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Randy Alcorn is the founder and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries (EPM), a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching biblical truth and drawing attention to the needy and how to help them. Randy is also a New York Times bestselling author. He has written over 55 books including Courageous… Heaven… and The Treasure Principle. His books have been translated into over 70 languages and have sold over 11 million copies. Prior to launching EPM, Randy co-pastored for fourteen years Good Shepherd Community Church in Oregon. He is a well recognized voice in the faith driven investing community and today is sharing more about the treasure principle and what it means to invest in eternity.

Episode Transcript

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Randy Alcorn: In fact, I’m commending you to store up treasures for yourself, that even sounds selfish, but obviously Jesus isn’t quite us to be selfish, but it is in our own self-interest. But the bottom line of what he’s saying is you can’t take it with you. And that’s why it’s foolish to store up your treasures on Earth because either they’re going to leave you or you’re going to leave them. It’s not a permanent relationship, right? You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead. And that’s what he’s saying by giving it away now, investing it in God’s kingdom. We can invest in eternity and make a permanent and lasting difference in people’s lives. That’s what’s so transformative about the message.

William Norvell: Welcome back. This is a special episode. This is a crossover episode, Faith Driven Entrepreneur and Faith Driven Investor, because honestly, we just feel that our guest today, Randy Alcorn, has a message that our whole audience should hear. It’s a message of generosity as a message of how to discern that with God, and we just think that our entire tribe needs to learn about this needs to try to discern what that means for themselves and how that could potentially impact their investing and or their business and or their lives and or their conversation with their neighbor tonight, whatever that may be. We are excited to bring this to you and sing out this special episode we are going to bring. Justin Forman, the president of faith driven movements out from behind the scenes because as we were talking before, he just had an amazing story of how Randy’s message has impacted him and his family. And I want to turn it over to him to introduce Randy through his story of how picking up this book at an airport and a plane flight changed the way he thought about generosity and how it’s transcended into his whole family. So just over to you now.

Justin Forman: Thanks, William. You know, it’s fun, especially we’ve been talking a lot about books and just the power of story. A lot of that recently, as we’ve been talking about the Faith Driven Entrepreneur book and just releasing that. But I’m just reminded, you know, on a special day like today, just the power that a book can have, how catalytic those moments can be. And you know, I can’t remember where I was flying from, but I can remember that by the time that I had gotten off a flight and landed in Dallas, then a book and really kind of changed the way that I view things. And there’s many things I’ve come to love about this book. But one of those was the brevity of it. It was a package, and it was, I think, almost like designed with that in mind that you can hit people with a concept so short, so sweet, so simple, so profound that you can live out. And it was a friend that had given me treasure principal years ago, and I picked that up and it just forever viewed as a young 20 30 something they just like how life is a gift and how we have to steward it. And what does it look like to kind of start out with the end in mind? And it just, you know, it’s one of those things that books have the power to unlock some of the things that once you see it, you can’t unsee it and it changes your perspective of things. And, you know, fast forward years later. You know, Randy and I have had the chance to be able to work together through a couple of different things. We did a video project kind of redoing the video project and retelling kind of a newer version of the story of treasure principal. And it was fun. Unbeknownst to me, last Christmas, my brother in law had been so deeply impacted by the book and made an impact on him that he surprised our 12 year old son, Tristan with that for Christmas. And so here we were in front of family, and we just kind of a fun moment to see a book that is so transformed me and transformed our family to be given that to my son. And that was a note, an challenge that really said, Man, if you can spend the time marinate on this book, go through it, finish it. You know, I’d love to take you out to dinner and talk more about it and to see that challenge that was issue there for my son to think about something that really transcends, you know, generations. There are books that do that, and this is certainly one of those. And that’s why. And to your point, William, that we just wanted this to be a message that reaches everybody. Entrepreneur and investor, like we have been entrusted with things to steward. And gosh, we just want to make sure that we do that faithfully. So with that man, it’s a treat and it’s a gift to have Randy with us. So Randy, welcome to the podcast.

Randy Alcorn: Thanks. It’s just so great to be with you guys. And thanks for that story, Justin. That was just great to hear about the treasure principal, its impact on your life and your family. That that’s why you write stuff. That’s why I write stuff in the prayer that it’s going to change people’s lives and impact them for eternity and impacting them in such a way that they’re impacting others. So that really only when we’re with the Lord are we going to hear all these great stories for people touched by the Holy Spirit through the things that we have done, not just the big things, but the small things.

Justin Forman: And that’s great. Hey, well, it really did it for us. You know, one of the things we love to do with our guests before we get maybe into the book and some of the topics and applications they’re given the fly flyover. Tell us a little bit about your story. Who are you, where you come from and how God’s led you to where you are today?

Randy Alcorn: Yeah. I live in Gresham, Oregon, a suburb of Portland. Portland, Oregon, is the world capital of weirdness. Yeah, but we love it. It’s a mission field, and we’re here to make a difference, and we know that it’s got purpose for it. I grew up right in this area and an unbelieving home. My dad was a tavern owner and had an amusement machine business that included the old pinball machines and taverns, and also he had cigaret machines and he had pool tables and shuffle boards and all of those kinds of things. So my house was actually very popular for kids because my dad would rotate his. Scenes from the different taverns and then all the access ones were in our house and our basement, so that was fun growing up having access to all those things, but it wasn’t fun and growing up in an unbelieving home, there just were, you know, obviously a lack of perspective. God was not talked about, thought about mentioned. But when I was in high school, I went to a youth group at a church and got involved, heard the gospel for the first time when I was 15 years old, a sophomore in high school, I came to faith in Christ and God radically changed my life and had the joy of living my mom to Christ a couple of years later and baptizing her. My desire at first know when I found out about missionaries and what they did, and I read Torture for Christ by Richard Worm brand and God smuggler by brother Andrew and Corey Tin booms the hiding place. All those things then that tells you the era it was back in in the seventies. I’m sixty seven years old now, so I guess that means I’ve known the Lord for fifty two years, but he grabbed hold of me in ways I cannot even begin to describe. I really came to the Lord. Reading Scripture, you know, when I jumped in and started reading Genesis, you know, people talk about how they get to Leviticus and get confused. Well, I didn’t have to get to Leviticus. None of it really made sense to me at first. But then when I skip forward to the gospels and are reading about Jesus, it had the ring of truth. God miraculously transformed my life and never been the same since we went to Bible College Seminary thought I was going to become a missionary at one point, but we decided to help plan a church and then became pastor of that church for 14 years and moved on from that to start a ministry called Internal Perspective Ministries. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

Darryl Heald: Thanks, Randi, for sharing. It’s great to be here with you. Usually, you and I only cross paths during conferences.

Randy Alcorn: Right, exactly. It’s been a long time.

Darryl Heald: I also was deeply impacted when my father in law gave me a book at Christmas called Money, Possessions and Eternity, and I had no intention of reading it because I thought, what? What a lousy. Yes, how about how about a new driver or shotgun or something else like that?

Randy Alcorn: And could we could we use that endorsement on the back cover?

Darryl Heald: What a

Randy Alcorn: lousy gift.

Darryl Heald: I mean, I was not very grateful. So I mean, I needed this book really bad. And you know, it was just in God’s providence. So I was you young commercial real estate guy there in Atlanta. And I can’t tell you why I found the book and picked up the book. And that one’s a lot longer than the treasure principal, right? But it was, you know, we talked about a journey of generosity, and that’s what set me. I mean, you were my teacher and mentor in that, you know, it just it changed my life. And I don’t know if you remember when David Wills and I were trying to get the rights to take that as an excerpt. And then, you know, you finally came out with the treasure principle and so many stories on that. But can you give us a little context? Is that book in a lot of ways? I think there was a lot of ways kind of, you know, a huge kind of breakout book and a brainy book for you where I mean, you know, all over the world now, as you know, just the generosity messenger and the insight you give in there. Can you give us a little perspective of like how broad that message is gone? Number of books and things like that?

Randy Alcorn: Yeah, it is really been phenomenal and totally surprising. I think when the publisher asked me to write it, it was going to be the second book in a series of really small books, and they were kind of going to market them together. Well, the first book in the series was called The Prayer of Jabez. And so they really weren’t connected with each other, and there were good things about that book and perhaps things I didn’t feel is good about. But they decided to kind of separate what was called the life change series out into another one so that my book would be the lead book of that, largely because the project was a world onto its own. And, you know, eventually it had all the offshoots like the prayer of Jabez for left handed waffle makers and, you know, whatever. I mean, it was everything. And so here I was with this book called The Treasure Principal. But it turned out great because even though nobody would have predicted it, it’s like, Oh, wow, what book can we come out with that will sell a million copies? It’s actually sold over two million copies now. But how can we really capture people? Oh, let’s get them a book that tells them they should be giving away their money so people have to. And money on a book that tells you to give away your money, that’s just not going to go anywhere. So at the time, giving books and there were very, very few of them simply were not selling. They weren’t getting into people’s hearts and lives. I mean, individually, they were sure, you know, biography of ERG Latino and other great things like that. And then people would talk about giving along the way. But this was a book that focused on giving, and it was remarkable. And to this day, every week, I think I just read one. Yesterday we get these emails, these posts, these people using extracts from treasure principal people talking about how treasure principle changed their lives. People saying, by God’s grace, after reading this book, we liquidated our unnecessary assets and we had a lot that were unnecessary. I mean, we didn’t. This isn’t a vow poverty thing. I mean, most people still own possessions and live in houses, and probably most people are middle class people, but they’re just divesting themselves of treasures on Earth in order to invest treasures in heaven. And that’s what Jesus said. Don’t store treasures on Earth stored for of treasures in heaven. And how do you do that? Well, you do that through giving, and it’s been a joy giving message. That’s what I just love. I mean, not duty driven nearly as much as just joy and happiness driven. Jesus said, You know, it is more happy making it to give than to receive. That word is translated blessed. But what it means is it is more happy giving to give than to receive.

William Norvell: Oh, that’s so good. And I mean, I want to give you a chance. I think you might have just done it, but you know, in a sentence or two, right? You know, what is the treasure principle? Give us a couple of seconds on just kind of what is the key thesis?

Randy Alcorn: I think what Jesus was saying when he said, Don’t starve your child’s treasures on Earth. We’re moth and dust. Corrupt thieves can steal. But store officials, churches in heaven where he treasures their heart will be. Also, what he was saying is when it comes to treasures. They’re not bad. In fact, they’re good and it’s OK to store up treasures for yourself. In fact, I’m commending you to store up treasures for yourself. That even sounds selfish. But obviously, Jesus isn’t calling us to be selfish, but it is in our own self-interest. But the bottom line of what he’s saying is you can’t take it with you. And that’s why it’s foolish to stir up your treasures on Earth. Because either they’re going to leave you or you’re going to leave them. It’s not a permanent relationship, right? With our treasures on Earth. You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead. And that’s what he’s saying by giving it away now, investing it in God’s kingdom. And it’s not just our material treasures and our money, but it’s true of our time. It’s true of our gifting, you know, our talents that God has given us. We can invest those in eternity and make a permanent and lasting difference in people’s lives. That’s what’s so transformative about the message.

William Norvell: Well, that is that is and I’m reading the book too, and it changed a lot. We did a group study on it and just changed a lot. And as you, as you say, some of the quotes as I’ve almost forgotten that that’s where I got that quote, right? It’s like, Oh yeah, that’s where I got that understanding. I totally forgot that it was so good. I was wondering, would you mind walk it through? How have you seen this play out in your own life? So you’ve mentioned a couple of different categories right time, talent, treasure. Get a little practical with us. You know, when when this message was given to you by God, how did this transform the way you’ve built eternal perspective ministries, how you spend your time, maybe how you pray? I don’t even know because you’re the expert. I’m not. I’m just curious from a practical view, how does your own life look different after you receive this message from God?

Randy Alcorn: Well, it’s interesting because I wrote several books and then I felt really Lord of the Lord, too, when I was still Pastor Young Pastor to do a sermon series related to money and possessions, not just the subject of giving, but including that. And so I thought, I don’t know how many weeks this is going to be. It’s going to be a four week series, a six week series, an eight week series. Well, so I started doing my research and then it was just so compelling. And I’m looking at all these passages and I’ve seen all these things that God says in his word about money and possessions and the connection to the spiritual life. Even where Jesus says, Where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. And I began to see in my own life and God had certainly led me into giving. I was sending a lot of money overseas, giving to my church, doing ministry related things. So giving was a big part of my life. But it was not so much. Based on scripture telling me to give, it was just the overflow of the Christian life. But when I’m looking at all these pastors related to money and possessions, stewardship, God’s ownership, I was stunned and I realized that I could preach two years worth of messages and just scratch the surface. And so the idea of the sermon series was God’s word overflows. I mean, God is so interested in this subject and expects us to be interested in it. And there have been different estimates. But if you take all of the stewardship parables, easily 15 percent of everything Jesus had to say related directly to money and possessions more than he said about heaven and hell. Not that the subjects more important than heaven and hell, of course, were more consequential, but it is really important. Or he wouldn’t invest all that time in it. So that’s what really caused me to turn that into a book, which was money possessions of eternity and that launched me into this area of giving. But to your question, what really was transformative in terms of our actual life was that it wasn’t long after the book came out. The original book, it’s been revised and updated sense, but came out in 1989 and I was still a pastor. But what happened later that year was I felt less of the law to get involved in peaceful, nonviolent civil disobedience at abortion clinics to save the lives of children just simply standing there blocking arms, but speaking up for those who could not speak for themselves. Well, as I said, I mean, I live here in Oregon and there were parts of the country, including Dallas and Wichita and Atlanta and places in the Bible Belt or Midwest. That’s its own kind of Bible belt where you could do that, and it could be fairly respectable in Portland, Oregon. It was not. The level of hostility was off the charts. So what happened was as a result of that, I had to resign as a pastor because they were coming to garnish my wages because of civil suits against me and others. And so one of those ended up being for eight point two million dollars, the largest civil suit in history, successful for a peaceful, nonviolent protest. And the result of that was I had to leave the church and I could only make minimum wage because the abortion clinics would garnish my wages, anything above minimum wage. So our lifestyle changed now. Fortunately, God had taught us already. We’re giving a large percentage of my book royalties away. I was making a good wage is a pastor, but all of a sudden I was making minimum wage. And so we looked at things and we irrevocably gave away the royalties from all my books. So now I’m actually looking at the pages of money, possessions and eternity, which I finish writing about one year before I could just make minimum wage and talking about God owns it all. And depending on God for everything. And that’s exactly what we were doing. That’s when my life really changed, which was ironically, after writing that book.

