and settled in an unpopulated place, the Negev, the Galilee, or if I settled in a very populated place like Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or city, would it be the same fulfillment of the biblical commandment to move to Israel? Now, mind you, I had no intention of moving to Israel at this point in time. And the Rabbi answered me. He said, Your question is nonsense. It’s total nonsense in a very charming way. He said it. He said, What you really need to do is move to Israel and open a factory to employ 10,000 people who will earn an honest and decent living. And I’ve been going to kind of orthodox Jewish religious education my entire life. And never once I heard a rabbi talk about the economy or business and not just as a spiritual imperative, but as a religious imperative and a business imperative, and that it’s good business to empower other people to earn an honest and decent living and thereby grow the pie. And so at that moment, I decide to move to Israel and try to employ 10,000 people. And I came back to the States, finished college in two years. I graduated college on May 31st, 1993. I got married on June 13th and moved to Israel on August 11th in pursuit of trying to employ 10,000 people, […] and decent living. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do ever since. That’s been like my life goal to keep doing that.

Henry Kaestner: So tell us how you got involved in investing. Did you have an operating background first when you first moved to Israel or did you right into the world of investing?

Michael Eisenberg: I got bad news for your listeners. I don’t have a background in much of anything. You’ll be disappointed to find out that I have a degree in political science, which I think I got good grades, but I don’t remember going to class that much.

Henry Kaestner: That’s right. I do too, and Luke is public policy guy.

Michael Eisenberg: Maybe there’s something there right, maybe there’s something there. And so the kind of background is I actually got started in political consulting. That’s where I got started. And political consulting, I discovered, didn’t create that many jobs due to politics, for what it’s worth. But, you know, to be perfectly honest, I was fired. No one told me I was fired, but I was and I was unemployed in my twenties with one child. And I couldn’t find a job here in Israel. And I was an immigrant and I started something that became a tech merchant bank. I didn’t know anything about tech or banking, for what it’s worth. So it was like classic imposter syndrome. But I was driven. I had to create jobs. That’s like that’s what I had to do. And so that’s what I did. And we started as merchant bank in the first bubble came. The bubble came in the late nineties and we all looked like geniuses, you know, that’s how I started my career. And then I got recruited by a bunch of venture funds and ended up going to one and ended up at Benchmark and then started my own together with my partners. And so, you know, that’s my story. I still don’t know anything about technology, by the way, and I struggle to read a balance sheet and an income statement, but it’s been okay. That’s the truth, by the way. That’s not like some false humility that is the truth.

Henry Kaestner: So you sound a lot like me, except you’ve got twice as many kids. But on the income statement and the balance sheet side. But Luke does know how to read balance sheets and income statement. So I surround myself by a lot of smart people. I know. And my presumption is you’ve done the same.

Michael Eisenberg: That is the secret to success. And by the way, it’s the secret to a happy marriage. Married people who are better than you and you’ll do much better. And they all like a mirror up to you all the time and challenge you and keep you humble and make sure you’re doing the right thing and you aspire to other men. Same thing is true in partnership. I’ve been in partnerships my entire life. My partners are all way smarter and more capable than me. They’ve proven that.

Luke Roush: So how have you seen just kind of the entrepreneurial environment and experience change in Israel over the last number of years? What’s most different today than it was when you got started?

Michael Eisenberg: That’s a great question. And we started by selling our good companies young because it was a young ecosystem. You know, we forget Silicon Valley is like 60 years old. And so it’s had enough time to kind of germinate management teams and financial sophistication and growth capital and all those things. We just were only around for 25 years, and so that 25 years feels like a long time, but it isn’t. And so now we’re building full stack companies and that’s a massive change. We said when we started all of my current fund that what we really want to do is build $10 billion companies out of Israel and they should have an Israeli flag in the front of the building. And that wasn’t obvious when I got started that you could even do that.

Henry Kaestner: I remember coming up to Haifa maybe about ten years ago and just being incredibly impressed. I well, it felt like Silicon Valley. It felt like every single major technology, you know, as Apple, as Google, Facebook, everything as you’re going up. And I remember back when I was on Wall Street, I remember a checkpoint being a big Israeli company, but it is out of nothing in 25 years. It’s incredible. Taught us a little bit for those who don’t understand what we’re talking about and haven’t heard about what has happened in Israel. Give us a sense of the size and the scope and just the depth of what’s coming out of Israel maybe. And it started out of the Israeli defense industry, correct? First.

Michael Eisenberg: Yeah. And even still, you know, in most American places, we have a technology center. What you have is a great university, Stanford, MIT, whatever it is, it produces technology people. Most of Israeli technology economy comes out of the military here, […] 200. Another one starts with 81 and some others. And so you build an esprit de corps in these places and mutual responsibility, and then they go out as teams and start these companies. They tend to have kind of less business exposure than your average American college graduate. But, you know, it’s a different kind of ecosystem in that way, by the way, it’s a far more loyal ecosystem in that way. People stay companies a lot longer.

Henry Kaestner: Got you.

Michael Eisenberg: Out here.

Henry Kaestner: Okay. So I want to get right into the meat of what we want to talk about with you, because you’ve written extensively on what the Bible says about investing. You’ve written about what the Bible says about a lot of things. So you’ve got two really interesting books. One want to touch on The Vanishing Jew, because that’s fascinating. And the other one, of course, that really brings us to today is the tree of Life and Prosperity. Before we get into each of those, give us an overview of your journey and learning from God’s Word. Since you first met the rabbi who encouraged you to look at the marketplace, how would you summarize what the Torah says about business and investing and what guide you through that?

Michael Eisenberg: So the most important insight is do we think that scripture is some sort of parable, or do we think it’s a blueprint for how you live a life in an ethical nation and ethical and moral life in service of something greater than yourself? And that’s a critical part of the way I approach the Torah scriptures, which is these are real things. In fact, when I launched my first book on Genesis in Hebrew, I did like an evening with a rabbi named Rabbi Loud, and someone asked him, What did you learn from reading Michael’s book? And he said, I learned that people haven’t changed in three and 4000 years. People are people. Families are families. Issues are issues. Wealth is wealth. And morals and ethics, you know, are relevant today like they were then. And so I thought that was just a great encapsulation. And so if you think this is a blueprint, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, as the case may be and on you look for how to apply it. And what we’ve lost I think is a way to interpret it to our modern society. Somehow we think when we read about, you know, Abraham and his flocks or Isaac and his flocks and his agricultural enterprise, so we say, Oh, that was then. But now we’re like in technology and computers and manufacturing. But I think that’s interpretable, not only interpretable in a way of parables, but fundamentally interpretable. It’s not an accident that Abraham was a shepherd and Isaac had an agricultural empire, and Jacob goes back to being a shepherd and Joseph becomes the secretary of the Treasury of Egypt. These are evolutionary behaviors that we see in family, generational businesses and in other areas like that. And so I think it’s a blueprint.

Henry Kaestner: One of the things that we’ve looked at a bunch, both were Faith Driven Entrepreneur Faith Driven Investor is the creation mandate and this kind of call to create be fruitful, multiply, take dominion over all things. And I’m curious, as you’ve looked into this with a number of rabbis and these yeshivats, etc., about some of the passages that you grasp on. And I’m wondering if they’re the same. Presumably many of them are. But in terms of the emphasis, you know, like, you know, you go back and say, see, God has told us to be able to be out in the marketplace in the Christian worldview. Of course, a lot of times we’ll go to the Book of Acts and talk about the fact that 39 of the 40 miracles in acts took place in the marketplace. What is it in Israel and the Jewish tradition? What is it you look back to specifically? I mean, you may mention some of that that what Abraham and Isaac did and Joseph being in the Treasury, etc.. But do you see anything, for instance, in the Genesis story, the Exodus story, or they’re kind of these rallying points that you say, see, this is why we need to do this, etc..