Darryl Heald: Well, that’s Randy. Thanks. That’s such a such a powerful story. And you know, one of the things that I think had such an impact on me is we think about the money and possessions part, and that’s really tangible. But this whole and eternity, right? The context of that. And of course, you know, you’ve had these famous books on heaven as well. But could you talk a little bit more just in terms of like where, you know, I think a lot of people listening to this right where we’re real practical, tactical, strategic, we understand the financial realm, right? We’re scaling businesses, we’re investing and all. But let’s talk about the eternity piece here, particularly in light of like from a relational standpoint, a family standpoint, things like that. What does that begin to look like in your own life?

Randy Alcorn: Yeah, know. I think of my family and the impact on my family, and I’ve told a story before about how when my daughters came out and we thought they should witness one time during the civil disobedience days and their dad, you know, getting arrested for speaking up for those who could not speak for themselves and the financial implications it had for a family. And I remember somebody saying to me, So do you realize the impact what you’re doing is having on your kids, how they’re going to be deprived, you having to make minimum wage and then having to see their dad go to jail? And I said, well, thank you for thinking of my kids, because, no, I really wasn’t thinking of them at all. No, but I said, you know, I hope that it will change them forever. That the material things now cannot be a huge part of our lives. God will continue to provide A. good and beautiful and wonderful ways, and our kids were not deprived. But the attitudes and actions I saw in my kids when they couldn’t have everything else that a lot of their friends could have. They couldn’t usually go the places and do the things others were doing. Though God provided us some wonderful trips and vacations and different mission trips around the world, different things that we did together, it was wonderful. But when my daughter Angela was in high school, she and I were out on a bike ride. She’s a junior in high school and we went down this new development and we saw a house that was the most beautiful house we’d ever seen in the area where we lived. And at the time, we looked at it and it was huge. It had this beautiful view of Mt. Hood. It was just landscaped beautifully, but it was still for sale. I’m in my yard and the for sale sign was $500000. Now I get it. Some people live in Southern California in different parts of the country where, you know, that’s not an impressive figure. Where I live, especially back in the 90s when this happened, there were no houses around that were selling for half a million dollars. I mean, you couldn’t find one. At least I’d never seen one. And so this is like the most beautiful house we’ve ever seen. And Angie was just great. Dad is just so gorgeous. And then all of a sudden it dawned on me, you know, and I said to her, And do you, do you know that if instead of giving away the royalties just from the last year, the royalties from my books, if we had kept them, we could have paid cash for this house? No kidding. And she’s got this big smile on her face. Well, she knew what we did with the money. She knew all the things. We talked to our kids about, which I, by the way, would really recommend. Sometimes parents are doing giving and they’re not talking to their kids and they’re not involving their kids. And I’d say, get your kids involved, help them even make decisions about, you know, where it goes. And all of that gives them ownership so that they have vested interests in eternity. But anyway, continuing with Angela, so I said that to her, and she’s just now kidding. And then I said, What age do you wish we would have kept the royalties? And we still could. I mean, we could get them back. We’d given them away, yes. But by that time, we could have taken them back. But but you wish we would and would buy this house or a house like that. And she looks at me and she laughs, genuinely. She just laughs and she said, Dad, he’s just a house. And I’m telling you. Tears came to my eyes because I thought people were worried about my daughters being deprived. Well, what they got instead of. They’re never going to get a huge inheritance, but they are. I hope they have received a heritage. And so that’s where it gets really personal for me.

William Norvell: Well, that’s good. That’s good. All right. I just keep wrestling. I’ve read the book and my wrestle, is this sometimes Randy when I go, OK, I get it. You know, there’s other things in the Bible where you go, OK, okay. Like, I’m not going to debate the theological points with you, right? Like this is clear, right? This is not debatable from that perspective, but how do our listeners get our head around treasure and have it? Right. And of course, that’s better. Like, obviously, that’s better, right? But two part question, right? So how do I one get my head around it, maybe theologically? And then two, you know, are there practical ways to maybe get around my own stubbornness? And you know, I’ve heard you talk about a financial finish line, right? Are there practical ways say, Hey, you know what? You are greedy and stubborn. And so here’s some practical tips to get around that.

Randy Alcorn: Well, I think one way to think about it is a lot of people think wrongly about giving where they think, OK, all right. I know it’s a good thing because they know people are needy here. I know a lot of things need to be accomplished for God’s kingdom in the world, so I’ll make the sacrifice and do the giving. And I realize God has given me a lot and so I can. Yeah, I can give some of the weight, but it’s like a begrudging. Even people who talk about tithing as if tithing were the ultimate like tithing is the training wheels of giving. It’s like the wading pool or, you know, is the end of the swimming pool where you get in. But then when you learn how to really swim, you go into the deeper water. Well, that’s how it is with tithing. So to me, the people are held back and they think that tithing is the most radical kind of giving that a person could do. Well, of course, that’s just that’s just 10 percent. And what God has provided for us is just way, way beyond that. But I think the mistake that people sometimes make is thinking of their giving as divesting. Just I’m giving it away and I’ll never see anything from it. But really, it’s investing and especially when you make wise giving choices and it’s truly making a difference in people’s lives for eternity. And so when Jesus said, you’re storing up treasures for yourself in heaven and Luke, 12, there’s a parallel passage where he says that you sell your possessions, give to the poor, and then God will give you moneybags in heaven. Or sometimes it’s translated money belts in heaven. So in other words, it’s the transfer of wealth to another location. You could say it’s a different kind of wealth, but it’s using actual material wealth as the basis for creating wealth and have it now. We don’t know exactly what that wealth will look like. We know that often it has to do with eternal rewards of ruling in God’s Kingdom of leadership in God’s Kingdom, a lot of people are thinking, Well, I don’t want to rule, I just want to go around and have fun or whatever. Well, it’s not ruling like in this era of under the fall of corrupt government or whatever. It’s going to be magnificent hearts filled with will serve at hearts of people serving the Lord in his kingdom. You’ve been faithful a little. I will put you over much. I’ll put you over five cities, I’ll put you over 10 cities. I’ve written a big book called Heaven and several other books on that subject. And I think part of what’s wrong is when we think of Jesus saying, Sorry, I’ve churches in heaven. When we think of heaven, we don’t have a biblical view of heaven. The biblical view of heaven is life forever on a resurrected earth, living and resurrected bodies with resurrected fellow believers with the resurrected Jesus in a new earth of resurrected culture and resurrected nature and resurrected animals. And it’s it’s, you know, don’t have time to develop all that and give the scriptural basis. But I’ve written whole books about it, and I’m telling you once you see heaven in that light, then when you think about investing and eternal rewards and investing in eternity and experiencing forever, the result of your giving way of your life and your time and your resources in this life, you think of that being something you will enjoy and others will enjoy forever, no matter what form that takes. That is an amazing, paradigm shifting thing. And ironically, it isn’t just that we OK. Yeah, we have to make all these sacrifices in this life. And you know, that’s that’s the pitch, you know, but at least it’ll pay off in eternity. No, it pays off in this life also, because then we have the joy of seeing where that money goes. I’ve had people say to me, or your books have sold over 11 million copies, it’s almost 12 million now. Do you realize what you could do if you had kept the royalties from those books? You realize the kind of house you live in, the kind of cars you could drive, the kinds of trips you could go on. And God has allowed us to go on some magnificent trips anyway, from speaking and missions, related trips and just all. All these kinds of things. But, you know, my response is always, well, yeah, there’s a lot we could have done with that money, but nothing that would have brought us as much joy as what we did with it in terms of giving them and what we are still doing with it in terms of giving it away. That is what is transformative to experience by the grace of God, not only change in other people’s lives as a result of our giving, but in our lives. And let me just add this my my wife has stage four cancer in the lymph nodes. It’s been a battle for four years. We had some test results recently that weren’t good. We pray for her healing each and every day, complete healing. God so far has not chosen to answer that. No, he may still and will praise him if he did, but will also praise him if he doesn’t choose to do that because the ball’s in his court. But I’m telling you to see my wife in the world daily and talking about heaven and looking forward to being with Jesus and trusting him fully. I believe that our lives and our hearts and our attitudes would have been very different if we had not, by God’s grace, learned the secret of joyful giving decades ago.

Darryl Heald: Well, thanks, Randy, that’s that’s super powerful, and we’re sorry that you know, that circumstances as it is and just it’s really amazing just to hear, though, the grace surrounding you with you and Nancy and your family despite the difficult circumstances. But you’re right, the hope of glory, right, is the driver. But so one of the things I think is really interesting. You just brought up this tension between how much do we keep, how much do we spend ahead, you know, treasure in heaven. Right. But then so a lot of people in our audience, right, are entrepreneurs, starting businesses, building businesses, investors who have capital goods given the ability to create wealth. So how do I how do I not have the begrudging attitude you’re talking about? And then at once, it’s the freedom to say this is how God created me and how do I begin to manage that tension or find a balance with, you know, using the worldly wealth right now to be a creator, to be a, you know, investor and things like that. So can I have the freedom to do that?

Randy Alcorn: You know, I think the answer is yes in a qualified way because I’ve had these conversations and heard that question, of course, many times from people, because it’s a very good question. I think the one thing we need to be careful not to do, and I’ve seen many people who have done this, and I think you have to where they say to themselves, OK, I’m going to make a ton of money and one day I’m going to give a lot of it away. Jesus did not say Where you want your treasure to eventually be there, your heart will be also. He said, where your treasure is, where you put it now is where your heart is going to be. So a lot of the people who have good intentions with that just keep accumulating and keep accumulating, and there’s no end to accumulation. There is no end. And so I think what has to be done is you have to discipline yourself to say, I am going to give generously now. I am not going to wait to give generously. Now, it doesn’t necessarily mean I will give away 90 percent of my income when I’m early on starting a business. For a lot of people, that just probably wouldn’t work with the starting the business thing, but I still will be very generous and depend on how much God is entrusted to me. Maybe I’ll give 20 percent, maybe 40 percent, 50 percent of whatever figure it is, and it all depends on the resources God has entrusted you and how it works. And there’s no biblical formula and there’s no magical percentage. I would never, ever under any circumstances go less than 10 percent because I just can’t imagine a New Testament believer changed by the grace of Jesus, who is unwilling to do the minimum that was required of the poorest Israelite. That makes no sense to me whatsoever. But the point is, yeah, there’s freedom. But then I would say not air on the side of because it’s not airing at all generous giving, but it’s just like, stretch yourself with the giving and ask God to bless. And you may find that of course, you’ll never know in this life because you can’t do it both ways. But I think in many cases, people just for their lives into the building of this business. They lose the business. The business, you know, just falls apart or the economy changes. They take the money that they made and that they invested in things out there and the investments went sour or they became very, very wealthy. And then they lost their families because their priorities weren’t right because their hearts weren’t right. So if you want your heart to be in the right place where your treasure is there, your heart will be. Also, put your treasure now into God’s kingdom, so your heart will be in God’s kingdom. Give your treasure to Jesus. Now see your heart will be with Jesus. That doesn’t mean give it all away. There are times where Jesus did say, Give it all away. OK, but isn’t. Do that for all of us. But whatever it is, do enough of it. Now that your heart is going there, then maybe not only might God bless you and your business, but your heart might be in such a place that when more money comes in, then you’re giving more and more. But if you’re always waiting for that day to come, when you’re going to become a giver that day in all likelihood will never come. And you will regret one day having really wasted your life with and your resources that were really God’s all along. Because he owns it all. When you could have invested in turn to be

William Norvell: so good and so here you tell that story. I guess I’ve heard a lot of people tell the story. You know, I’ve never heard someone say yes to the answer of Do I wish I have kept it? I’ve heard a lot of generous people. I don’t think I’ve ever heard one person say, You know what? Actually, yes, I wish we had not given that money away. And right, that’s staggering. It just hit me as you were talking. I’ve never heard someone say the other answer to that. And for someone who’s wrestling with that, for my wife and I just went through what a Darrell’s program’s journey of generosity and we were wrestling with what that should look like in our life. Fred is just such a moment to remember. I’ve I’ve never met someone who said we gave away too much. We made a mistake.

Randy Alcorn: Yeah. And I don’t think at the Jesuit seat of Christ, it’s just hard for me to imagine. Well, you know, I’m going to reward you for this and that, and I commend you for this and that, and he is going to do that. But this I have against you, as you said to the Rev.. Churches and Rev.. I have this against you, but this I have against you. You gave away too much to feed hungry children and get clean water to people and get the Bible translated into their heart language and to help persecuted Christians all over the world and to reach people with the gospel in the far corners of the world. You really shouldn’t have done that. I mean, I’m trying to imagine at the generosity of Christ him ever saying that, yes, somebody could say, Well, there’s probably a case where a guy made his family go hungry so that he could give all that money away. Well, God knows if there is such a person. And there probably is somewhere. But I would say that’s a rare situation, and I’ve had people say to me, we got to take care of our kids and living in a culture where even middle class is exorbitantly wealthy by global standards and historic standards, and people are saying, Well, we got to take care of our kids. Will you provide for your kids giving them food to eat and clothes to wear and a place to live versus just overindulging your kids constantly so they have the best of everything, which will not ultimately be character building for them?

William Norvell: It’s so good. I realize you’re one of the generous giving videos with Tim Keller to thinking about our heart boss. You’re right. He joked. You know, if you don’t know Tim as a pastor in New York and says, Yeah, I’ve been a pastor for 35 or 40 years, right? Said, You know, I’ve I’ve never had one congregant come to me and say, You know what? I struggle with the sin of greed. I think I’m too greedy. There’s just something about our heart posture that doesn’t let us go there. We just don’t assume we are right.

Randy Alcorn: Exactly. And I think that’s the nature of me. We talk about blind spots like, What are your blind spots? Well, I don’t know, because they’re blind spots, right? And that I think with greed, materialism, greed is idolatry. We’re told it’s putting something before God. It’s worshiping the material, it’s worshiping money and we do it and we do it a lot. And first, Timothy, six and other passages as well just really speak against, you know, the love of money and its impact on our lives and telling us to be rich in good deeds to give it away, laying up for ourselves treasures as a firm foundation for the coming age. The coming age is life forever on the new Earth. We got to change that perspective and when we do and we can’t just do it, you know you can’t. How do you make yourself less greedy? How do you make yourself generous? Well, this is only one way to give it away. There’s only one way to break the back of materialism that’s giving a lot away because when we give it away, we prove to ourselves that we don’t have to have it to live on. And we proved to ourselves, it’s not our God. And that’s what you do. So you don’t wait until you feel like giving in to give you give. But the more you give, the more joy you find in it. And pretty soon, giving is so wrapped up in your life you don’t even think of it as a sacrifice. Other people look on, they say, Wow, you’re kidding. You’re giving that all away. And often they don’t know. In my case, they don’t know what we give from our own personal income, from what the ministry pays us. But they know all the royalties are given away. But I don’t even think of it. I mean, I only think of it as privilege and joy and. And the same thing with my family that our kids are not going around hanging their heads because they’re not going inherit all this money or these great houses and lands or whatever. And this is where the transformation comes in. You only overcome greed through giving more and more. If you keep it, you’ll just stay greedy. In fact, when I think of the word miser, what English word is derivative of it is connected with it miserable. The miser is miserable. Think of Scrooge. Do you want to be like Scrooge? I mean, who wants to be very wealthy but utterly miserable until the transformation takes place? And Charles Dickens, when he writes that I go back and I reread that story once in a while, a Christmas Carol. And what happens to Ebony’s Your Scrooge in that strange story with the three ghosts of Christmas? And all of that is the equivalent of a conversion story. It is like coming to Jesus, and everything looks different now, and life is full of joy as you give away what you always used to keep and made you miserable.

William Norvell: So again, coming up on the Christmas season, I’m going to watch that with the new light now and the new vision. So as we come to a close, had one final question. I don’t know if we got exactly to it. Could you explain the concept of a financial finish line and how you’ve developed that and how our audience could think about that specific concept?

Randy Alcorn: Yeah, some people become highly specific with the financial finish line idea, and others take it more as not a clear line, but something that they generally strive for. There’s obviously advantages to clarity where you say, All right, this is all I need. All I could use. Everything beyond that goes to God when I reach a certain amount. And obviously I’m not going to say an amount is going to differ with what people believe about it or I reach a certain amount. It’s like in my investment portfolio. Do I need to keep pouring money into it so that there will just be way more than I could ever possibly use? Or do I need to give it away now and not leave it to my children after I die and hope they give it away because they may make more income than I do? I hope they do, but give it away now because God didn’t entrusted to my children, he entrusted it to me. So the finish line is don’t feel like you’re supposed to keep most of what comes in. If God is given you a lot of money, why has he entrusted it and given is the wrong word entrusted to your care? Well, it’s so you can make a difference for eternity. God will make us, it says in second Corinthians nine, he’ll make us rich in every way so that, OK, what’s he going to say now so that we can live in the nicest house and we can have multiple houses and the beach in the mountains and and everywhere? And so that we can go on the most exorbitant vacations and and have the most the greatest cars and multiple cars and all of that. OK. It doesn’t say that you will be made rich in every way so that you may be generous on every occasion. And Corinthians eight nine, I would just say, read and reread those two chapters and ask God to change your heart. And you see how grace it’s all about the grace of God manifested in people’s lives and showing through giving so that grace is the lightning. Grace is the lightning that comes from heaven, that comes from God. Giving is the thunder. That is our response to the lightning. You’re gonna have the lightning for the thunder to be there. And if you are not generously thunderously giving, it’s probably a sign that you’re not experiencing the lightning of God’s grace in your life the way you should and could. But the solution? Give more and ask God to give you a cheerful heart as you give. And he’ll answer that prayer. And when you see what’s being done with the giving that God has privileged you to do, you will get more pleasure and more excitement from that than you could get from any material possessions ever.

William Norvell: Unfortunately, we have to come. To an end, gosh, I feels like we could go on forever. We may have to beg you to come back and go on forever some time. But where we love to end is we love to invite our guests to share a little bit of where God’s word is working on them right now. And so that could be this morning. It could be a season in your life. It could be something that God’s brought new to you as you’ve been reflecting on a during a season. But just love to see how God’s word transcends our guest and our listeners and how it’s it’s always alive and working.

Randy Alcorn: Well, I’ll tell you right now that is both a hard and an easy question to answer. It’s easy to know what I should talk about because unless something changes and God intervenes and we still pray that he will. My wife is dying, and so we face that every day and still doing the treatments haven’t g iven up there. But we’ve said, you know, if it gets to a certain point and quality of life is diminishing, we’re going to take you off the chemo. And you know, all of that because we’re not hanging on desperately to life in this world. It’s better to die and be with Christ is greater by far to be with him. And my wife knows that and I know that. But obviously we want her to continue in this life. But I’ll tell you, when you look at that in terms of eternity, it moves your heart and it just the priorities becomes so, so clear. It’s kind of like what we’re saying before. It’s like people on their deathbed don’t say, you know, I wish I had spent more time at the office and less time with my kids. I wish I had spent less time with my wife. No, the regrets or the other way they wish they’d spend more time with their wife, more time with our kids, that maybe they hadn’t traveled around the world quite as much without their family. Or maybe they wouldn’t have spent so much time making money that you know, now they don’t have the relationships that they could have had if they had invested less in their business and more in their family or done their business in such a way that it didn’t have to sacrifice the family. OK, but for us, we are just thinking God, that by his grace, years ago he did. Some things in our life were far from perfect. And I don’t mean there’s no such thing as greed or materialism in our lives. You know, we live in a culture of it. It’s the air we breathe. But to the degree that we have been freed from that, that our hearts have been in heaven and for decades and cautions three says, set your eyes on things above where Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. By God’s grace, we have been able to do that and we have no regrets and Nancy’s talked about that not having regrets. So right now, I would say ironically, when we started our ministry now just over 30 years ago, I guess thirty one years ago, the verses that I chose that would be our theme for the ministry were in Second Corinthians four, where it says we look not at the things which are seen, but the things which are unseen to the things that are seen are temporary. But the things that are unseen are eternal. And that’s why we named it eternal perspective ministries. But it’s preceded by a verse that helps so much with understanding the meaning these light and momentary afflictions. Now think of Paul’s life, who’s talking and the afflictions that he went through are unbelievable. You’ll look at the list of those in Second Corinthians. It’s unbelievable. But these light and momentary afflictions are achieving in us and eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all. Therefore, we look not at the things which are seen, but the things which are unseen to things which are unseen are eternal. OK, well, it’s not just we’ll have to put up with these afflictions, but then they’ll be gone forever because we’ll be in heaven will live forever on the new Earth. That’s true. But what it’s seen is these afflictions are achieving in us. God is doing a powerful work in our lives through our suffering. God has done the most powerful work I have ever seen in my wife’s life and my life through the suffering of these last four years. He is achieving eternal purposes. When I see her in the word. Every morning, I see her journaling, she reads to me from her journal. I turn some of the things that she’s written in her journal and ask her if we could use them as blogs on our EPM website. She wrote one recently called My Cancer is God’s Servant, based on a passage that says all things are God’s servants. He uses all things, and we know that all things will work together for good to them. That love God to them are called according to his purpose. And so not only in general, is that what we have been learning, but it has confirmed how grateful we are that God let us open our eyes years ago to the joy of giving. And we’ll sit and we’ll hear reports from different parts of the world and book that I hand out to somebody somewhere. And then somebody that had their car break down last week and took women or children to their house sent him some books and hearing the stories of lives being changed through the divine appointments God gives us and through the wealth he’s entrusted to us. I can say this we are not living with regrets. I mean, of course you always think should have done this better. Should’ve done that better. It’s not the mirage of perfection, but it’s thank you Lord, for helping us to discover these things and live these things out together as husband and wife for decades, even though it was costly and could no longer be a pastor, could no longer make a normal wage for, well, for 20 years. But God provided and God is gracious and kind and sovereign, and we trust him 100 percent.

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In 1976, 23-year-old David Weekley started his own home building company. Now more than 40 years later, the company has sold more than 100,000 homes, expanded to 19 cities across the nation, and won countless awards. In addition, David and his family launched a charitable Foundation to impact the world through both Christ-centered and secular organizations. David joins us to share the story of starting one of the most successful home building companies in the country and how their foundation is changing the lives of thousands around the 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.

David Weekley: I would share to you, no one go where their passion and where they’re called, but number two, not to set aside their business acumen and learnings when they give so often times, especially if you come from a place of faith, you kind of it’s like you do business with your head and you give with your heart. And to me, you ought to combine those just like, you know, hopefully we’re living out our faith during the week and work. I think we’re supposed to give with the same business acumen that we use in earning money. Just amaze me that people spend 40 hours of 50 hours a week, whatever earning sums. And then they’ll give at the drop of a hat without any investigation, understanding, et cetera.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast is a special edition to combine this with our sister property, Faith Driven Investor, because we’ve got a really special guests. And to be clear. Having done a couple of hundred of these, each one of the guests are very special. And each one of them has made a major impact, I think, on all of our lives. I think they’re great stories. I hope that you’ll agree with me today, though, is, shall we say, extra special. We’ve got David Weekley on the program and from time to time we’ll have an interview with somebody who’s made an impact on my life and has for quite some time. And David is one of those people. I met David first, I think, probably about 12 years ago, and I think back to the different entrepreneurial things that I’ve been involved with my life. And to some extent, they’ve been informed by some measure of naivete and hubris. And you know, David met me when I was in my thirties. I’m now in my early 50s and I found him to be nothing but incredibly encouraging. He must have been thinking, this guy’s crazy. He just did all these different things he wants to do. He’s never going to be able to do any of them. And I’m a busy, successful guy and I don’t have time for this. And yet he did, and he’s been one of those guys that has consistently been a source of encouragement to me, of guiding me and how to think about entrepreneurship, how to think about giving and giving. Well, Sir David, thank you very much for spending so much time with me over the years. Thank you very much for being on the program.

David Weekley: I’m excited about it.

Henry Kaestner: So we like to start every one of our episodes by hearing about the personal background of our speakers. And you’ve got a great one and you’ve got incredible testimony. And so we want to start there. And so maybe you can just start off. Of course, at the beginning, bring us through quickly about the type of home you grew up in, but then what made you decide to launch your own business?

David Weekley: Born and raised in Houston, Texas, fortunate with a mom and dad who were together for seven years and two older brothers. We were all eagle scouts and, you know, kind of a suburban. Leave it to beaver kind of life growing up. So I was blessed in that way. My two older brothers were a lot older, 12 and eight years older, and so I know look up to them and always wanted to live up to their expectations of my parents expectations. Found out Boy Scouts, if you work hard, you could get badges. And it was kind of fun and I was never the smartest guy in school or the best looking or the best athlete. So I found out the working hard is what worked for me. I married my high school sweetheart, three kids and grandkids, and started out and went to work for a homebuilder right out of school because I was supposed to go get a a business degree up east, go get an MBA, and they wanted me to get a couple of years of experience. And so I went to work for a homebuilder and that was great. But then I got fired after about a year and a half, and so my brother said, Well, why don’t we start our own company so at age 20 to start my own company? Fortunately, it was the late 70s in Houston, Texas, and lots of homes were being sold and so grew that company up to the mid 80s. By the time I was 30 made a lot of money, thought I was God’s gift to the homebuilding business president, Local Builders Association, speaking to three hundred people every month and driving my BMW seven Series and building a 10000 square foot house at Memorial. I mean, I was I pretty much had it made. And then, sure enough, market downturn in the mid 80s oil and gas business in Houston and American went from 30000 starts to 6000 starts. And most builders went broke and we didn’t because we went to a couple different markets and were able to get profitable before we went broke. But the key point about that part of the story is that I remember the worst thing about that downturn was the reality that I had millions of dollars flow through my hands and nothing good had come out of it. And so kind of made got a promise to give me one more boom and I won’t screw the next one up. And he came through in the late 80s and early 90s, and guess what, about 92 that they have open heart surgery for a birth defect. I went on a Christian retreat and remembered my promise and said, OK, from this point forward, I’m going to give half my time and half my money to charitable causes. So I had to hire a CEO. I went through a couple with and found the right one, and I had taken the company up to about 300 million and he’s taking up to three billion. So I was fortunate to find someone wonderful, talented I was that was a professional manager where I was an entrepreneur, so to speak. So since then, I’ve been given half my time as well. And so that’s something that a lot of folks can’t do, but it helps you gain some knowledge, I guess, of the last 30 years and half my time, a thousand hours a year. So that’s 30000 hours into philanthropy. And you know, we’ve all heard it takes 10000 hours to get to be an expert, but I’m still making. Mistakes regularly, so still working on it.

Henry Kaestner: Well, the best part of that is that you’re showing mistakes with people like me is I and a lot of other people try to be better on that giving that helps rather than hurts. If you think about Brian Stricker and his work and so you’ve been a big part of that. I actually want to go backwards just a little second there because you talked about running the business as an entrepreneur and running the business as a manager and going from $300 to three billion. And what the type of skills are, they’re required to take it to that level. So many of our audience are entrepreneurs and they have a vision and they’ve got the energy and they’re catalyzing things. And yet it’s almost agree that you get the vision sometimes that you’re not great at actually program witnessing things. Can you talk a little bit about how that happened and just some of the maybe some of the lessons that you’ve learned in not only your own experience, but having been around enough around other entrepreneurs about mistakes made and or just council, you would give a visionary entrepreneur that is starting to see success come about and yet is really wondering what it takes to really scale something.

David Weekley: I was fortunate in that my older brother, who was my partner, was also a great mentor. And so I was able to bounce things off him and he had good business judgment. And entrepreneurship is sometimes a pretty lonely business. And so my first thought is to get some mentors people who you trust and have faith in to count for you early on. Second thought would be, is that, you know, oftentimes if you got a private company in your private stockholder, you know, the story is never sell anybody else stock or never give to anybody else. You know, you can pay them well, but just don’t give up stock. And for me, I found just the opposite to be true when I brought on my CEO as a partner sold some stock to him. Now I’ve got 40 managers that are my partners, that own real stock. And it’s great having them go through ups and downs. You know, this last downturn for us in 2007 and eight was really tough. Sixteen hundred team members and we took it down to eight hundred to survive and having a bunch of folks on the board with me pull through those waters that were my partners, whose financial net worth was on the line, just like mine was, was very helpful.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, OK. So that’s helpful. You know, we talked a lot about partnerships on the program and I’d be completely lost. I’ve had three different entrepreneurial endeavors, and each one of them were successful because of Divine Providence, but more pragmatically, having an incredible partner because otherwise being an entrepreneur is a really, really lonely journey. And so I did not know that part of your story. Tell us about the story of the idea of trading your principles for an Oldsmobile,

David Weekley: and that goes back to when I was fired. And what happened? I was running a community for another builder and we kind of had this compensation deal that was set up where it was. I got a percentage of the profits about halfway through the in June, they said. We want to change the deal and instead of you getting a percentage of profits, we want to give you a company, Oldsmobile. And I kind of said, Well, I really don’t want a company, Oldsmobile. I kind of want the deal we set out. And so end up talk to my boss or my boss’s boss. And they finally said, Well, this is really where the companies go. And then the final. I went to the president that, you know, wrote a letter to him and he called me in and I thought it was going to be great. You know, we agree we’re not going to change it midyear on you. But he said, I didn’t really have the right attitude and I need to go find employment elsewhere. So that’s kind of what happened.