Michael Eisenberg: By the way, parallel to some of the Christian teachings. So we have rabbinic literature from similar time periods. And in fact, there’s a lot in rabbinic literature that takes place in the marketplace as well. And I don’t think that’s an accident because those are the same time periods. Right. Marketplaces evolved primarily after the Romans came into our part of town here in Israel in the call it first century B.C.. Right. So we have those parallels also. My focus in the books, although I do bring from some of the rabbinic literature, is really what Christian listeners would call the Old Testament. We call the Hebrew Bible. And so in the creation mandate, there’s a few parts of this. One is everybody works and everybody creates. If you read through the Book of Genesis, you can’t not notice that Noah invents the plow. I’ll come back to Adam in a second, but Noah invented the plow. Abraham is a wealthy man. The word wealth or possessions is what’s called a […] In German, which is a leading word in all the stories about Abraham and Isaac creates an agricultural enterprise, and Jacob and Esau fight over inheritance. Basically. Why they’re fighting over inheritance because there’s what to inherit and there’s different views of what that businesses and, you know, Jacob and his sons are in a family business and they’re fighting over that. Right. They go to shepherd the flocks farther away. And the whole story of the economy of Egypt is told at the end of Genesis. And I think a lot of this goes back to the beginning of Genesis. And there’s different interpretations, both in Hebrew commentaries and in Christian commentaries, to the best of my knowledge of the story of the Garden of Eden. And, you know, man is told, go forth, be fruitful and multiply. And to exercise dominion over the land, I would take a jump for them to the Middle Ages for a second. […] the great scholar of the Middle Ages and Jewish philosopher, doctor and scholar of Middle Ages has this line that he brings from the Book of Psalms, where he says, that man is just a little bit less than God. In Hebrew, it’s about [….] and he’s a little more limited than God. That’s a very aspirational comment. It says that, like, God created the world. We need to continue creation. And in fact, one of my arguments in the book is that in the Garden of Eden, man created nothing because he was fed everything kind of equated to universal basic income today. We got all your basic needs taken care of you’ll be indolent. And Adam in the Garden of Eden was indolent. And so he sinned, by the way, he never talked to his wife in the Garden of Eden? We only find her talking to the serpent. She had no conversations with Adam in the Garden of Eden. Because when we’re not productive. We get bored and we sin, we get bored and we don’t do the right thing and we create nothing in God’s world. And so man is expelled from the Garden of Eden. And for the first time he creates something which is a person. And if you read the Scripture carefully, only once man is expelled from the Garden of Eden does he have children, which is the ultimate creative act at the end of the day, the ultimate most godlike act. At the end of the day, in Talmudic studies, we talk about that there are three partners in the creation of a child, man, wife and God. Right. And so it’s the ultimate kind of joint creative act. And then man begins to work for a living. Now we view it as a curse, right? That the thorns and thistles come forth and by the sweat of his brow, managed to till the earth and create his bread. At the same time he creates something and that begins the creativity of humanity.

Luke Roush: So I will do just on that called to create, which is the title of the book that we’ll read here in the US that speaks to kind of why do we create? There’s a great podcast that Henry and I oftentimes point entrepreneurs to and our own teammates too. That’s done by Simon Sinek on Start With Your Why and just curious to kind of get your take on why do we exist? We exist to love God and love our neighbor. How does that manifest in and through the way we invest, the way we build products and services, etc? I’m curious to just have you unpack that in terms of actually, let’s make it personal. Why do you do what you do Michael?

Michael Eisenberg: I go back to being super motivated by creating 10,000 jobs, and I want to explain this for a second. It’s not just creating jobs. The economy grows and enables other people to flourish when we don’t think of it as a zero sum game. And I think the biblical view of the economy is I can be successful and I should make you successful as well. That’s good for me and good for you. And so why do I do what I do? Because I think a more prosperous society, economically prosperous society, creates better families, creates better marriages, creates better belief system, the more cohesive communities, and enables people to get through tough times. It builds resilience in society. And there’s a level above that, which is I see something a little radical right now, so I hope you’ll excuse me. You know, there’s a lot of people talking about capitalism being broken today and that there’s a problem with capitalism. I think it’s a little different. I think if we look at capitalism, we’ll say that it’s created more prosperity, more progress, more greatness for humanity than any other economic system before. But when Adam Smith talked about the invisible hand of the market, he lived at a time and lived in existence that was predicated on a religious community and society that existed where he was. So a lot of the mutual responsibility and mutual empowerment was an understood prerequisite for Adam Smith capitalism. What’s happened over time is that the capitalism has gone awry, but that the underlying religious assumptions of community responsibility, of empowering the other, of loving thy neighbor as thyself, of saying I’m going to succeed and ensure that he succeeds because he’s part of my community and part of my faith. And we have aspired goals and a common code and a common language that has been undermined in large parts of modern society, where people have adopted relativist ethics and morals and they’ve developed a significant amount of individuality and individualism, all of which is important. But it must it must live alongside the imperative to empower others and create on behalf of yourself and on behalf of others. And that underlying assumption that Adam Smith built capitalism on is what has disappeared in many parts of society and is what I hope we can reinstate this covenant among communities of men built on often religious faith, most often religious faith that brought these communities together where people eye to eye. If you go to synagogue every Sabbath or church every Sunday, you see people there on our sight and you know, they’re part of your community and you can empower them. And on that you can build a very successful and empowering and mutually empowering capitalist society. When that erodes, it gets tougher.

Luke Roush: So your point really is that it’s not that the animal is no longer functional or somehow evil, it’s just you plop that animal into a completely different operating context. And the environment now is actually not conducive to flourishing in the way it once was, in part because of, you know, the anonymouszation of community. People no longer actually recognize who is my neighbor. Is that kind of what you’re getting at or no.

Michael Eisenberg: I think it’s more than that. It’s not. They just don’t recognize who it is. We had a common code. There was a Judeo-Christian ethic that was a common code. And I could trust that we lived by the same code. And if I can trust that we live by the same code. You’re become predictable and it’s easier to do business together and work together. And I think that’s an important point that gets lost in a lot of the modern dialog. And I also there’s an expectation of me from the community that I will exist and succeed to help you, Luke and you, Henry, succeed also and everybody else in our community. And I think we’ve lost some of that and we’ve got to get it back.

Luke Roush: So to contextualize that sort of broken state, right, it sort of once was but is not currently. And maybe like put that in the context of investing. Are there things about the relationship between investor and entrepreneur that are also concurrently broken because they’ve been shaped by kind of this broader societal dilemma that we find ourselves living through?