Henry Kaestner: If it had been a BMW, would you have said

David Weekley: maybe you could

Henry Kaestner: trade even weekly at home instead of one of the largest and most successful home builders and contractors in the country? It’s huge. If you went down from 600 to 800, it’s now come back where you are now. Can you share that?

David Weekley: Yeah, we got again six hundred team members, but we’re doing a lot more volume. That’s good news. Yeah, we’re back up to three billion, which is our peak.

Henry Kaestner: So if you’re in a really competitive homebuilding business, then you always have been. The fact that homebuilding is a lucrative venture is not new for other people. It’s not like you have invented a new rocket ship to the Moon or something like that. There’s some amount of execution that has to go on, and there’s some amount of really understanding your market and product market fit and understand your competition. Can you share a little bit about what that was like for you over the last couple of decades about how you’ve looked at the competitive landscape, how you’re able to come up with a product that was just better than other people’s? In a way that it was preferred.

David Weekley: When I first started out, I was up against a national homebuilder that had better buying power and more efficient. And so they were selling cheap. And we were and I figured out pretty quickly. I had to figure out how I was going to differentiate myself. And so I decided the design was going to be that first differentiated myself. So I went to California, got the latest designs, hired my own designer in house, Brad. Going outside so we could learn what our customers liked and didn’t like and continue on a path of being very, very customer focused on design. Then about the early 90s realized that we need to do more next. We were catching up on design. So then we gave our customers choice instead of design centers, and they could come in and pick out their own tile and various things. So we moved to choice. And then sure enough, most of the competition have copied our design centers, and I’m not a copy from somebody starting out, but we went pretty fast and big with it. And then so service became the key differentiator for us, and now we get about 40 percent of our sales from referrals. You know, we got 4.8 stars on a five star rating from our customers. And you know, you can’t get a steak meal where you get 4.5 stars. And this is a very, you know, complex purchase. Very emotional takes a long time. They get to see building it. And so getting people that really care for the customer and care for that customer experience has been a huge differentiator for us currently. And that’s not easy to do. You can’t just flip a switch and make that happen. That’s a culture in the company.

Henry Kaestner: OK, so I want to get to that because that’s the other differentiator. It goes beyond just design and selection. There’s a unique culture that you have, and I think I know part of the answer to this. I think that our audience knows part of the answer to this about your unique culture. Part of it is the fact that you have these 40 car owners with you that are strapped to the mass with you. But I think it’s also more than that to talk about your unique culture and how you built it.

David Weekley: Well, in my early forties, when I had that operation and kind of moved from being a cultural Christian to being more of a committed Christian, I really kind of made the decision to look at the other more than myself. Quite honestly, the first 20 years of the company history, it was all about me. After all, the company was named David Weekley home. That should be fairly self-evident. And so moving for me to the other is when we really started taking off and creating, we have

Henry Kaestner: it so that your name was on it, but your brother, at least one of your brothers, was involved.

David Weekley: Right? Well, he started out the little story on that would back the late 70s. When we started our first billboard, it was weekly homes. It wasn’t David Weekley homes and it was weekly homes from the 30s, not 130, not 230, but from the 30s. It was. It was a lot of home. Now remember a truck pulling up in front of one of our models full of furniture on the back and said where those homes to rent for $30 a week weekly homes from the 30s?

Henry Kaestner: Oh, that’s great. No, there’s an e there between the L in the world, right?

David Weekley: Right. But oh, so I talk to my brother. So we need a change, change the name of the cavities and what he want to do. I said, How about David weekly? Sounds good to me. So. Wow. So anyway,

Henry Kaestner: what was his name, Ebenezer or something that just didn’t work?

David Weekley: His name was dick weekly. It is. So anyway, one of the interesting challenge about that when I hit my thirties and I had young kids in school and you know your names on a billboard, I realized I was kind of put my kids in a situation where all the kids in school would assume their rich folks because our name was fairly well known around town, et cetera. So I looked at changing the name of the company that literally we did market studies, et cetera. And we already had enough of a reputation that it didn’t make sense. And then, you know, later as I got into my more philanthropy and being able to speak and talk to folks, et cetera, I realized that God kind of had a plan because he gave me a platform that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. You know, with a name that was known out there. And so, you know, I love the way I guess Rick Warren coined it, whichever stewardship of affluence our money. But we also have the stewardship of influence, you know, the folks we know, et cetera. So I recognize that having a company called Weekly Homes gave me a stewardship of influence that I need to work with

Henry Kaestner: and do steward that influence within the company. If I come on board and I’m a project manager and I’m one of the six. What am I going to experience a David weekly that are not likely to experience it of Pulte or somebody else like that?

David Weekley: Well, we bring everybody in here to the main office and we have a fabulous one on one. I get to meet them all and we talk and and they get inaugurated, so to speak. The main thing is we hire people that really care, right? So it starts off if you don’t get people with similar values. It doesn’t work. So we get people with summer values. We incorporate them well. We do multiple interviews before they come. We even interview their spouse.

Henry Kaestner: OK, I was going to ask you, is there something unique that you do in doing that early? And I’ll tell you that that’s one. So I’m glad you said that. That’s one of the secrets to our success at bandWith was interviewing spouses.

David Weekley: Right, right. And it’s it shows that we care about them and puts everything on a different playing field right now. And then, you know, you take care of people, you know, eight percent managing for one K, there’s profit sharing every quarter. We have weekly TV personal encounters where the manager and the team member, you know, we’re fortunate we’ve been on Fortune’s Unabridged Place to work like 14 times. And for a homebuilder, that’s not Google, you know, we’re out there building houses, it’s it’s hot and and, you know, in tough work and, you know, we don’t buy everybody lunch and we have a gym for them, you know? But it’s how we treat them and how they work well together.

Henry Kaestner: Tell me more about the personal encounters part.

David Weekley: Well, most people want to know how they’re doing and having their manager spend time with them each week for half an hour personal encounter and making it the team members time to feedback to the manager what their needs are and how they’re doing and what’s going on in their life and how they’re going with the kids. Or it’s a half an hour personal encounter every week with each team member. And it’s really their time with their manager. It also quite honestly cuts down on all the day to day interaction, having to go back and forth because they know they have this set half an hour.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, yeah, that’s very interesting. OK. So personally, Karen, something I didn’t know about are just shocked at the frequency of it. But what you just saw obviously suggested there is that actually, it sounds like it’s inefficient, but actually is remarkably efficient because it changes the dynamic of the other thirty nine and a half for forty nine and a half hours.

David Weekley: Right, right. It saves time. It doesn’t take time.

Henry Kaestner: OK, I want to go back to Dave quickly. Homes, you’ve won lots and lots of awards and accolades over the years. Are there any that really stand out more than others? That’s a leading question, because you’ve been invited to build for a company that I think we can all really admire. You may have a different answer to it, but if you don’t answer it the way I want you to answer it, I’m going to bring you back there, OK?

David Weekley: Telling me that you want to hear about the invitation to build it was Disney. Yeah, and we went in there celebration project in Florida. And I’ll never forget sitting in my office and getting a call from somebody at Disney. And you know, this is Dave and I’m with Disney in this. I don’t want any tickets or anything. So no, no, no. Wait, wait, wait. You know, the setting, the sales call. And he said, We’ve been looking at you for two years. We’ve interviewed your customers in Dallas and in Austin, and we’ve seen your designs. We’ve had this week that we ran that because they research stuff to death and we’d like you to come with us in Orlando and said, Well, we don’t build in Florida said we know that. And but we want you to come bill for us in Orlando. So anyway, we got together with him. I went there a couple of years early before the project was opened, so we could learn how to build in Florida, went to Disney, you, you know, university. And anyway, it was a great experience for us. They obviously know customers focus very well, building that community where we were the only builder to start out and finished up. Everybody else blew out over time because the customer expectations at Disney are through the roof, as you can imagine. And they were paying quite a premium for their home, on their side, not on our side. But it was a great experience and really we were building. It’s called T and traditional neighborhood design, very higher density smaller houses, but front porches really creating a sense of community. And that has really worked for us strongly for the last 20 25 years, for probably the largest candy builder in the country and a lot of flippers come to us because of that experience.

Henry Kaestner: So there are clearly things you picked out from that engagement that you then brought back into the business for sure. OK. David, the way that we first got together was actually not around entrepreneurship, not around business. So much, although I heard a little bit about your story and I think it probably showed a little bit about mine, but it was around the concept of giving. And how does one give? Well, when I remember being on the Board of Hope International about 10 years ago and you had been a very significant underwriter that I came to understand that there’s this guy is really thoughtful about giving in. So you spent a good amount of time with me. I don’t know if you remember the first time was at a gathering and maybe an hour on kind of like a veranda. And I want you to be able to see if we in our time that we’ve got left. If you can share some of the lessons that you’ve learned in philanthropy and in giving, you talked about the fact that you’ve done some things well. There are some things you still are learning as you get to that 10000 hours of giving. Can you share some of those with people, our demographic, we tend to have our average entrepreneurs, probably in their 40s. Many of them are coming into a place now where they’re having some financial success and they want to be generous. And their heart is oftentimes really influenced by a lot of stories. And yet they’re businesspeople they want to give, Well, what would you share with them?

David Weekley: I would share to you, no one go where they’re passionate and where they’re called. But number two, not to set aside their business acumen and learnings when they give. So often times, especially if you come from a place of faith, you kind of it’s like you do business with your head and you give with your heart. And to me, you ought to combine those just like, you know, hopefully we’re living out our faith during the week and work. I think we’re supposed to give with the same business acumen that we use in earning money. Just amaze me that people spend 40 hours of 50 hours a week, whatever earning sums, and then they’ll give at the drop of a hat without any investigation, understanding, etc. And since from my standpoint, it all kind of belongs to God anyway. You know, I have no idea why he put me in this place and decided to give me a company that’s grown like it is, et cetera. It’s just been a true blessing, and it really belongs to him. Why shouldn’t I give his money away as carefully as any other investment I make? And so to me, it’s just it’s a little bit of a mess to not take it that seriously.

Henry Kaestner: Can you give us some examples of maybe some given that you did early on? Were you learned some of these lessons or was it just always just baked into the way that you thought? Were you just like, you know, from the get go? I’m just not going to give to something that doesn’t satisfy both my heart and my head.

David Weekley: No, usually, you know, said people give to people. Right. And so, you know, somebody in they’re doing good work and they come up and they talk to you about something. And I did a lot of that giving starting out. And then over time, the more time I spent, I saw some of those funds were not being effectively used were being wasted. You know, the outcomes weren’t there that were hoped for or promised. And I just realized that if I was really going to take my giving seriously that I had to again, I had to pay attention and I gave the time as well. Most people don’t have the time or don’t make the time for me as an entrepreneur. Once I got up to a certain size, I realized, you know, I was working 70 hours a week flying all over the country, and I realized that I was getting out of my skis. I was losing control. I wasn’t good at managing four cities and 300 million. I mean, it was getting beyond me. And so when I committed to give half my time, it meant I had to go find somebody to run the place. And that worked out, obviously, to my benefit in both ways. It freed up the time to be serious about philanthropy, and it also helped the company by getting somebody that had skills that I didn’t have.

Henry Kaestner: You also did something on your company structure, right? You landed on kind of a unique ownership structure that allows the company to operate in perpetuity. Can you just share a little bit about that?

David Weekley: Yeah. As you get older and you have this company, especially if it’s a large company, you got to figure out what you’re going to do with it. Am I going to sell out or go public or what’s the endgame here? And I did lots of research, talked to lots of families, looked at all kinds of different opportunities, and I didn’t want to lose what we created as a team here in terms of the culture doing a great job for customers, et cetera. So I wanted to continue specifically as a private company. So I said, OK, how are we going to do that? How are we going to get alignment, et cetera? And I decided to do a third of it since I’d had luck with ownership being in other people’s hands. I said a third of it’s going to be owned by the employees, by the team members. And so I’ve got 18 percent of it in individual managers hands owning stock individually and then we got a 15 percent ESOP that we put on top of that. And then I wanted the charitable aspect that I’ve been doing with my own funds as the primary stockholder to continue. So I put a third of the stock into a charitable trust. And then the final third is going to be owned by the founding families to keep it like a family business into the future, that doesn’t mean everybody’s going to work here, et cetera. And whether my kids or anybody’s kids have the skills to earn three billion dollar company, that’s a pretty significant skill set. But you can be great owners and you can be in different positions if that’s their choice. But I just like the concept of a third, a third, a third, all with the line values, a third for the team members, a third for charitable interest and a third for the founding families. All of them have aligned interest in trying to do the right things for the right reasons and move on down the road and hopefully be here 100 years from now.

Henry Kaestner: OK, so you hit on a topic. I want to get back in a second back to giving and lessons learned what you’re getting as you spend ten thousand plus hours and giving. But when you talk about your family and you talk about your kids, I know you’ve got three. I know Robin the best Robin. I’ve known Robin for these 10 years because I know she helped us put together a trip to Nicaragua back before there are any traffic lights in Managua. You also come from a family of three boys. And I have three boys, so I’m a father of three boys. I’d love to get any reflections that you have of family dynamics, being a good brother, being a good father and seeing faith be a part of the family dynamic. Most of the people assume that are going to be parents. You’ve been thoughtful about this. Can you share something with us about family dynamics?

David Weekley: Well, the family dynamics started seeing my father put an envelope in the plate every week, right? He’d reach into his coat. The plate would come by. He’d put it in. And so right, I think things were mostly caught, not taught. And so my father was a generous man and that helped set me up that this is what we do. This is how we operate. There’s a father growing up. It was a challenge because I said my name was on billboards all over town, so my kids were labeled rich kids right in work. And so how do you handle that? So my kids earn half the money for their car. You know, we sit down with Amigos de las Americas. They went down to Central America and live for eight weeks in a village on the floor when they were in high school and did mission work. So I mean, they’ve seen that our life is not the usual life. And I think that that builds a responsibility for you. I mean, for me personally, I’ve just always come from a place of deep gratitude for my parents, where I am in America, et cetera. And out of that gratitude, I get a deep sense responsibility of what am I to do? You know, too much is given, et cetera. And then when I act out on that responsibility through philanthropy and working with people in other ways or in the company, I just get a deep sense of joy, not just happiness, but deep, deep joy feeling like I’m in God’s flow, feeling like I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing.