Michael Eisenberg: I’ve written a bunch of blog posts about investing as a transaction. Investing is a relationship, and I think a lot of what goes on is become transactional, not relationship. And one of these I love about venture capital is the opportunity to develop a long term relationship with these founders and try to build something meaningful over time and lasting. And I did some work when I switched firms to try to see where I’ve been successful, more successful, less successful investor. And one of these I discovered was co-investors actually mattered. I didn’t think they would, but they did. And I think that’s because, you know, if you get to a point or board where people are pulling in different directions because they’re not predictable and they’re not kind of in it for the same reasons or have the same long term perspective, it kind of comes apart at the seams. And so the way I think about investing rests on a bunch of pillars. So one is relationships are not transactions, two long term thinking versus short term thinking. Three, what I would call virtuous alignment, and I want to dig into this for a second using an example. So I’m an investor in an insurance company called Lemonade, fastest growing insurance company in the world, Lemonade, came and looked at the world of insurance and said, this is a really odd relationship because if, God forbid, Luke or Henry got into an accident, the insurance company would make your life miserable until they paid your claim. You know, they sent an adjuster and 500 questions. And the reason is obvious. It’s a totally misaligned business. They make more money by making you miserable and not paying your claim. And not only that, even the broker’s misaligned because he gets a fee for closing the deal and an ongoing fee. So he actually is not incentivized to provide full data to the insurance company. And so those forms are pretty light, but you move it into an app and a phone, you can gather a lot of data and you align the business, Lemonade said we’re going to take a flat fee to run the pool. We’re not going to make any more money by denying your claims. Not just that leftover premiums will sign what’s called in game theory. Ulysses contract will tie our own hands. All leftover claims are going to charity of your choice. Charity of your choice. So if you fraudulently trump up a claim which you do against your legacy insurance company because you know they’re going to screw you so you won’t do it to Lemonade because congratulations, you’ve screwed the American Cancer Society. And it turns out that most people are good people. They really are. Most human beings are good people. But we designed systems to bring out the worst in humanity because we think of these as transactions and not relations. We don’t trust people. And this goes back to the same before we’ve lost the code of trust and that we need to regain. We’ve lost a code of predictable behavior based on, in my view, predictable community and scripture behavior that once was a common code, and we’ve got to get that back.

Henry Kaestner: So I’m fascinated by that. That’s very, very interesting. We talk on the program a lot about the concept of a redemptive business model, and I love it when you just go ahead and you illustrate through an example like lemonade. Are there other ones that come to mind as well when you think about like.

Michael Eisenberg: Oh, sure, I give you many more when I’ll do another one, which is stunning. I have a company called Rise Up. Now. I’m invested in a guy named Yuval Samet, who grew up poor in a town just outside of Tel Aviv called Petah Tikva. He grew up right above the market. You know, he is opening air markets in Israel. If you’ve been here, open air, fruit and vegetable markets. And, you know, he says parents would go down at 3:00 on a Friday afternoon. Right. The weekend here starts Friday for the Sabbath. And, you know, before the Sabbath start, they bought all the veggies on cheap. So they’re fresh fruits and vegetables. They didn’t have money. And he said he grew up with a mindset of abundance, despite the fact that they had no money because his parents kind of taught him this mindset. And after he sold his first company to Klarna, which the big Swedish e-commerce payments company and lived in Sweden for three years, he said, I’m coming back to Israel to start a company that will use a day to day finance to teach self efficacy and turn that into real business and cash it so banks make money in the same way venture is going to make money. They take fees on your transactions and they want you to borrow money and ironically they actually want you to default on a payment or two because then they get fees and penalties and the best customer for a bank is someone who takes a loan and doesn’t make all their payments but ultimately pays it back. That’s fundamentally misaligned, came Yuval, Samet said using A.I., we can fix this A.I. and community and. You looked at Fitbit and all these people driving themselves nuts, walking upstairs in the middle of the night did their Fitbit number on their watch and say the human mind optimizes around hitting a target, one number, one target. But we’ve got to get that number right. And after a lot of research with single moms, widows, people at the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum, he discovered that the one number that mattered was how much money do I have to spend at the end of the month from now until the end of the month? And so using technology and WhatsApp and iMessage, you plug in your bank account, your credit card statement, your purchasing habits, and sent you one number once a week every two days, whatever you wanted. How much money I’d spend another month. I catch this. They’ve taken many, many, many, many, many thousands of people out of overdraft and out of debt into savings and even investment. These people have open investment accounts. Do alignment is not only that, these are not the high socioeconomic people in Israel, to say the least, and they’re paying $15 a month subscriptions to this company rise up because they know it gets them out of debt. And then around this is coalesced, a community of 20 plus thousand people who are encouraging each other through challenges to save money and to then invest money. So much so that we did a partnership with one of the largest savings account providers in Israel. We got our clients a 50% discount on fees and they got more signups in one week and then they get in a year through our customers. And this money never existed before because these people were in overdraft super align business with deep values and a deep sense of community that drives very, very rapid growth. And it put a cherry on top of the story. The kind of spokesman for the leading bank in is the largest bank in Israel was like the host of like Jeopardy in Israel and he was our spokesman of the largest banking is on TV. And he called up and said, can I come represent you on a campaign that’s like, wow. And Yuval who by the way, grew up secular, not religious. Tells the biblical story of Elkana from the Book of Samuel and in the Book of Samuel, Elkana leaves his home and goes to the Tabernacle, the mini temple in Silo, which is in Judea, just outside of the hills of Jerusalem. And he would go collect all the people from around and bring them to the tabernacle for the festivals. He was like a collector of communities to bring these people, but he led by example. That’s what Yuval talks about. We can lead by example and collect communities of people for self efficacy in service of a greater goal. And it’s a great business by the way and amazing business. And I just want to say is, I’m not talking about impact investing. My view is very clearly that good values and aligned businesses with the right intentionality of empowering people and helping them do better, create better, more profitable businesses. And that is a virtuous cycle that’s here. Yeah.

Luke Roush: And I would actually say that 100% of what you’re doing is impact investing. This is not as the world would describe it, you know what I mean? I think there’s actually we’ve talked about this a lot internally, that all investing is impact investing. The question is sort of what impact do you want to have? And the reality of what you’re doing is actually having a phenomenal impact, far more impact than what the world has probably described as like impact investing in the last decade. So I love it.

Henry Kaestner: On a personal note, I think back to the movie Chariots of Fire. So I think we’re roughly about same age. I’d say you’re likely to have watched the movie Chariots of Fire, have you?

Michael Eisenberg: I have. I remember it well.

Henry Kaestner: Good. So in the movie, the main character is being challenged by his sister as to whether he should go into an a missions field in China or not. And he responds back that God made him fast and when he runs, he feels God’s pleasure as you work, as you invest, tell us about the times when you feel God’s pleasure.

Michael Eisenberg: I have a confession to make. I have a difficult time personally both answering that question and feeling it, because it feels almost presumptuous for me to think that I would know exactly where God would find pleasure with me. We try to do the right thing and hope that God takes a favorable view of it. But I struggle with that, you know, in kind of having knowledge that I will tell you that when I grew up there, a verse in Deuteronomy which says one shouldn’t say that the strength and might of my hand or arm brought me this greatness. And when I was a kid, there was a very self-effacing view of this, which is promulgated by the great Jewish scholar […] who lived in Spain, where he says that one should never say that I succeeded or I was successful, or it’s because of me that I succeeded. On the other hand, he had a student who lived a little bit after name, Rabbi Nissim of Girona, […] lived in Barcelona and Rabbi Nissim lived, I don’t know what was 50 kilometers north in Girona says, no, […] misunderstands the verse. And really what it means is we’re all given God given talents or genetics as the case may be. And we have talents like the runner in Chariots of Fire, the main character. And you have those. And you should say that I’ve taken my talents and maximized them with the right intentionality for the right service and the right aspiration. And so I relate more to that one, that interpretation of Rabbi Nissim, where you’re given some talent, you got to work really, really, really hard and with the right intentions to do this in the service of the right goal. And I hope and pray that it finds pleasure in in God’s eyes. But I have a hard time knowing and feeling it. Maybe it’s a personality hangup around that or maybe it’s, you know, kind of the teachings I had from my own rabbis and my parents and my grandparents over the time I have emotional story. If I can’t happen today, can I can I do that for a second?

Henry Kaestner: Please, please.

Michael Eisenberg: So I spent the morning at the Israeli president’s residence this morning in a ceremony with my 98 years old grandmother and my 98 years old grandmother. My grandfather of blessed memory were friendly with the president of Israel, Haim and Aurel Herzog. They were friendly before they were president. And my grandmother, who’s 98, you’ve had a relationship with President Herzog’s mother and my grandparents were over at the president’s residence and sometime in the late eighties, and they saw their the booklets for grace after meals, the biblical blessing we all need to make after we eat a meal had been like collected from like weddings and bar mitzvahs, and there wasn’t something kind of regal for the Israeli president. And my grandfather and grandmother said, we need to make a president’s booklet for grace after meals that is respectful and respectable in the president’s residence. And they did that. And I was honored 33 years ago to speak at the president’s residence about this. And at the time, we talked about the importance of the blessings that we all have and in giving thanks and how it should be beautiful and an inspiration. But today, the son of that original President Herzog is now the president of Israel. President Isaac Herzog is today’s president. And my 98 years old grandmother presented him with a unique booklet in his honor, ever the president’s residence of Grace After Meals. And so it is now two generations. But my same grandmother with this thing and in this story deep, I was there. We were all emotional. Today, the president teared up and his wife was crying and say, My job is to cry here. And my grandmother, thank God, has hundreds of descendants. And in my view, this is like a critical piece, which is everyone talked about today that in the blessings and the grace after meals, we’re thankful for all the things we have in the land and our business and our success, etc. And it helps remind us that it’s not about us. And that’s a generational teaching that I’ve learned from my parents and grandparents and I think is super important.

Luke Roush: That’s great word. That’s a great word. One of the things that we always finish our podcast with is just a question on what is God teaching you recently? So I’d love to stay consistent with that and and just hear from you on that Michael.

Michael Eisenberg: Yeah, the thing I’m thinking about a lot is inflation and you say, God teaching me about inflation, the answer is yes. I want to make an observation. Inflation hurts poor people and we turned on government spigots to print money and cause inflation. I want to explain what I think is the scriptural and economic misstep here. And we did this because we had to keep unemployment low. And so we picked up a point of employment, right? Maybe a point and a half. But what we did in return was impoverish more 33% of the wage labor population. And I think this comes from a radical misinterpretation of what our job is. And I think when we look at as people of faith what our job is, we need to look more broadly at humanity than the near term. We need to look more broadly at the effect of things we do then the near term and the Bible is the work of thousands of years that is still relevant today and that gives us a longer term perspective. Then let’s call the next Fed press conference and the next unemployment print, and we’ve lost that long term ism. And I think as people of faith and people of optimism about the future, which comes hand in hand with faith, by the way, we must help others get a longer term view and an understanding of the real impact of their actions on these people. And it’s a large population and unfortunately, large numbers are statistics, small numbers or like individual. And what we got to see all the human beings in this and all these people who are working, but their money is not worth as much. And that’s something that’s kind of keeping me awake at night. And I think, you know, the Bible. Which talks about empowering other people, whether it’s through the commandment of living in a corner of your field, open for other people to collect. That’s not just charity. That’s empowering them to earn a decent living. They got to come work. They got to come harvest.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah.

Michael Eisenberg: And if we have an expectation that people will work and harvest and earn a decent living, we don’t hand them out money and we don’t kind of lower the pain for the short term. We actually increase the challenge, but forced the mutuality and mutual responsibility over the long term. And so that’s what I’m thinking about a lot recently.

Luke Roush: That’s a good word and it’s a good word. It’s a timely word and another construct of reaping what we sow we’re going to reap what we have sown over the last two or three years. I’m grateful for your insights, Michael. Extraordinary. Huge blessing to me just being able to visit with you today and excited for our listeners here.

Henry Kaestner: Indeed. Thank you for being generous with your time as you get ready to go out and spend time with those Stanford MBAs, I just give you a quick blessing for all of us and all of our listeners. Heavenly Father, I just asked if you would allow us to get out there and to do the work you’d have us do that would be guided by your word and by your spirit that we’d feel your pleasure as we go about these things. And we’d see how this work matters for you, as you have instructed us, encouraged us, admonished us, and instructed us in your word since the beginning of time. And that did this book is alive and 4000 years ago. These lessons apply to the way we live and act and worship and we pray for all these things in Jesus’s name. Michael, thank you for being with us. Awesome. Great gift.

Michael Eisenberg: Thank you for having me. This was amazing. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Episode Transcript

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

John Coleman: Hey, Henry. Good morning. How are you?

Henry Kaestner: I’m doing awesome. Thank you. I’m doing awesome for lots and lots of different reasons. I shouldn’t time guard this, but we’re getting ready to go into the Sweet 16 of March Madness and a lot of us are fired up about the different teams that we were following. And I am absolutely one of them. But I’m also really excited about what we’re talking about today at Faith Driven Investor. We’ve talked a little bit about arts and culture and entertainment a little bit. We’ve had John Irwin on the show, and we’ve started to explore a little bit about how important it is that we think about making investments in this space, and yet we really haven’t gone into it that much. And part of that is because both you and I and Luke are the co-hosts have this background in private equity investing. We tend to invest in lower and middle market companies in venture investing. And and there’s a different type of investing that happens no less important, but yet it’s different when we think about making investments in culture. And so to help us to get back on track with where we should be in focusing on this very important topic, we’ve got Craig Detweiler and Ben Howard with us on the show. Craig, Ben, welcome.

Ben Howard: Thank you. Good to be with you guys.

Craig Deitweller: Thanks, Henry.

Henry Kaestner: So we like to give an autobiographical flyover for every one of the guests that we’ve got on the show. And on occasion, we’ve got two of them on the show. And so what I’m going to do is I’m going to actually ask Ben for you to get started and talk about your background and autobiographical fly over. And then, Craig, if you could just pick up on that, give us a glimpse of that and then bring us into Wedgwood circle, please.

Ben Howard: Great. So excited to join you guys today. I am somebody who’s had the privilege of being involved in faith connected entertainment for over 30 years, starting in Christian music long ago, then a step where Bob the Tomato was my boss as I worked with Phil this year at Big Idea and I got to be part of what is Provident Films and be part of what the Kindred Brothers did with Fireproof and War Room and things like that. The Erwin brothers, we hired them to do their first music video, went all the way through. I can only imagine with them and now have my own entertainment company. God has continually given me the opportunity to help creative people do what they do. I have an MBA in an accounting degree, and my goal is if I can help creative people make a living out of what they do and at the same time have impact on culture, I’m very fortunate to get to do that.

Henry Kaestner: And by the way, I should mention when you talking about. Bob The tomato, Larry the cucumber. Phil Vischer has played such a big role in the Faith Driven Entrepreneur ministry that we have. I can’t think of any better overview of the identity of an entrepreneur than the way that he is talked to at our conferences. But then I think maybe it’s podcast number 20 or so, way back in the early days of Faith Driven Entrepreneur from minute 16:32 to minute 20:30, if our audience goes back and listens to it, it’s the best 4 minutes I’ve ever heard on the most important topic that a Faith Driven Entrepreneur or investor will encounter. And that’s the identity that we have. And he did a great job. Maybe we’ll link to it in the show notes, but thanks for having mentioned that, Craig. Who are you and where you come from?

Craig Deitweller: Well, Henry, I come from basketball country, but I am not cheering for the Tarheels or the Blue Devils. I actually went to Davidson College.

Henry Kaestner: Oh yes, Steph Curry. Yeah. And you guys almost pulled it out last weekend.

Craig Deitweller: You know what? I’m impressed with what we do with a small school. We are giant slayers is how we approach live. So my background is I came to faith through young life and that kind of wild, crazy, relational approach to understanding Jesus. But I also was rooted in my faith via film and seeing films like Raging Bull, which was this violent, profane R-rated film that it became this cautionary tale. And when I saw that as a kid, it like woke me up and I said, Something’s going on here that’s deeper and it’s getting to my soul. At the end of the film, it says, Once I was blind, but now I can see says it on screen. I was like, What does that mean and what does that look like? And so my life has been a process of coming to see Jesus through these other means and understanding the power of culture to lead people to faith, even in my own journey.