Henry Kaestner: So I think that you touched on something there that it’s taken me a while to really kind of embrace, which is this kind of selfish ambition, which is this personal joy that you feel as you give is what we are trying to always get when we are selfishly had selfish ambition before, but kind of wrestle with it. So I always had a selfish ambition and a selfishness that’s been a kind of the core of my life and influence all that I’ve done. But you’re getting on something there that’s really important, which is that that you actually have an opportunity to lean into that. Yes, you probably can give examples where you sacrifice and you take up your cross. And yet at the same time, this guy’s invited to life that is truly life and that you can have this selfish ambition of looking for joy. And there’s a recipe for it. And you found that in giving you found this joy and as cool as a BMW seven Series is and it’s more fun to drive than a Prius, you get presumably more joy from some of the giving you’re doing, regardless of what car you have. Or am I just putting words in your mouth, right?

David Weekley: No. And yeah, I’ve got a pickup truck now, so I’m sorry. It’s just I had the great good fortune to have had a lot early and had it taken away in the downturn and recognized that that’s not what life was all about. So my generosity came out of that understanding.

Henry Kaestner: OK. Share with us other things that you’re learning about giving and maybe way that maybe start off with this is just how do you all give? And for those that don’t know your daughter, Robin is running the foundation and you’re giving away more and more and more money. But what’s a way aside from the amount? But what’s a way in which you give differently than maybe did 10 years ago?

David Weekley: Well, like most entrepreneurs, I love deals in models. And so I used to give to whomever had the best model for something, whether it be, you know, five for finance or savings groups or community health workers or whoever had the coolest models that I thought, This is neat. Let me go, give to it. And what I’ve found out is that even more important than the model is giving you great leadership. It might seem self-evident, but I got caught up in the deal earlier. But, you know, if you got great leadership, they’ll adjust the model and get it to the best place. But if you don’t have good leadership, the best model will fail. So the key thing is that we really, really give to extraordinary leadership. So that’s that’s one thing.

Henry Kaestner: Before you go that, I’m going to come back and remind you that there’s a second thing, but that’s really, really important. That’s really hard to do. What are some different ways where you interact with a person and are able to determine whether they’re a great leader or not?

David Weekley: Well, have they established a vision that is big and broad and is a dean supported with a strategic plan that can get them there? And do they have people around them that can help get them there as well? So oftentimes will work with or meet the second layer of folks and not just to face the organization, but people really doing the work. And then you can really see what the organization is like and what they’re doing. And obviously always trying to focus on the outcomes of what’s happening. So, you know, it can be great people in lots of flash and a great deck and a great plan. But if the outcomes aren’t there, nothing else matters. And so again, I feel like I’m investing God’s resources and I want to have flourishing humans out there as a result of my investments.

Henry Kaestner: So you hit on something there that somebody that you and I both know. Kirk Kyle Hacker is the board chair. Praxis has impressed upon me and he said, You know, they’re really only three things for a leader to do is that you’re responsible for the vision you need to resource the enterprise and you need to get the right people on the bus. And it’s that emphasis on that third one that I think a lot of us miss. And that’s why I think that just in the same way that you interview spouses of employees, they’re coming on board the organization. Interviewing the next level of leadership helps you to really understand, Is this a great leader or are people really following the leader or not? And I think that’s really important. OK, so thank you. So the first one is leadership.

David Weekley: The second one, this really has three items. I look for an organization that uses leverage where my dollar will create $5 or $10 worth of impact. You know, I’m a real estate guy. I love leverage. So one authorization that has great leverage. I want to organization that can scale like geometrically, not arithmetically, but can really scale. So I want to fund organizations that can blow things up, right? That that can really impact the world. And then thirdly, I want to fund an organization, has some type of sustainability plan for the long term. Do they do anything where they can create their own income? Do they have a plan to get government funding, you know, or bilateral funding? Because if it’s an organization and the only way that they can grow is to go get more donors, and they will always be limited by how much that they can raise. So I want to get involved in things that can have high leverage, can scale and have some way to reach sustainability over time.

Henry Kaestner: Can you give us some examples of the leverage in the scale where you go ahead? And you know, if I write a check for a dollar, it’s going to lead to four or five in any samples of ministries. Charities doing that well, they come to mind.

David Weekley: Well, the one you mentioned, Hope International does it well because, you know they lend money, make interest on the money so they can fund part of their operations. Another one that I’m very involved with is Christian Camping. And so if we go and help and build a Christian camp, so if a Christian camp from go broke, add more cabins and you know, more dining halls, et cetera. Once that investments made, assuming you have a big assumption, great leadership and great board governance that can break even and provide returns and continue to impact kids for Christ forever. And so you plant the seed and it grows.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. So there’s this sustainability in there that you build out some infrastructure now parents feel better about spending twelve hundred dollars on the right.

David Weekley: And so things like that to me have a lot of impact for the dollar invested a lot of leverage.

Henry Kaestner: David, is we come to a close. I’m going to ask you the question that we ask every one of our guests. And that is that is there is something that God is teaching you through your time in scripture, your time in the Bible. It doesn’t need to be necessarily. This morning could be last week, but what are you hearing?

David Weekley: You know, something that is kind of guided me through my Christian journey as I try to think about what should I do this or should I go left? Should I go right? Should I go to more full time ministry or something else is I’ve always appreciated the version. First Corinthians 07:24 brothers and sisters. Each person as responsible to God shall remain in the situation God has called him to. And so to me, we’re in these life situations. And rather than presuming that to be a Christian brother or show my love of God or whatever, I’ve got to go, change my situation, take the situation to God’s, place me and figure out how I can take that to the next level and in a more Christian way, in a more loving way, in a more outreach way. How can I take where I’ve been placed and really plus it in a significant way through my faith and outreach, et cetera?

Henry Kaestner: It’s a great word. That’s a great word. So as we’re entrepreneurs, you’ve probably if you found this podcast, you probably know enough to know that God absolutely uses you in your business. And that being entrepreneur is by no means a second class citizen where we’re just doing this just so we can make money to do something else. Or gosh, if we’re really following God, we’d be in full time ministry in Botswana or something like that. But to stay where we are and look to honor God there. And of course, as you’ve heard from David today, you can make an impact on a lot of people’s lives where they live, as in the case, David. But each of us has an opportunity to be able to impact culture, and one of the things that I’ll take away from this is just the greatest investment that you can make, and culture is bringing the right people and giving them some skin in the game. But when you bring the right people in, getting to know them more than another important might and what a great way to be able to live on somebody. And when you’re having this every week where you’re following up with so many of this personal reflection moment to actually know who their spouses. So when I’m talking about going on a vacation or they’re talking about something that they’re wrestling with with their spouse in terms of where they give it, their time or their money, or what they do, or how they can support their spouse, you actually know them. And so that’s a big takeaway of mine for many. David, thank you for your time. Thank you for your friendship and partnership. And again, one encouragement that you are to me and all of us.

David Weekley: Thank you.

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Today’s episode takes us all the way to South Africa, and we couldn’t be more excited about it. And the question we’re going to start by asking is this: How can a garbage-collection company in South Africa undo the legacy of Apartheid? 

Bertie Lourens, CEO of WastePlan is here to share how their company is working to divert the vast majority of customers’ waste-stream from landfills and converting it into valuable, recyclable resources. They do this by employing hundreds of local workers, caring for their families, and investing in local schools to educate the next generation of South African leaders. 

And, as Bertie shares today, stewarding God’s creation has now grown into giving God a majority ownership stake in the company. Listen in to find out how…

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.

Bertie Lourens: I think God went after the very thing that could become a mammon stronghold in my life, that very thing that I believe I’m building, something of massive equity value. He said he wants that. And it was very difficult, but at the same time, I knew this thing is actually really worth minus something to deal with. I said, OK, God, I’ll give you shares.

——

Darryl Heald: Hey, William. Doing well. Excited to be here today, especially to hear from our friend in South Africa.

William Norvell: I know. It’s amazing. It’s amazing to have you and Bertie and Darryl have known each other for a while. So it’s going to be fun to tease out the story. I know our audience is going to hear something that they probably haven’t heard before, and we hope the spirit can use BAM story and what got him and his faithfulness to encourage and inspire other faith driven entrepreneurs as we’re listening. So, Bertie, welcome to the show.

Bertie Lourens: Hello, William. Thank you for inviting me.

William Norvell: We’re happy to have you. And, you know, as we get started, one of the things we just always love to do is just to hear a little about you, who you are, where you came from, where you grew up, how you ended up becoming a Faith Driven Entrepreneur and you know, how you ended up sitting in that chair today with us telling the story.

Bertie Lourens: Thank you, William Norvell. First of all, I’m a son of God, God Almighty, the creator of the universe and everything in it. And I’m married to a beautiful, gentle Canadian lady. And she calls South Africa home for 15 years already and Foljambe grandkids. But I was really born and raised in a small mining town in the south east of Johannesburg in the 70s. I grew up in the 70s and 80s and that was during apartheid South Africa. It was a very difficult time for South Africa. And everything that we are facing today is the legacy of apartheid. And a lot of things that we do today is still trying to fix all the wrongs of the past. So I grew up as a young teenager seeing all these wrongs, and I just thought it might be wise just to give a little bit of context about apartheid and what the past is and was. But it was really a governing system that denied all nonwhite people any decent education, no voting rights and no rights for any managerial jobs. So you can understand what that means over a period of 40, 50 years of a father that needs to work in the best job we can get, as in a mine, as a general worker or in a factory or a construction company and a father teaching his son, this is the best that you can ever be. Just try and be the best general worker that you could ever be. And hopefully you could become the supervisor of general workers. And if you just keep perpetuating that over decades, a whole lot of anger happens, a whole lot of hurt and a narrative of blaming. So that’s that’s the South Africa that I grew up in. And I saw how apartheid came to an end. I saw how a new era was born for South Africa, and so how Nelson Mandela was released from prison and how he was elected as the first democratically elected president. And I started seeing how the entire country started rallying together to try and correct the wrongs of the past. And it’s been two decades and we still doing that. But it almost feels like we fail every decade. Our failures are bigger than the decade before. So that’s the context where I grew up. And personally, I was a very insecure teenager when I grew up because my father never told me that I had what it’s like. You never told me that he loved me. So I always grew up never knowing what that real lack was that I had inside of me. But I always knew that I just do not feel complete. Of course, I ran to alcohol and women and I was also a very good salesman when I was in school. And I very quickly learned that I could make money. And that’s when I realized how hold on, money will maybe fill that gap and it will make me popular among my teenage friends, which I did, of course. But luckily I got saved very early in my twenties. It’s just off to the one relational failure of the next. I realized that I just do not have what it takes to keep a life together and a surrender to Jesus at the age of twenty three in the late 90s. And it was wonderful. It almost felt like it was the beginning of a healing journey for me. Shortly after that I found a mentor that saw something in me and decided to help me to build the business because I knew I wanted to be a businessman because I could sell stuff and I thought if I can sell something, I can build a business. I started a business in 2004 and I am still running that same business.

William Norvell: Well, that’s amazing. Thank you for walking us through that. I’m going to ask if you would would you maybe spend. A few more minutes for our listeners. I mean, I hear that I’ve you know, I’ve read a little bit about apartheid maybe, but maybe it’s been a few more minutes on what it was like growing up. Like what did you sense in the air? What did you sense was was there and sort of from your perspective, because we have a listening audience as a white man. Right. What did it feel like at school? I don’t know. I don’t even know the right question to ask. But I’m just really curious for I just always learn, obviously, from people in different worldviews. And they grew up in different scenarios than me. And I just want to give you kind of an open mic for a couple more minutes to say just kind of what were some of those experiences like for you?

Bertie Lourens: William, you know, when you’ve become a teenager, when you hit your 10, 11, 12, 13 age, you start asking questions, you know, just things around you, you know, just that there are no black kids in your school. You notice the kids that you play sports against are all white. You’d notice that when you drive out of your town, you drive into a we call them townships, but it’s really chanty towns. And you just see black people there and you see that the people who work in the white people gardens are black people. And you don’t see black people driving cause they’re driving bicycles and their clothes don’t look decent. She’s noticed all these things and then you start asking you questions, you ask your parents these questions. But why you see beggars at the traffic lights are only like people and not white people. And you ask them, but why are beggars only black people? And then they answer you. But you can see it’s almost a governmental brainwashed answer that does not make sense for a 12 or 13 year old. And that’s when you start realizing. But hold on. Yes. Something wrong with the entire system. And you listen to adults, the way they talk around the barbecue, around the Sociales about them and us, and you ask yourself, but we are all one, we’re all one country wiser, them innocent. You know, you ask these questions and you get answers that just do not make sense. And to take it one step further. For most of these answers, there was a biblical scripture to, quote, to justify the system of apartheid and. You see black people doing the hard labor, almost like the Hebrew slaves, that both the infrastructure of Egypt, I saw how the black people, the majority of South Africa was like people were building the infrastructure for the minority. And something inside of me just said that is wrong. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s not sustainable. And then you start watching news, you start understanding what you hear on the news. You start hearing the conversations in the kitchen and around the dinner table with your parents, really as the tension started building up of the masses of South Africa, just saying enough is enough. We want voting rights. And you start hearing those conversations, the family conversations, the fear. And it’s a fear is a massive bloodbath, revolution coming. And we just do not have answers anymore. And I saw all of that and the fear also gripped me. But then I saw the miracle of a peaceful negotiation between Nelson Mandela and the ruling president, F.W. de Klerk, back then, and all of a sudden, very quickly, the tension released and there was an election. All the black people were granted voting rights and the ANC, which is the party that represented them, won, and there was joy and there was fear all at the same time, the wealthy whites that were able to flee, fled, packed up all the goods, and they fled everywhere else in the world because they believe that all the white people in South Africa were going to be murdered, that they believe in communities rejoiced and they sang Hallelujah. And you started hearing these messages of the fearful and the jubilant all more or less in the same space. And something inside of me said, that’s a miracle. What happened here. And it really was looking back now, it was a miracle, and very shortly after that, in the 90s, we just had a great leader and Nelson Mandela, who was very verbal in his communication. He understood the fear of the white communities. And he spoke to us on public television, where he made very, very bold statements of how you will protect us. And he made very bold statements to the angry majority black community in South Africa, saying we need our brothers, our brothers in our country to help us rebuild this country. And you just hear that propaganda coming from him and eventually you start believing this is going to turn out to be something beautiful. And that’s why we named it the Rainbow Nation, because we really believed something beautiful that was going to come out of it. And we still hold on to those hopes in those dreams because it’s still beautiful, but it just sometimes feels like it’s taking too long. But our timing is never the same as God’s timing.