Henry Kaestner: You know, it’s really interesting. You mentioned Raging Bull. We had Dallas Jenkins on the podcast a couple of months ago and his dad got his start in the Left Behind series, and he’s talking about this background, very faith driven. And his father, despite being in the film industry, said, I don’t want my children to watch any movie until they’re 13. And then I’m like, wow. So that’s maybe austere, but, you know, tell us more about that. And what was the movie that you saw when you turned 13 is like, my dad had us watched The Godfather.

Henry Kaestner: That’s not. Not what I was expecting, but he says, you know, it was such a powerful movie and my father wanted to be able to help us to understand the power of cinema, the power of storytelling. And that was. What makes me think I don’t know that Raging Bull has the same thing. They both have Robert De Niro, but maybe there’s more there.

Craig Deitweller: Indeed. Well, now, since then, I’ve been both a filmmaker, a screenwriter, as well as an educator. And so I’ve taught, you know, hundreds of film students over the years, including Destin, Daniel Cretton, who directed Shang-Chi. And now I’m a professor dean of the College of the Arts and Media at Grand Canyon University, as well as president of the Wedgwood Circle, which invests in the good, true and beautiful for the common good.

John Coleman: When Craig, you definitely have the college professor background right now, there are at least a thousand books that we can see on video in the background. Talk to us a little bit more about Wedgwood Circle. It’s such an interesting organization with a great mission.

Craig Deitweller: Well, we’re actually named after a great entrepreneur, Josiah Wedgwood, who basically figured out how to turn his business, which was Wedgwood China and his art, which is, you know, telling stories through, you know, cameos and dishes. He funded the abolition movement, the abolition of slavery in England through his faith and his business put together. And so the Wedgwood circle is trying to do the same thing and try to help entrepreneurs and business people who want to impact culture. We’re like a concierge service to help people navigate these very complex industries that are sometimes hard to figure out. How do you make money in movies? Maybe people know how to lose money, but they don’t know how to make money. How would you invest in Broadway? What’s it like to invest in a music career? What do artists and musicians need? And so we have advisers, trusted advisers all over the country, people like Ben Howard, who have made money in entertainment in multiple different versions. And so that’s why Ben is here. He works alongside us at Wedgwood Circle, helping investors be good stewards of their money.

John Coleman: And Craig and Ben, I mean, that’s such a fascinating story. And one of the things that I love is that Wedgwood does have such a broad focus, you are covering different types of cultural institutions in media. Talk to us a little bit about why you think it’s so important that Christians invest in these different cultural artifacts and how it is that you came to invest in these, given your early interests?

Craig Deitweller: Well, honestly, it goes all the way back to the garden. You know, when Adam is called to tend the garden, to cultivate the garden. We might think of that as agricultural. But there’s also, I think at this point, a lot of us are no longer farmers. Maybe that is important in certain context to understand the importance of water and soil. I love the work that Faith Driven is doing in Africa with entrepreneurs. But most of us at this point are cultivating things like a culture of encouragement and goodness and truth. Maybe that’s in schools, maybe that’s in our churches, but can that also be in our entertainment? And so we take that cultural mandate and we apply it specifically to the arts where we might invest in someone like Jon Batiste, who you’ve seen on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert as the bandleader. Wedgwood gave him money maybe eight years ago when he needed some instruments before he was on Colbert. And since then, he’s won an Oscar for being on the score for Pixar for their movie Soul. And he’s up for 11 Grammys this year, more than any other artist, basically a faith driven jazz kid from New Orleans who just needed a little bit of encouragement and capital to launch his career.

John Coleman: It’s awesome. And one thing caught my attention, Craig I think a lot of folks associate investing in the arts with concessionary investing. The fact that you’re not likely to make money, you may even lose money in it. But you mentioned Ben has done so successfully. I mean, Ben, talk to us a little bit about what those investments look like from a financial perspective. And is it possible to actually make a return investing in the arts?

Ben Howard: Look, it’s definitely possible. And you guys spend your days in venture capital, private equity, etc.. In that sense, it’s really no different in that every film is a new business that’s starting a new business. And what often happens is somebody will invest in a single film, they’ll lose money and they’ll be out. And just like if they only did one venture capital private equity investment, it may or may not make money. And so the model has been flawed in that sense. People have not applied, generally accepted investing principles into their entertainment investing now, by no means is that guaranteed that they’re going to make money. It’s high risk. There’s got to be a double bottom line. It’s got to mean something else to you. But there are better ways to do it that improve your chances of making money and at the same time have impact on culture.

Henry Kaestner: So talk to us about some of those that’s intriguing to me. So there are some ways that you can invest that will increase your chances of doing well financially. What are some of those ways?

Ben Howard: So I don’t know your criteria for how you invest, but. I’d start off first of all with a better have a good management team. In other words, if you’re going to invest in a film and none of the producers none of the producers really are just shorthand for senior management team. If nobody on the senior management team has ever done this and succeeded, I’m guessing you don’t make a lot of investments into businesses that have nobody that’s done it before successfully. And so we look for teams for management teams that have at least done it at one point and succeeded at some level, not all of them. There’s got to be room for first timers or we’ll never build up young producers, young filmmakers. But somebody in the mix needs to have done it before. Another thing I greatly advise is don’t ever be 100% of the investment. Sometimes somebody comes in and they fund a whole, you know, the entire film, an entire project, whatever medium we’re in. I’d say never be more than 50% and always put your money. Besides, other smart investors reap the benefit of their experience and what they’ve done before. If you can just do those two things and let’s make an assumption that we’ve decided we have some money and we’re spreading it over multiple projects. That would be another piece. But you’ve really enhanced your chance not only of getting some of your money back or all of it and or profit, but you’re also at the same time having incredible impact on culture. So we really do go for kind of double bottom line.

John Coleman: That’s excellent. You know, there are a lot of areas of investing that are like that, Ben. And you’re right, I think there is a portfolio approach to anything that comes with a great amount of risk, which strikes me very much like venture capital. What I find interesting is that this is so unfamiliar to people. They often do need someone to hold their hand or to guide them through entering this new area of cultural impact or investing in the arts. And Wedgwood and you all and people like you seem to play that role. How does Wedgwood serve investors in that way, and how can people get involved in the organization in order to get more familiar with how to enter this space?

Craig Deitweller: Well, this kind of education that Ben’s providing now is something that we do for everybody, right? You express to us what you’re interested. Maybe you’re interested in Broadway. And then we’re going to try to connect you with some Broadway producers who’ve made money, maybe producing a show like The Temptations Show on Broadway. So you have points of reference, trusted advisers who can explain to you how the business works. We do that at least once a month with situations like this where we’re doing calls and, you know, bringing our members together. But we also do it in person. You know, we’re going to have gatherings. We’re going to be in Nashville in November for our 15th anniversary around Veterans Day, November 9th, 10th and 11th, I believe. And that’s a chance to gather with like minded people, meeting like minded artists and filmmakers and storytellers and figuring out how to just almost in a matchmaking service. Right. Getting to know people that you can trust that you’re comfortable with who have just both your interests, as well as the interests of getting that story out there.

Henry Kaestner: Can you talk a little bit about some of these stories that you’ve seen? And it could be on Broadway. I mean, you mentioned The Temptations side, but our audiences can be familiar with some amount of the work that you’ve done. And obviously, way back to Bob, the tomato and Larry the cucumber. But walk us through maybe some of these movie projects that you’ve done recently and maybe not at liberty to talk about every aspect of how the deal was structured or what the waterfall was back to investors, but make it a little bit more tangible for us. Help us to understand how some of these productions that we might be familiar with got financed and how they did.

Ben Howard: Yeah, you know what a great example would be? Blue Miracle. Blue Miracle is a film that people can go today and watch on Netflix. That’s a project that we put together last year, actually three years ago. So it got put together, filmed a couple of years ago. Netflix debuted it last year. First of all, it had a producer team that had done this before. My producer partner on that, one of them was Darren Moormon. Darren has done a number of things in the faith world that a lot of folks would be familiar with. Same kind of different as me was one of his projects he and I worked on Indivisible together. But so first off, back to kind of my criteria. Here was a management team, a producing team that had done this before. Our next step was to find some fellow investors. Some investors in this Provident Films came in. They are like minded. Endeavor Content is a company that wanted to have a part in this world Fair Trade, media, Mercy ME’s record company. They came in. So here we had people that all of whom had had success in the entertainment business who are now investing their money through in a great story, inspiring stand up and cheer, a story set in an orphanage in Mexico about being on the ocean. It was a great script, a great story, and then add Dennis Quaid to the mix. So we know now people choose to see movies, often based on the talent. And so we knew that was a critical piece of the puzzle. That movie got greenlit largely because of the management team around it, the producer team around it, the story itself, and then the talent and talents key a lot of time. People in this faith world at times try to make movies with talent that nobody knows. You know, it’s okay. It can work. But generally, if you want to help, your chances of succeeding with an investment, have talent that causes people to want to tune in and or go to the theater. So those elements really came together, Henry, and got that movie greenlit, got it made. And then that is something that was sold to Netflix for a profit. So everybody made their money back, made a little bit more money, and we’re putting the next one together right now.

John Coleman: You know what I love about that example, Ben, is historically a lot of people’s perception of Christian entertainment is totally separate, right? There’s Christian music, there’s Christian movies, Christian television shows, and it’s almost like a bubble. And, you know, we’re commanded to be in the world, but not of the world. And with Blue Miracle and some of the other projects like American Underdog that we’ve referenced here, those were wide releases that really touched a lot of lives outside of the traditional Christian bubble. How do you think for artists, or investors about navigating being in but not of the world and trying to have a broader cultural impact?

Ben Howard: I personally and be real interested in what Craig says about this as well. I think when we view redemptive stories, let them be just that. Don’t make them all be the same thing. Don’t make them all be a conversion film. Don’t make. Don’t have a formula they all have to fit. Tell great redemptive stories. Be a story of forgiveness. Might be a story of inspiration, etc.. Lots of ways to go about it. Then make sure we give them in the film what audiences expect when they go to theaters and talking about theaters. But obviously some movies will go streaming television directly. Use people with credibility, use directors that are known to the audiences, talent that’s known to the audience. These things to me give it a relevance that allow us to have something that gets outside of just the immediate Christian audience in the people who we can open their eyes to things they may never have thought of before. But to do that, we do have to be relevant artistically.

Craig Deitweller: And I think even back to my own experience as a kid, I maybe didn’t have enough of those Christian influences that were coming into my life. I needed a young life leader to take the risk and walk into my world, into my high school. And I feel like it’s the same thing with our living rooms. It’s the same thing with our movie theaters. It’s the same thing with our cell phones. We need to be involved with technology and storytelling and do all different kinds. And so when I see a series like Sweet Magnolias on Netflix, it’s run by a woman named Cheryl Anderson, who comes from a deep Lutheran faith. She’s going to infuse those values in that series across maybe one, two, three, four or five seasons. And it’s not going to preach at you in an obvious way, but it’s going to model maybe some behaviors that your family can talk about and invite you into that screen family in a way that builds a bridge that maybe a traditional Christian film maybe can’t do, that it’s too strong for some people who are more in an exploratory stage.

John Coleman: So what are some of the other things that you’re excited about in the faith driven area right now?

Ben Howard: So one thing I definitely want to tell you about is the story of Auntie Anne’s pretzels we learned of Ann through your podcast. That’s where we first go away. We’ve got to know where we’ve pulled together a group of people and we already have funding to have a script written. And so, you know, you earlier talked about a project that might get its beginning here. Hey, there’s one that’s already had its beginning here.

Henry Kaestner: How encouraging is that? Wow. That’s awesome.

John Coleman: Henry, how long until we get a bandwidth and Henry Kaestner script? How do we get that going?

Henry Kaestner: Oh, man. Yeah. You’ve got to have an incredible heroine like Auntie Anne and so we’ve automatically disqualified ourselves. Ben That’s really encouraging. And Craig just that’s awesome. We endeavor to be about content and community on this podcast, understanding that stories are the way that God brings us in and weaves this into the bigger story of what He’s doing in this world. And for you to take up the story of what God has done through Anne’s life, and for us to have it just a small part of it for you to hear for that story. Gosh, yes. That’s an incredible encouragement. And I cannot wait to see how you all work with that. That’s awesome. I don’t know, John, if that gets us, does that get us an invite to the premiere?

John Coleman: What I really want is a year of free Auntie Anne’s pretzel, I feel like that would be the big reward.

Ben Howard: Yeah me too

Craig Deitweller: Yeah, they’re really good.

Craig Deitweller: So Craig, you’ve written some books on just culture. You’re also a theologian and you’ve studied the subject and you speak to the just the influence of technology. Tell us about what you’re seeing in culture over the last 15 or 20 years. So how you interacted with culture is different when you came to know about Christ in young life, and that’s continue to expand. Just give us a fly over. What are you seeing and what are you seeing for the next five or ten years? What do you think culture is going to be about? What’s a role?

Craig Deitweller: That’s a great question Henry. Huge question, really. I think Christians were awakened by the success of something like The Passion of the Christ, and then you see it being replicated in a different kind of way through crowdfunding and something like the Chosen Series. And so there is a broad appetite that is really in some ways international for I would call it timeless biblical storytelling. But I’m also excited about what I would call the new voices, both the new voices of Christianity that might be coming from the two thirds world and then also might be telling us these stories that we haven’t maybe seen before and giving us back a sense of the difference that faith can make. So there was a gentleman named Lee Isaac Chung, who is a Korean immigrant. He went to Yale to study to be a doctor and fell in love with filmmaking instead. And he told a story last year called Minari, which was nominated for six Academy Awards. Brad Pitt gave him the million bucks that he needed to make the film because it was so touching and so real and it dignifies faith. It talks about the complexities of what it means to be an immigrant in America. And so it’s almost giving us back that kind of Hollywood film of the thirties and forties, like a Frank Capra kind of film, but filtered through the 21st century of what that maybe outsider experience of faith and culture looks like.

John Coleman: You recall an essay by a wonderful writer who was a Christian, Flannery O’Connor, perhaps the greatest short story writer of the last century, where she effectively talks about how a great story shouldn’t be easy.To summarize that, you have to let the characters in the story drive themselves rather than just having a point. And that seems so relevant. One thing I’ve noticed with a lot of the redemptive films or TV shows recently is how they are so story and character driven. And it feels to me like a lot of Christian filmmakers and writers have actually embraced that, as you all are outlining the power of redemptive stories and of weaving themes rather than leading with a message. As you look around the landscape, you’ve mentioned Broadway. We’ve talked music, movies, TV. Where do you think there’s a gap right now? Where would you say that Christians investing in culture or entertainment is most needed right now where there isn’t.

Craig Deitweller: What do you think, Ben?