William Norvell: Man, thank you so much for it. Such a beautiful job of taking us into some of those moments. And I just thank you for walking through that for our audience. And I’m interested in how did all of those experiences impact you as an entrepreneur, as someone who was studying what God wanted you to do? Right. And what was your part of that story that was being written in South Africa? Where did God find you and push you to an entrepreneurial journey?

Bertie Lourens: So I knew that I wanted to be a businessman for selfish reasons. I wanted to get rich. And that’s the end of that story. So I pursued that dream of becoming rich and I could see how this new South Africa attracted so much foreign investment. This was truly the hope for the continent. And we achieved amazing GDP growth. And I just realized I am in this ecosystem that is filled with growth and I have the skills to sell and I want to be a businessman. But as I went on doing this, I noticed that the people that we employ in business are poor and they are, many of them general workers that work for a very, very low salary. And that started bothering me. Now, the salary we pay is equal to what competitors in the market pay for those laborers. And when we pitch for contracts with clients, a big chunk of our service costs is labor costs. So if we overpay, then we are not competitive and we can grow. So we were forced to pay the same salary, but we realized we can do much more. So it’s just an awareness. It grew over time that while we employ poor people, we have the power of influence over them more than what political leaders have and more than what the church could ever have. Well, they work in our business. We found out that the one that receives a salary submits quite easily to the one who pays the salary. So the one who pays the salary has tremendous influence. And we I thought, let us use that and help people learn how to better themselves so that they can build a better future for themselves. And all of that comes down to education the way you think, because if you could educate yourself, you can acquire more skills or a higher skill, you can bring it to your workplace, you can get more responsibilities and then the higher salary. I’ve personally worked with some of the guys in the early years, and I’ve seen once they get that, it’s almost as if you’ve put them on a perpetual path out of poverty because he’s connected the dots. You said, I see how this thing works. It’s not a secret any longer. Bring more value, take more responsibilities and more money and then repeat. And that made me excited that we have this influence that we can help people out of poverty.

William Norvell: Amen, amen. Yeah, you’re sharing a gospel. You know, you share in the good news with people that you’re holding this good news that they don’t know about yet and educating them. What a beautiful reflection of the gospel where God placed you and where he put you. And and what are the unique things I’ve heard you talk about before that I’d love to have you share with our audiences? You know, you set out to build a business also where God would be a shareholder. And could you tell us a little about what that looks like to you, what that felt like to you as you dug into that and prayed about that? What does it look like to make God a shareholder of Voice Plan?

Bertie Lourens: Will needs to understand how that started. First of all, if you have a really good mentor and he is building a really successful business, all you need to do is just listen to him and do what he tells you. And that’s what I did because I didn’t know much. And what happens is if you enjoy enough success upon success and if you do not have people around you that are willing to hold up a mirror to you so you can see who you become and you will become proud. And I became very proud because I enjoyed tremendous success quite quickly and in the first years of the business. And I had to define later on to myself what is pride and pride to me is the conversation with self that says that I am better then and you can fill in the gap there with any name. I’m better then. And very quickly after that, pride leads to strife or strife and striving says that I would like to be better than so-and-so. So it’s a situation of measuring and seeing that you’re better than some, but then coveting the success of others. And that just put you on the spiral of destruction, which I didn’t see. I didn’t see it coming, but God did. And and luckily he rescued me there again shortly after the business, about seven years in, we started losing a tremendous amount of money, buckets full of money. And it came as a shock because I his Blue-Eyed Boy, I’m so successful. What happens? Why all of a sudden all these losses, whatever I worked so hard for over seven years, could be gone in a moment. And I found myself in my garage a year later on my knees, crying out to God to have mercy on me and rescue me from the situation and repenting of my pride and my arrogance and my striving and building it in my own strength. And he did. He came and he rescued me. William, it was very shortly after that the situation turned. It was miraculous and it turned. So you could imagine early the next year, I was still very raw and I was covered in the fear of God and just asking him, how do you want me to build this thing out now? I do not ever want to make the same mistakes again. And I felt God say to me, he wants me to give away, well, what did I have? I had detonated an insolvent company and I asked him if he wants that. But I heard God say the word equity to me. And that’s a very interesting word. Now, the founder of a business always believes that the equity value is hundreds of billions. The balance sheet could showed deep zeros that the founder always believes it’s worth more. And I think God went after the very thing that could become a Maymont stronghold in my life, that very thing that I believe I’m building, something of massive equity value. He said he wants that. And it was very difficult, but at the same time, I knew this thing is actually really worth minus something to deal with. I said, OK, God, I’ll give you shares that you’re going to show me how. And I asked him if he does if you about by 30 percent. And he remained quiet and then I gave him 30. And that’s where we are. So from three very shortly after that, we grew to fifty one because I immediately so I started understanding the benefits of inviting God Almighty, the creator of everything, to have him as a shareholder in your business. The value proposition is just so big at first you don’t know it. But once I did it, I started realizing what I did and I realized, but hold on, let’s let’s give him a controlling stake and then I can sit back and watch this thing grow. And that’s where we are today.

William Norvell: And hey, man, I love parts of that story that, of course, because we have a God that runs after us harder than we can imagine that he rescued you. But hearing a practical it just gets me every time when you hear of God coming to the rescue and the audience knows I cry a decent amount. So, you know, I may cry again now, but it’s just a beautiful story of you submitting. And, you know, and it’s not a prosperity gospel. It’s a reality of the scripture. Right. That like, when we do turn to the Lord and when we do repent and we do give it back to him like he’s here and he’s there for everyone listening and not everyone’s in that spot. People have already done it. But, man, if you are run to him, be with him. It’s an amazing story. And, you know, and I would imagine the the way God wants to run in their business or be a shareholder may look different, but to submit that to him is the point. Right.

Bertie Lourens: William, I think, is going after the one thing that he knows will drive the biggest wedge between you and him sometime in the future. And he’s going to go after that thing. And all he’s really asking is just to surrender, to surrender, whatever it is, just surrender. I’ve got this. I know your future better than you will ever know. Just let me do this with you and it will be so worth it. It’s always asking,

William Norvell: hey, man, I’m going to turn you over to Daryl after one more question here. I realized, of course, we got so excited about the wisdom you have here. I forgot to ask you. Could you tell our audience a little bit of what a waste plan is, how many employees you have, what you guys do in South Africa? I think the name tells a little bit. I think people are already on the edge of their seat knowing a little bit. But could you tell us a little bit more just about the business and who you try to serve and how you try to care for God’s world through the business?

Bertie Lourens: Yes, absolutely. So most companies have ways as part of the production or service offering, and we found that that’s normally an afterthought and it’s a liability. It’s an ever increasing cost that somebody somewhere has to manage. But there’s no specialist or an expert or dedicated person to do that. So we offer a service companies, food companies, factories, hospitals, hotels, shopping centers. We will bring our personnel onto your site. We will segregate your waste. We will divert as much away from landfill as possible, and as we divert the waste away from the landfill, we turn it from a liability into an asset and we have enough data to show it’s an appreciating asset. So we take waste with segregated at the source in separate streams. We sell those streams. The value of those streams we sell increase in value year on year. We return the biggest part of that value back to the client. But what happens in the process is that person that did that sorting and the handling of the waste, he realizes. But I was part of turning a wasteful item that’s a liability into an asset. And in that process, we generated new revenue. I earned a salary. And with that comes dignity because I was part of turning value out of something with no value. And that’s the beautiful part of what’s happening here. We have about a thousand employees scattered over 10 cities and we have about six hundred and thirty clients that we service and waste gets segregated from all the sites moves into big processing centers, which we call recycling centers. Where we do final sorting, we compress them and we sell them to the highest bidder. So we always try to put

Darryl Heald: a lot of that waste trader in a variety of ways. Just love hearing the story. And, you know, my love for South Africa, I mean, it just we’ve had lots of great adventure. This a lot of fun to be have a chance to tell more people just how God’s moving in your life and your business in the country, things like that. So I want to take us back when we first met. I think our audience has already heard there is a deep thinker and I just remember where we have a mutual friend. He invited you and Leslie to this journey, generosity. Why don’t we just start there? What did you think about that? And just the process that happened yesterday?

Bertie Lourens: It was mind boggling to process all the information that was presented over that week. And now I saw how very, very poor people gave everything in those videos. I mean, those discussions. And I saw how excessively wealthy people did the same. But what struck me was that the richest and the poorest were equally happy. Joy, Joy, that is deeper than what a dictionary can define for you. And I think that’s what hooked me, that I was chasing really after satisfaction all my life. And you think that wealth will give it and then you’ll meet people and they’ll tell you, no, it doesn’t. But that we can realize. Hold on. I think I got the secret. Yes. This is the thing that I’ve been chasing after all my life. This deep satisfaction and joy comes only from a place of true generosity. And I was just trying to piece that together. What would that look like for me when I leave this weekend? And I wanted to just take in as much as I possibly can while I’m there so that I have as much to work with when I go back home on the Monday.

Darryl Heald: Thanks for sharing that. I know there’s a hope and desire that all of us as entrepreneurs and investors, that we understand that value proposition that is more blessed to give and receive and that we can truly live in that point of joy. So a couple of things, though, that I just when I think about Botein, I just I love how you are walking out this jury. One of them is when we were driving home from the office to your house for a dinner one night and up ahead of us, there are some guys at the light who were begging for money and things like that. So take the story from there. I thought that was just I forget the date of its day, but tell our audience just what you do. I mean, this is just like everyday generosity. I just love this piece.

Bertie Lourens: Is there so the South Africa that I just told you about, I just want to give you a little bit more context. The unemployment level now sits at thirty eight percent unemployment. The amount of school dropouts is ridiculous. Something like forty eight percent of people at starting grade one get to grade 12. So you could imagine the amount of people on the streets that do not have jobs. His name is Bennett, is a baker, is bent over. He was hit by a car. A drug is back and he’s never been able to get surgery. So he’s bent over almost 90 degrees. And he’s just let the traffic light on my way home. And he’s got the brightest of smiles. So it’s easy to be generous to him. But surprisingly, most people are not. After the Jörg weekend, one of the first discussions that I think you see every time is, well, is it right to give to a beggar? It’s just going to buy alcohol. And I remember that weekend someone say that I don’t know who it was. So that person said, but it’s his job to give account for the money he received. It’s not your job to give account on his behalf. You just gave your job is to give account for the money God gave you. And the way you live with that, so I just decided my wife and I, we decided we are going to give to every beggar we went ERG we started changing money to have as much money as possible. We quickly ran out of money. So that plan didn’t work well. We then became a lot of Budweiser and we broke it up into smaller denominations of money and so that you can give less but give to more people. And then it is just one of the beneficiaries of that decision. And they love seeing my car. And if he hasn’t seen my car for a while, especially now during covid, if I drive past it on my way to the office and he sees me, he will stop all the traffic just to get to me because he knows he’s going to get something.

Darryl Heald: Well, I just love the relationship you have. I mean, it was obviously that was I mean, that’s happened dozens and dozens of times. You’ve talked about education and the importance of education. Let’s talk about what you and lesslie is from a kingdom investing side. We think about this giving. What are your particular passion about? What are you excited about giving to right now?

Bertie Lourens: There are it’s really the education the education states and South Africa are alarming. It is a bomb that will explode if nothing happens. There’s another state. About four percent of kids that start in grade one will pass. Math increased above four percent. So you have ninety six percent of your population that cannot count. So the quality of jobs and the amount of jobs that they’ll get is few. And so the amount of unemployed people, the volume of people that are unemployed is growing year on year. And it just doesn’t make sense that one should live in this country and think that that’s OK. So we put as much effort into educating people and just basic skills. So first of all, a capital is the foundation that reform really is the structure we formed where we could have got as a legal shareholder in our company. And the Nyko Capital uses all of its funds and it throws it into schooling. So there’s a few schools up here in Pretoria and Johannesburg, Christian schools. So we try and throw all our skills in there, all the networks, all our relationships, and as far as possible that we could use our resources and our assets. And money is just a very small part of that. The lady that works in our kitchen, who cleans our house, looks after the kids when we are not there to try and do as much as we can for her and her kids in terms of housing, schooling, the gospel, help them understand the gospel of the gospel and preach the gospel in the communities. The guy works in our garden and we just felt that that is practical in South Africa. If one just starts there, you’ll stay busy for the rest of your life just there. You do not have to go after big things, just those immediate lives around you influence them and help them educate themselves.

Darryl Heald: Yeah. Thank you for sharing. Some of that is a real joy for me to see some of those schools with you on that last trip. I mean, how many students do you have in these schools now?

Bertie Lourens: They’re all there’s about a thousand students, I think in all the schools where we’re involved. I’m particularly drawn to one school with its two hundred kids. It’s in the middle of Mamelodi township. It is a Christian private school. It’s private because there’s no other support coming from the government. So it’s really donations. And some of the parents are paying fees to keep the kids in there. But it’s beautiful what’s happening there. It’s kids that have all the odds stacked up against themselves. If they did not go to the school, they would go to one of our failing government schools that are producing the results I’ve just mentioned. So here we are creating an environment for them where they have great education, great principal with a great teaching group that we teach the gospel, we model the gospel, we show the gospel, we model grace. We model generosity. And we try and show them what good fatherhood looks like because that’s the one big lacking thing in the poor communities. There are no fathers there. So the way I see it is zero two hundred kids that will become two hundred families one day and 200 families. We’ll have a chance at success in South Africa because of the school and that on its own is so rewarding because you look in the eyes of these kids and you interview them and you hear what they say and you hear kids say, I need to live generous with my fellow students. That comes from a kid that has nothing. And that’s beautiful because that kid gets it and that kid is going to enjoy success and joy because they get that concept of generosity.

Darryl Heald: That’s great. Thanks for sharing that, Betty. You also have a real passion for leadership so that you’re studied this for your own self as a leader, your company and your community and your family things. Tell us a little bit more about these. What’s driving you to do these interviews with other leaders there in South Africa?

Bertie Lourens: Daryl, I just started with interviewing my mentor when he was getting old, and I needed to have some video footage of what he’s taught me over the years. So I asked him and questions some of the questions are ones I’ve never had time to ask him. And some of the questions that I asked that deeply impacted me. So I asked him that. I took a video of it. We broke it into 10 little snippets, videos, and the purpose was really just to release it into our organization. But the value was so much that we thought, let’s literally just start a YouTube channel called Stories that Inspire. We posted on there and then for anyone to enjoy. And I thought, that is wonderful. And I asked God if he wants me to continue with that and felt free to go find another leader like him. And my deal with God was if he had to keep sending me people that are willing to be interviewed by me, I will continue to do so. And we are on series six, I think, right now. And I am just enjoying hearing from these people because everyone who has achieved the level of success are always keen to share it. They’re not stingy. Everyone who has had success wants to share it. So that’s what I do. Like I ask them and I try and package it in snippets that other people can enjoy and use and benefit from Amen Burty.