Ben Howard: I don’t know that I’d pick one because I think they’re all relevant medium and that people of faith are underrepresented in all of them. I would say I think probably the music business has benefited the most from investment of larger mainstream companies into it. But I’d say in all of them we have work to do to bring up new, young, creative folks with a worldview compatible with what we’re talking about, to have impact on culture.

Craig Deitweller: My answer would be, I think we need more Christians involved in tech. We need more people like Henry, because those are the folks who are defining kind of the screens and the content and how things are distributed. So I think we have enough schools, whether that’s, you know, Belmont in Nashville, whether that’s Grand Canyon in Arizona, there’s enough schools educating young people in how to tell transformative stories. I don’t think we have enough executives who can give those green lights, who are savvy, business minded folks who have that ability to say, I want to see this on the big screen or this on the small screen or this on my phone. This is what I want to listen to. It’s what my family wants to gather around. So we need more, I think. Faith driven entrepreneurs to get into those boardrooms and get into that decision making.

Henry Kaestner: All right. So you got me going. So building off the culture, the things that you’ve seen, hitting on technology. Let’s look at the metaverse. What is the future of Christian entertainment content? Is that something we get involved with, or is that just like just such an alternate reality? It takes us away from the way that God designed things. Give us a perspective.

Craig Deitweller: Yesterday I was looking at a 4D technology that was being used to train officers in simulations, high risk situations, and the technology they were using had come from video games. Right. So we need more Christians involved in technology, making video games, building out the metaverse to figure out how to create this online world that is good, true and beautiful, and that has the possibility of the common good. And so at Grand Canyon, I’m pushing the university as fast as possible to say, Hey, you’ve got this great online reach. You need to create online classrooms and you need to create virtual simulations in this technology. They could create a virtual version of me in 10 minutes, like a 3D model version of me. You can make me dancing, do whatever else you want in 10 minutes. That’s what’s possible in this new technology. And so we need more people who can understand how to control the box, if you will, with the power at their fingertips really is.

Henry Kaestner: If you could make me dance in 10 minutes, you get a buyer. My wife Kimberly will spend a lot of money on a product like that.

John Coleman: I think the next podcast is exactly that. Henry We need to meet in the metaverse here, and we’ll all have dancing avatars. We’ll have our Oculus.

Henry Kaestner: There will be a first.

John Coleman: You know, we’ve talked a little bit about this medium from the investor side. But if you are an artist with a great idea, if you’re someone with a great vision in tech, it can be difficult to meet those and connect with those who are going to finance those projects. You know, often those folks are not terribly commercial. It may be difficult to communicate your idea. Coming at it from the other perspective. What advice would you give to those who have a great artistic idea or even a great technologically enabled idea in order to connect with those with capital to make that idea reality?

Craig Deitweller: Well, isn’t that the core of what the faith driven network is trying to build? And that’s really what we’re building at Wedgwood Circle is an on ramp with people who can vet projects and say, this is viable, but have you thought of it this way? Or, you know, maybe retool it a little more with this in mind. Right. People who understand the marketplace matching up with these faith driven artists, that’s what we do best at Wedgwood is try to connect artists to capital. That’s what you’re saying, Wedgwood.That’s what we want to do as well. What do you think Ben?

Ben Howard: Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I’d say most film makers, most artists have their first project be something that they probably funded out of their own piggybank or with their own parents in that. Just go do it. You know, the Kendrick brothers are fond of saying their first movies were run, chase and shoot movies made with a camcorder in the woods. And I really think that’s important. And that’s not just for people of faith. It’s how we exercise our craft. We just start doing it. And if we do it in a great way, a lot of times that’s what starts to get attention. So that’s what I would say is go do it.

John Coleman: We’ve talked a little bit about some of the successful projects that you’ve worked on, Ben and Craig, but are there some new artists out there and new projects that you’re really excited about that you’d want to put the spotlight on now that you think could make a big difference?

Craig Deitweller: Should we talk about the Boylan’s and what we did it at Grand Canyon, Ben?

Ben Howard: Yeah, let’s talk about the Boylan Sisters. Why don’t you talk about it from your vantage point?

Craig Deitweller: Oh, well, you know, how many times have we seen, like, sort of the Christian football movie, right? There’s all kinds of versions of that. So it’s all these guys making movies like, Hey, guys, Christian guys will love this. Well, what if you had some women who were saying, what about the girls? Right. Who’s making films for young Christian women or for mothers and daughters to interact? And Ben Howard introduced me to these two amazing sisters.

Ben Howard: The Boylan sisters are Andrea and Alexandra. They’re originally from the Northeast. One of them currently lives in Wisconsin and one in L.A. And they’re gifted storytellers, and they have incredible hearts for God, incredible hearts for young girls. And I came upon them about a year and a half ago here in Nashville, where I am. And they had a script and a story. I found out they’d made five movies and their investors had gotten paid back on all of them. And look, as somebody who’s seeking to make business out of entertainment, that’s gold. And so we immediately started to work on that next project. Their admittedly low budget, their previous projects that I was aware of had been up to half a million dollars. That’s a low budget. So we up to that, we went out in the more million dollar range and put a plan together and I intersected with Craig about that time and he was just making the move to Grand Canyon University. We were looking for a college campus to make our film on. We ended up making a movie at Grand Canyon in January. And let me tell you, Phoenix in January is a great place to be. These sisters, in my opinion, are God’s answer. Not that he’s been requested to answer this, but to the Erwin brothers and the Kendrick brothers. We now have the Boylans sisters and as Craig said, it’s like they’ve got a story and a heart for women and for young girls. And it made an incredible, I think, what will turn out to be incredible comedy, family film, teen film called Identity Crisis that will hit the world later this summer.

Craig Deitweller: And it’s really designed to get women and their daughters talking. Right. It’s about a girl who has a personal identity crisis. As a freshman in college, she feels like she can’t keep up with her engineering major as well as her, you know, her social life. And how do you do that? Well, she figures out how to clone herself. And so you got two versions of herself running around. It’s a lot of fun. They ran all over the Grand Canyon campus, but it was fun for us because we got Wedgwood investors involved at work on the financing. We think they’re going to get their money back, which means they’re going to want to do more. And that’s how it works, right? Tell them good stories, making sound business decisions so people can continue to work on their craft and tell their stories.

Henry Kaestner: For people have listened to the podcast for a long time, you know that we always end the podcast with the same questions. I’m going to give the two of you a heads up as to where this is going. We’re going to ask you at the end of this. What are you hearing from God in his word? Maybe it’s this morning, maybe it’s this week, but sometime recently that has encouraged you. It could have something to do with what we’re talking about. It could have something completely different. Okay, that’s where we’re going. That’s not where we’re going to get started. We’re going to get started. We’re going to bring back a feature that Luke and I had brought in six or seven episodes ago, which is kind of this lightning round of questions. And so each of you is allowed to answer. You had to keep your answers to less than 15 seconds. And then we are, of course, will close off with what are you hearing from God and his word? Okay. Number one, what story in the Bible do you think needs to be told next? So many characters, so many stories. What one is ready for the big screen next?

Ben Howard: Craig.

Craig Deitweller: Ben.

Ben Howard: You know what I’ve loved? I’ve always loved the story of Gideon. Nobody’s ever made a movie about a guy up against long odds with very little resources, and God made him do it in a way he never imagined.

Henry Kaestner: Good answer.

Ben Howard: I love the story of Gideon.

Henry Kaestner: Craig. It’s going to be hard to top that.

Craig Deitweller: I agree. That’s why I’m going to say we should do Gideon.

Henry Kaestner: Not very original, but maybe it just maybe that’s where it all started to start out here on the Faith Driven Investor podcast. Tell us about the origin story of that blockbuster movie that’s called Gideon. Okay, number two, tell us about you have interacted with lots of famous people, lots of folks that we’ve seen on the silver screen, and many of them are motivated by their faith. Give us one story of somebody that most of our audience is likely going to be familiar with their name, at least. Whose faith has inspired you? Oh, I hope there’s somebody.