William Norvell: As we come nearer to close, I want to give you an opportunity just to maybe speak, just to have an open mic a little bit again to talk to the entrepreneurs out there that may be listening. And any other advice that you might have about, you know, just how God taught you to lead a business from a faith first perspective.

Bertie Lourens: Thank you, William. Yes, this all comes from the journey of starting to surrender, and I have developed a conviction that our father wants us to steward his stuff on his behalf. Now, we’ve heard this. This is all tacky, but if we can just pause for a moment and think of your earthly dad had assets with hundred billion dollars and he asks you, my son, would you take over the running of this company while I’m alive, then what would you do? How would you do that? Well, the first thing is you’ll be very fearful and respectful. And as you step into those very big shoes, but you will honor him and every one of your decisions, you will seek him in every one of your decisions. And you must check in with him daily. And our father, the creator of the universe, has created resources that generates about 90 trillion dollars of GDP every year. We are his sons and daughters and he wants us to stay with these assets on his behalf. So why do we get caught up so much and what we create and what we hold onto this such big journey out there? And by calling for us and I almost feel like our father is sitting on the edge of his seat waiting for us to surrender and let go of our stuff and the power that our stuff has over us and said, God, I’m your son and I’m here to steward your assets on your behalf, for your glory. God showed me in Romans eight. I’m about 19 and this is my translation of the all of creation is waiting eagerly for the Sons of God to stand up and reveal themselves and say, here we are. And then to do what? To risk your creation out of the bondage of corruption and to then steward it in a way that gives glorious liberty. What is glorious liberty? It is it’s a freedom that gives glory back to him. And I think that’s our calling our sons and daughters. So when he gives us assets to steward companies and people, he wants us to steward in a way that brings liberty, freedom to the resources of the earth that we stewarding the animals, the plants, the rivers, everything, the resources in it and the people and all of creation should the glory to father because of the way that we is sons of stewarding his assets. And I just think it’s such a big calling that we cannot waste time to get caught up in stuff and status, you know, and accolades. And I just felt that the only way that I was able to do this is to reach a place of complete surrender. So when I gave God shares in the business and I gave him control, it almost felt like that was absolutely necessary for that to happen before I could really stupid things on his behalf. Before then, it was all for me, as for me, my family, their inheritance, my legacy and all that nonsense.

William Norvell: Oh, I love that the it wasn’t something you begrudgingly did or maybe you did, but it was necessary. It was like that was the only way for it to work, actually, in sort of God’s world is to take that step of obedience.

Bertie Lourens: Yeah. And I want to add one more thing. The second point to that is the idea of generosity, how to be generous lives. I realized that a father is a generous father and the father of lies is a stingy father. And selfishness and stinginess come from the fear of scarcity. And generosity comes from the understanding of abundance and abundant provision from our father. And it’s almost as if we could live our lives in either one of these two veins. You can’t be in both. And when you realize that my father is the father of a Bynum’s and I can share my resources abundantly with the ones around me and I can live abundantly gracious with the people that I lead, employ my family, my friends, my neighbors, then you see the lie of the enemy. But until you make that choice, you live in the lie of the enemy. You always think, especially in South Africa, in a declining economy. How can I put away as much as I can now so that my kids will be OK? The day when I die. And I think we all live with that fear. That is the father of lies that are whispering those lies until years. And he whispers little lies. He puts little packets of lies and fear around our lives, neatly wrapped as gifts, tiny little packets. And as soon as you take the one and you open it up, you give him legal right to enter and cause havoc. And you cannot live in faith and fear. So Faith says, my father is abundant, is my provider, and he will look after me and my family. And fear says it’s up to me to put away as much as I possibly can so that my kids and my family are going to be OK one day.

William Norvell: Amen, I almost hate to ask another question, a wonderful place to end, but we do have to get to our closing question because we always ask it. And so usually I would cut myself off. But thank you for sharing that. And our closing question, will we love to ask, is just where God has you in his word today, where he has you in his scripture. And that’s something that you could have been meditating on for a season. It could be something God revealed to you this morning. But just to let our audience in to where God’s walking with you in his holy word today,

Bertie Lourens: William, I want to share something that happened over the last week. I got busy. I had to travel to Capetown, came back, went on a mountain bike race, traveled again. And this morning when I sat down, I opened my word. I saw it for the last eight days. I did not have a quiet time. So the last eight days, I got so busy that I didn’t sit with my father and I speak with him. And I realized the day before I exploded in the meeting because I acted out of my flesh, out of anger. And when I said with God, I repented for not seeking him daily. I allowed business to come and take me away from him. And I felt the father showed me the picture that the enemy wants us just to move away from my father slowly. You’ll never come with a big bang for your give away. His plan will come slowly. You’ll distract us with things that he knows will move us away from our father. And if you can get us away for long enough, then introduce a stage to riches, lies and fear. Because if we’ve been away from our father long enough, he know that we will not hear this Holy Spirit in the moment and introduce introduces little lines once we take them. He comes in with a lot of lies and after a week I was operating fully in my flesh, making fleshly decisions and exploding at people. I’m making bad decisions and that’s just a fresh revelation that I did not set before my father every day. And I ask him advice and if I don’t sit in his word, so his presence and I listen to the Holy Spirit, I do not care how long I’ve been a Christian. I will fail. I will act in inflation, will make bad decisions, and I’ll disappoint them.

William Norvell: Amen Amen, so grateful for you joining us today, so grateful for your story, so grateful for sharing what God’s done and through your obedience and at times your disobedience. And thank you for sharing both of those and how he still comes to the rescue through all of those examples. So grateful for you and grateful for your story.

Bertie Lourens: And give William.

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Today’s guest is Alan Clayton, who is, get this—a Global Roaming Mentor. Is that a cool title or what? After 10 years in marketing/logistics at WalMart UK, Alan co-founded an international coaching consultancy, turning vision into action for leadership teams, including managers at Motorola, Unilever, ATT&T, and others. ​

Following that, Alan embarked on 20 years​ of startup​ experience ​working on his own ventures, culminating in what he does today as a mentor for SOSV. Today’s episode will capture his story and his passion for mentoring the whole person. 

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: So along the way at Wal-Mart, and then you ended up in Motorola and GSK and a bunch of other organizations at the center of an organization you end up finding yourself struggling to manage people and mentor others. How did that how did you talk to us through that progression and how that how you started to realize that you had something to impart to others?

Alan Clayton: So I think part of that came through like me. I met my wife working at Wal-Mart and then and managing the people there was interesting. So I probably had a team of 10 people working for me at that stage. But like I say that my sense of working in a very big organization was there was a kind of limit to what you can do. And some of the people that I came across and some of the ways business was organized didn’t really kind of sit very well with what I thought life was supposed to be about or what what I wanted to do. I mean, in the world of sales and marketing, it’s a lot to do with like people and, you know, community and, you know, buying and selling and trading and telling stories and all all the people and ideas stuff, basically. So if you think about left brain and right brain people, you know, I’m pretty sure at that stage I was clearly identified in my own mind as a very right brain kind of individual. So what happened was I left Wal-Mart at that stage and actually the first thing was I set up a children’s book publishing company with a friend. So this was into entrepreneurship on a very small scale. And second step beyond that, because I didn’t have a stake in that particular company. We published and sold a lot of books. But the first thing that I probably did was to go on to the mentoring thing was I in my own world, I set off to pursue a vision which was very clearly to go live in a particular part of the UK known as the Lake District, like amazing part of the countryside, Coleridge and Wordsworth and all the poets grew up. I spent ages walking around climbing hills in that part of the world, so I knew that’s where I wanted to live. Secondarily, I needed to earn a living. And so I won’t tell you the whole story today. But I basically bought a small hotel because I desperately wanted to have some community kind of place where I could live and work and contribute to others. So this business where I actually converted a very successful steak house into a not so successful vegetarian restaurant back in 1990.

Henry Kaestner: I’m imagining right now I just have to interject. I’m imagining John Cleese in Fawlty Towers right now.

Alan Clayton: Right. So so this is it. So to this day, running this business, which was known as the great little teashop, it was it was partly vegetarian restaurant, partly coffee shop. But the important thing for me was that I wanted to put something back into the environment and to have groups of people do this. So we ran conservation holidays for people, a level above students who want to sleep on a church hall for the weekend. But to for people like me who want a glass of wine with dinner and a hot shower after going out building footpaths up the hills for the day. And so this was this was my business. Now, the challenge is being a left right brain individual. I didn’t actually have any money to do this, so I had to borrow more than 100 percent of the money in a world where interest rates were 15 percent. And I can do math, but like that was the challenge that that business faced. So what happened was that I got together with three or four of the other individuals that I’ve been involved with in the kind of personal development world in the workshops there. And we decided to set up a coaching consultancy. So the idea was, you know, I had this incredible personal experience. If I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t have believed I could do it. So to to to buy a hotel with no money and to set up an enterprise like that of the like that I did that was a demonstration to me of actually how much most of us are capable of so much more than we think. And so armed with that experience, two or three people we got together as maybe we could put a sort of sort of executive coaching type program together and go back into big business and multinational companies and basically share some of those techniques and tools and processes, but also backed up by the experience. And that’s how the coaching thing became became a thing and the mentoring. So, you know, starting from scratch again, I had to sell executive coaching programs to the likes of Unilever research from scratch, which, you know, because of my setting up my own business experience before that, like, I managed to do that. But looking back again, it’s like, you know, how did I do that? And all along, you know, as I look back now, God had a plan. God was taking us from like a church community to church community as we moved around the country a little bit and each time. Those were very different and very kind of supportive and ran very much in parallel with everything that was going on in a in a kind of work life.

Henry Kaestner: OK, so I’m going to hand this over to William here in a second, because I know he’s got a ton of questions to ask you on this. But before I do that, I just want to ask you one thing, because that’s a very interesting background. That is not the usual path to what somebody would think is executive coaching experience in big business. Lots of bureaucracy going off and doing it on your own and running this this restaurant and hotel. What changed about your executive coaching? I think I might know the answer to this about taking a risk, but maybe I don’t. What about your time as a proprietor as a as a business owner, entrepreneur? What changed your perspective of how to coach people at a place like Unilever that you didn’t have, having only been in a big business?

Alan Clayton: Right. So there’s a very simple answer that basically it was the idea that if I could do things that I didn’t believe I could do before, then maybe I could help other people to do their equivalent so that the big the big a ha was. Most of us are capable of doing more than we can. And obviously what large organizations are desperately trying to do is encourage that that staff that in this case, they’re kind of fast track managers to really become the potential leaders of the future that they have inside themselves. But they didn’t really have a process to help bring that out. And I think that’s what you know. So there was the tools and the practice, the practicalities of it. But again, you know, so encouraging is a lot of what I spent my days doing. And that’s in the early days. That’s really what I was doing for people that Unilever had earmarked as leaders of the future. And my job was just to kind of push them back out. You can do this, trust me. You can do this because even an idiot like me can do it.

William Norvell: That’s a good that’s a good book title right there. I don’t know if you’re I don’t know if you’re looking to write a book, but even idiot like me can do it is that’s got a ring to it. Just throw it out there

Alan Clayton: Ok. note to self

William Norvell: if you know, I only take two percent of the royalties for the idea. Alan, so you’ve been able to explain to tell us to bring us up to date. What do you do now? I know your title on LinkedIn because I saw it and I was like, that’s what I want to be one day and I don’t even know what it means. You call yourself the global roaming mentor. Tell us what organization you work with, what that means, and kind of what you do with SOSV.

Alan Clayton: So after the coaching in in the likes of Unilever or Motorola, my wife and I moved to Ireland, which is where I am today. So that was 23 years ago ish. We then started up a couple of other businesses. Somebody invented the Internet for me. And so I thought what we should do is have a build a business where you could earn money while you’re asleep. So we built a company called […], which was essentially a fair trade chocolate company online. We sold chocolate worlds from part of the price of which went directly to hunger relief projects in Africa. So we partnered with a charity and honored at the time. So that was another business. Then we started bringing Fairtrade Foods into Ireland and putting them into distribution and so on. And then I met a guy called Sean O’Sullivan who came to live in Kinsale on this lovely town in Ireland. And Sean, successful entrepreneur, originally from New York, came here. We met. He invested in another company that I set up, which is a rather fair trade kind of food company. And after two years of doing that, Sean said to me, well, what S.O.S Ventures is going to do now is we’re going to run accelerated programs and we don’t need you to do is bring this kind of people in ideas, mindset, all this kind of right brain set of skills and characteristics, if you like, together with a lot of the tech entrepreneurs we’re about to invest in. And I want you to do that for all the startups that we’re going to invest in. So that’s why I go back 10 or 11 years. That’s how I suppose we started. We started running accelerators along very similar lines to textiles and other people. We started doing it in China because that’s a place that nobody was doing it. And and yeah, so so that’s only then shows that when you need a job title. And so basically I just made up so the programs all over the world. So I guess it has to be global. I would doing a lot of traveling, which I kind of enjoy. So that’s the roaming bit. And essentially I visit all of the programs every year. I meet all the founders and all of the companies and provide some kind of assessments and processes to help them become better entrepreneurs over time.

Henry Kaestner: Well, now I understand why it’s called SOSV, right. Although I get that, you know, it’s the amount of investments and the amount of entrepreneurs. That you invest both time and money in is staggering. It’s very significant. Tell our audience a bit about that.

Alan Clayton: Yeah, it is. So in the last 10 years, it’s like last October, I think we got a thousand a thousand start ups that we’ve invested in roughly 20, 30, 40 million dollars a year across all of those companies. The companies have come from over 75 different countries, but it started with the program, which actually is celebrating 10 years birthday this year called China Accelerator. So China Accelerator is a software accelerator program for entrepreneurs coming from anywhere. Most of them are not actually Chinese. It’s kind of cross-border Internet helping software entrepreneurs, trying to build a market inside China or around Asia. And so in, you know, typical accelerator style, we would we would recruit 10 or 12 companies in a program the entrepreneurs would come to in the early days, a place called Dalian in China City I’d never heard of, which is obviously twice the size of the country I live in. And we ran the first program. And then because we were in China, people said people started applying to a software program, but they wanted to build hardware. So and you can’t really do that in Dalian and nor even in Shanghai, where we moved the China accelerator program to. But you could probably do that in Shenzhen, down just next to Hong Kong, obviously. So that’s the inspiration for the second program we set up, which is known as Hack’s Hardware Accelerator. So that was the second program. So, again, we were running two cohorts of each of those programs every year. So each program is you know, we’re probably investing in 25 to 30 companies per program per year. And at that stage, seven years ago, there were the two programs. And then we set up a biotech program out of San Francisco about six, seven years ago now. And we also ran a European version of that program for four or five years. And that has kind of moved, if you like, to New York. So now we have a program in San Francisco and a clone in New York. We ran a food program out of New York for a few years. And the China program has a spin off in Taipei, outside of China firewall, if you like, which is really for mobile only startups that are looking to scale into Asia. So if you add all that up, there’s sort of five main programs running twice a year, 10, 12 companies per program. We actually also have a block chain kind of program out of New York as well, which is invested in probably 30 companies in the last two or three years. So if you add all that up together, it’s a thousand companies, ten years, a lot of money. And me.