Craig Deitweller: Yeah, well, there’s actually. There’s so many.

Henry Kaestner: Oh, good.

Craig Deitweller: Which is kind of amazing, I would say. Patricia Heaton and her consistent witness in sitcoms over the decades. Really impressive.

Henry Kaestner: Okay. For those of us who may not be as familiar with Patricia Heaton’s work as there may be Robert De Niro’s, help us understand where she’s been.

Craig Deitweller: Everybody Loves Raymond.

Henry Kaestner: Oh, there you go.

Craig Deitweller: The middle. Right. She’s kind of America’s mom and has done that as a person of faith with grace and aplomb.

Henry Kaestner: Oh, it’s awesome. Great answer. Great answer. You’ve redeemed yourself from the last one, Ben.

Ben Howard: Great answer. Yeah. And then I would offer Dennis Quaid. He’s the guy who I’ve got to work with a good bit recently become friends with. Dennis continues to choose projects that fill a void in terms of what our culture is hearing. And I don’t just mean faith, but just projects. He plays Ronald Reagan in the upcoming Reagan movie that I think will hit the world next year. And he’s taking roles and upping the ante, if you will, into messaging and stories that our culture needs to hear.

John Coleman: All right. I’m going to hit you with two more self-interested questions. We’re all living in a world where after COVID, I streamed entirely too much in terms of TV and movies. What’s the best movie or TV series, Faith Driven or Not, you’ve seen over the last six months? And why?

Ben Howard: Yeah, I’m going to throw out the one that’s probably among people I know always talked about, but maybe you guys haven’t hit up on it yet. But it’s Ted Lasso and it’s Jason Sudeikis. It’s on Apple TV and it’s about kindness and goodness and doing good. And it’s not a faith per say, but it’s all the things that come from faith. And so I love that show and I love how I feel when it’s over and the way I want to live when it’s done. And if that doesn’t define faith driven content, regardless of who’s making it, I don’t know what does.

Craig Deitweller: And I’ll go for the flip side of that. On the same network on Apple Tv+ the morning show really deals with the complexities of sin and the long tale of how bad choices continue to maybe spin you out and have a ripple effect. And so I think for businesspeople interested in ethics, it really shows you how important it is to do the right thing, because when you do the wrong thing, it gets really bad in really devastating ways for all of those around you.

John Coleman: That’s good. I am also a lover of Ted Lasso, but now I’ve got a great recommendation for the morning show. I’m going to hit one last one, which I expect Henry Kaestner to answer as well, because I know Henry has a classic interest in this subject. Who’s your favorite musician of all time, and why should a person of faith love that musician as much as you do?

Henry Kaestner: That’s great.

Craig Deitweller: The Boss, Bruce Springsteen. I’m that guy. I’m that old guy. I saw him probably when I was, you know, 16, 17 for the first time and fell in love. And, I don’t know, working class songs meant something to me. I was a working class kid, and he gave me a sense of hope that you can maybe get in that car and get to the other side. And so going from North Carolina to Hollywood, that’s a big, big, long drive. But I think the Bruce Springsteen gave me a little bit of courage to hang out on that Thunder Road.

Henry Kaestner: Get a wife and kids in Baltimore. Jack, I grew up in Baltimore, so I always got me. But man, born to run, there’s no better pump up song for me ever.

John Coleman: Well, talk about a musician who’s a storyteller, right? Those songs really tell the story of working class America. You’re right. All right, Ben and Henry, what do you think?

Ben Howard: You know, I mean, I’m The Avett Brothers through and through who come from Henry’s territory. If you’re from North Carolina, these guys sing of truth and of love and of pain and vulnerability. And I love The Avett Brothers.

Henry Kaestner: All right. You’ve blessed us with that. I don’t know The Avett Brothers. I’ve heard it. Well, I’ve heard of them. I can’t tell you name of song, but I’m going to go to that. I’ve got two for our audience real quickly. One is U2. I actually sponsored the first ever academic conference on the Christianity of U2 lyrics. It happened at North Carolina Central University way back in the day and was fascinating just to hear about their spirituality, where the streets have no name, of course, is talking about heaven. Still haven’t found what I’m looking for. Just a great seeking type of song. There’s so much there and the Christianity of their lyrics and I love that. But one of the things I’ve done recently is I’ve gone back since. I like a lot of secular music too. I’ve started to borrow some of the greats from the 1970s, which is I’m a child of seventies and adopted them as my own, as praise and worship music, whether they are praise and worship or not. And an example of that, which I encourage our listeners to check out, is Ain’t Nobody by Chaka Khan, Ain’t Nobody Loves Me Better.

Craig Deitweller: Right.

Henry Kaestner: And I envision that is a praise and worship song. It may. Or may not have been designed that way, but that’s what I would leave our audience with. John. I want to turn the tables back to you. Give us one.

John Coleman: Oh, gosh. I didn’t know y’all were going to turn it on me. There are so many out there I’d almost have to go by genre, but for the same reasons you highlighted with Springsteen, I think guys like Johnny Cash are really interesting just telling the story of America and how you build from that. So I’ll stop with that one for now. But there are too many to name for me.

Henry Kaestner: Well, okay, so now we’re closing this off and I’m getting some great comments in from our producers here that and we could go on and on about some great music acts. We’re going to do that for the next segment. This has been awesome. I can’t wait to have you guys back on the program. We are going to close out as we do every one of our episodes and ask you what each of you are hearing through God in his word.

Ben Howard: Yeah, I’ll jump in. That one was immediately came to mind for me and I’m continually reminded that we’re not alone. And I don’t just think God’s presence, but we have a cloud of witnesses, we have a body, we have others around us, and we don’t have to do this by ourselves. And I am so thankful for that.

Henry Kaestner: Amen.

Craig Deitweller: I’ve been struck reading about the parable of the four soils, if you will, the seed. And I think about it for entrepreneurs. I think about it for pastors. The fact that Jesus basically said, hey, if you got a 250 batting average, that’s biblical. That’s like all time. Like one out of four is about as much as you can hope for. And so for investors, it’s like you might have been burned and for pastors, you might have said, why did those people walk away? But that’s just that’s the biblical average. And so we shouldn’t be surprised if 75% of our our efforts feel like they were wasted and got choked out and didn’t manifest in the way we hoped. But that 25% is can be pretty beautiful.

Henry Kaestner: I think you’re very, very right. I thought you were going to the parable of the sowers there too? And I’m going to just leave this as an encouragement to our audience on the Faith Driven Investor podcast and the parable of sowers. Of course, if you listen this podcast the odds you haven’t had your faith snatched away by being scorched or by birds coming in and get, so you’re likely have gone through that. But mine and John’s encouragement and along with Ben and Craig, I’ll presume, is that we might be able to soldier through the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of riches to get to that type of faith driven investment return of 160 or 30 fold. And that’s what this podcast is all about. So as you know of folks that you think might be encouraged by episodes like today, give us some feedback, too, and say, listen, if you ever do that whole thing where you ask people about their favorite music acts again, I’ll never listen again. Or if you think that was great and you’ve got some other suggestions on things, we might ask our guests, let us know. And please just take this to your communities. Whether it’s a Faith Driven Investor group, whether it’s a Faith Driven Entrepreneur, a group that you might launch with your church, there’s never any cost, there’s no catch, there’s no upsell. Here we are a ministry and we get fired up about telling stories like Ben and Craig’s. Thank you for listening in. Ben Craig, thank you very much for being with us.

Craig Deitweller: Thank you, Henry.