William Norvell: And and and a lot of mentoring, I would assume, as a global mentor.

Alan Clayton: So there is a bit of structure to it, which I probably didn’t point out.

William Norvell: So this is great. I want to get into the entrepreneur investor relationship a little bit. What walk us through kind of what America’s mentoring is a word. You know, I mean, I feel like it gets thrown out a lot. And and I personally have a view that almost every every other person I talk to has a different version of what that word means. And especially in the investing landscape, when someone gives you money, are they are they supposed to be your mentor? Are they supposed to help you find a mentor? Is that what a […] Role is? If so, what does that look like? I would love for you to dove into that a little bit.

Alan Clayton: OK, so so I have a kind of particular answer to that. So one of the things that I studied all looked at over the years is the whole field of neurolinguistic programing, which worked until now, until natural language program was invented a bit later. That’s the only MLP I’ve ever heard of. Anyway, so in the world of neurolinguistic programing, there’s a model known as neurological levels. And without drawing it or explaining it in detail, the way I can relate to mentoring is, you know, we all we’re all very busy with our To-Do lists. And if you know, the clue is in the word, the things that we do are obviously our behavior and the way you kind of control or organize your behavior, if you’re if you need someone to do it for you, you have a supervisor. So supervising operates at the level of what we’re doing. Our behavior, if you like training, which is another word, is often in the mix. Training is a bit training is what you’re doing when you’re basically equipping somebody with a set of skills. So you teach somebody an ability or a competence to do something which is thighed. The next level up, the next level above that, which is really are kind of values and beliefs, if you like. That’s what I think of as coaching. So coaching is a relationship where the client is trying to get from A to B and they need to know where and B are. And the coach is the person who comes along with a set of process tools so they don’t have to be an expert in the domain. If that is a good idea that they’re not, they have to be an expert in process. And so that’s coaching. Mentoring is kind of a level above that. So all I know about mentoring is like I think about it like this, to be a good mentor, you just have to be human and you have to be able to sit in a room with another human being. And as a mentor, the only thing you have is the best interests of your client at heart. If you can do that, you’d be a good mentor. So in the end, in the startup world, in the investing world, those things do get confused. So sometimes mentoring is basically supervision because this person is telling you what to do. Let’s not mentoring. Sometimes they’re, you know, they’re just making connections for you. That’s not really mentoring either. That’s just making introductions or they’re just giving you the money, which is not mentoring, obviously. So, yeah, it’s a it’s a really interesting topic. But know for me, mentoring is essentially just sitting down with another human being. And the key is for you to have their best interests at heart. I mean, you know, if we think about this as a faith conversation, you know, Jesus is a great mentor. Jesus only has our best interests at heart. He has very little idea about what, you know, some of the things that got in my mind or the world that I live in in detail, he hasn’t got time to supervise me or even coach me. But he’s an amazing mentor.

Henry Kaestner: OK, so, yes, is this is a faith conversation, the reason why I’m so interested in talking about this, because I think that there’s an increasing number of Faith Driven Investor that are coming into the the angel world and many of them have already been there. And there’s some amount of I was going to say that on one level, some angels think of themselves, fancy themselves as venture capitalists, and they’re looking for 100 percent markup in the next year to the next institution around can get done. And and they think of themselves as venture capitalists, except that they don’t have to raise outside capital. And I think that they can be oftentimes a recipe for a challenge and that it presents pressures onto the entrepreneur that may or may not be helpful, that are likely mostly not helpful. However, the reverse part, the glass half full part of this is that we as investors have a unique opportunity of coming into the life of an entrepreneur and to encourage them, to mentor them, to disciple them. Even maybe discipline is a part of you know, maybe you can unpack that a little bit about the spiritual formation and how to love one an entrepreneur and what that looks like, the special role of an investor that has skin in the game. They have a vested interest in the enterprise. That is the passion of the entrepreneur. And yet, if you do it right, you can be an encouragement, but you can also help the entrepreneur in and in loving on them. Can you love on somebody as a mentor once you unpack that a little bit and help me to go where I’d like to go?

Alan Clayton: So it’s great that you introduce the word discipleship because I just quickly thinking, I mean, mentoring and discipleship and discipling probably seem to me like roughly at the same kind of level in the same kind of things. The thing that that I’m just the two thoughts in my mind. One is like what makes it what makes a good relationship between an angel investor and any other investor, really and an entrepreneur is is the idea of a shared vision. So something in a sense that both parties have consciously committed themselves to. And when I say committed, I mean so you could there’s a difference between being committed to something and being dependent on something. So sometimes as an investor, we sort of we’re committed to the business, but we’re actually dependent on getting a return on our money. And so the you know, somewhere along the pathway, the the shared vision or the common interest slightly diverges. And ultimately that’s going to cause the issue. So if people are genuinely committed to the end result, then, you know, by definition, both parties will do whatever it takes. They will sacrifice whatever it takes based on what they have, their own resources and their own skills to get to the end result. Often, you know, even though, you know, in the short term or consciously, people think they’ve done that, sometimes it turns out that they haven’t. Does that make sense? So for that reason, I believe that, you know, that relationship discipling and or mentoring or whatever between the investor and the entrepreneur absolutely can work and should work.

Henry Kaestner: Where do you see opportunities and, you know, you do a lot of mentoring, you work with a lot of entrepreneurs, some large number of those entrepreneurs have other investors in their cap stack, other angels, other direct investors. Where do you see common mistakes that an angel direct investor would make as they interact with the entrepreneur that they’ve invested in?

Alan Clayton: So it’s funny because, I mean, in many ways, when I saw […] investing because it’s at the very early stages, we’re not that unlike a corporate angel investor, if you like. And so the challenge in my experience comes when the business led by the entrepreneur starts to grow. Obviously, other investors get involved. And let’s you know, if I was to think of ourselves as the angel investor, we we get a bit crowded out. So other investors come along, invest bigger sums of money, eventually bigger stakes in the company and sort of without realizing it or anybody consciously planning this, they they seduce the entrepreneur. If that’s the right word or distract the entrepreneur, they become a more important influence, certainly in the practicalities of the business. And so, you know, if we’re left with only a small stake in the company, there’s a limit in practical terms to to what we are an angel investor can do. So the danger is that the other the other investors that come along maybe don’t quite share the same kind of end result or the same vision.

William Norvell: That’s interesting, I mean, so I want to switch switch gears just a little bit, one of the things I’ve seen you write about before, and I’m sure we’ll link to, is I want you to have a chance to mentor some of the investors here and, of course, maybe how they would interact with entrepreneurs as they come in. And, of course, we have entrepreneurs listening as well. Could you talk a little bit about your concept of pitching in pairs and walk us through that concept and kind of what you’ve written on that?

Alan Clayton: Yeah, so, yeah, so so I mean, I’ve done a bunch of selling in my lifetime and I’ve helped other people try and do that as well. And whether you’re selling your wares or whether you’re pitching your business to investors, it’s pretty much the same thing. It’s all a negotiation between human beings. And one of the things that I learned is that if you go to a meeting with an investor or indeed with a customer on your own, there’s generally there’s too much to do. So we all talk often about the fact that if you have your first meeting with an investor or indeed with a customer, the best thing that you can possibly walk away with at the end of that meeting with is a friend, because it’s very unlikely that you’re going to walk away with a deal. It just happens that at any meeting in those sorts, there’s really two things to parallel activities going along that it’s very difficult to be master of. It’s difficult to be master of both. So on the one hand, you have the sort of task at hand, which is get the investment, get the customer deal or whatever. And that involves showing up on time, having your presentation ready, making sure you get the answers to the preplanned questions that you have leaving on time, basically going through really the left brain side of the whole process. But in parallel, there’s this kind of somewhat more unconscious thing going on, which is called building a relationship, you know, engaging with another human being, getting them excited, because, as we all know, we we have more kind of governed by our emotions than our intellect. But to have a single person in a meeting trying to concentrate on getting the deal done and making a friend is pretty difficult, even even technically. So what you what I’ve always learned to do is like two people going to the meeting. One person’s responsibility is to try and walk away with the deal done or the outcome. And the other person’s responsibility is to make sure we leave with a friend. So it’s been kind of technical terms, that means somebody is sitting in the meeting doing nothing other than just keeping an eye on this other human being in the room. So it’s all about kind of body language, all of those kind of practical things, and noticing whether this person looks uncomfortable at all, noticing whether this would be a good time to crack a joke, noticing whether this would be a good time to call a time out and have a cup of tea or change the subject completely. So their job is just that kind of, you know, right brain humanistic approach to life. And the other person is the more organized get the deal done, the kind of closing approach to life.

Henry Kaestner: So, Alan, I couldn’t agree with you more. And I’m actually surprised that I’ve that we’ve never talked about that at Faith Driven Entrepreneur before, because that is absolutely the value of a partnership. Right. We at Sovereign’s Capital Love Investment Partners. We think that there’s so much about God sending us out in twos. There’s iron sharpening iron, and there’s just really something about being in the throes of business together. You can look at […] and look at all sorts of different great examples in the Bible and literature. And yet when people ask me for practical example, I come down to just this. When I think about the key business meetings that we had had, it began with how many times will come out of that meeting where David says, I think we need to go back in and we need to change this part of the proposal, because he noticed the way that he crossed his arms differently or just was able to read something that I completely didn’t see. It’s not as if I was blind. I was watching what he was doing, too, but I didn’t pick up on it. And he’s able to understand, David, to be able to understand the interplay that I had and how he would respond in. And there’s something very valuable there. And I’m glad you mention it, because I think most entrepreneurs miss it. I also think that there’s there’s great value on the investor side. I think that many investors will take meetings with entrepreneurs one on one. And yet when I have a meeting with Luke or any one of my partners at sovereigns, we’re able to pick up different things about the entrepreneur, about their command of the business plan or the competitive landscape, or just where they’re uncomfortable about different things. That helps us to pick up on yellow flag for integrity or how they talk about their faith or a whole bunch of different things. It’s almost impossible for just one person to pick up. And when you’re thinking about putting an investment capital behind somebody, that’s a really good chance to make sure that you’ve got somebody else who is there providing counsel who is able to interact. That’s different than having an interview with an entrepreneur, then coming back to an investment committee and getting all clinical. We’re investing in people and we can’t do it all ourselves and picking up on all the signals and all the clues. And we need to

Alan Clayton: I think the other thing I usually explained to me was like, if you do walk out of the room without a friendship, you won’t be going back. But that’s why in real life, if nobody’s going to invest in someone they don’t like and nobody’s going to buy anything from someone that they don’t like, because there’s plenty of logical reasons that we usually make up, if we have to, to get get that done so that, you know, as long as there’s a working relationship, all bets are on potentially good.

William Norvell: So that one of the last things I’d love to ask, that’s that’s really interesting. So I do feel like at times, you know, I do this and I’ve seen other people do it, you know, there’s a chance to romanticize an investor entrepreneur relationship and say, hey, I am going to be a mentor. And I and I just care about their wellbeing and all of those things. I’m interested. Do you think that’s possible and still be a fiduciary? Do you think that’s a unique role that you get to play where someone has set you up in a position to love entrepreneurs within the portfolio differently than the lead investor? Or how do you think about that? How do you think about that? Is that’s something to pursue for everyone? Should they set someone up like you just just kind of walk us through how you would think about doing that throughout these relationships?

Alan Clayton: Yeah, it’s funny in a sense, because you could argue that I’m like a nominated mentor for all of the all of these companies. And the truth is, when I meet them all, but I probably spend like half a day with all of them and sometimes in groups, and then the relationship continues with some over a period of time. So that’s the idea of mentoring. I mean, in large companies, again, mentoring is often confused because the mentors are nominated by the company and given to the mentees, whereas the best way that mentoring works is for the mentee to to choose their own mentor. You know, I think one of the things that I talked about a lot in in church that that I’m familiar with in San Francisco, that at APEC is the idea of a wisdom table. Now, the people that you have your wisdom table, if you like, you choose them to be that they don’t choose to be there. So the mentor mentee relationship, you know, should be one where the mentee gets to, you know, invite and choose their own mentors, not the other way around. So, I mean, the other part of your question, I think maybe that I have a gift. I have some gifts that allow me, like in a financial I don’t really have any very I don’t have any significant ax to grind in terms of the financial outcomes of these relationships. So, like, what else is there? So the rest is is the is the human side of things. I mean, you know, life is about living in community and, you know, pursuing a dream or vision, building a kingdom

Alan Clayton: As a mentor and a disciple for somebody motivated by their faith. What are the challenges that U.S.A., our struggle with that might otherwise surprise somebody? How would you characterize maybe maybe that’s an unfair way to characterize the question, maybe it doesn’t matter where they surprise somebody or not, but what are the attributes that you pick up on an entrepreneur from having mentored and worked with thousands of them that you might impart to a investor that may have only had 10 interactions with entrepreneurs before? And what are the things to be alert for? What are the some common needs that they have that otherwise you might not pick up until the fourth or fifth meeting, but maybe you could ask some questions earlier on to draw things out.

Alan Clayton: If if there’s one really simple thing that investors often don’t ask the founders, it’s just to ask them what they do at the weekend, because, like I say, the whole thing is going to rely on a relationship and it takes time to build a one, you know, piece of that that is going to have to be around forever, which is trust. And if you think about it, trust, if you think about the people that you trust, the people that you would give the most challenging tasks in the world to, that you just don’t have time or ability to do. Those people are always the people that over time have consistently kept the promises that they made to you. That’s why you gave them that job, because you can rely on them. So I don’t think there’s any shortcut actually to building that kind of trust. The only other way you might I mean, you can find references and talk to people who’ve been around this person for some time. But I mean, in terms of a direct relationship between the investor and the entrepreneur, it does just take at least a little bit of time. But the fundamental kind of building block of that is, you know, if this person consistently shows up exactly on time, if they’re always prepared, you know, if they if basically if they keep their commitments. So as a company grows, you know, what the investors are looking for is a never ending growing revenue stream. So often the startups will present the figures at the beginning of the year and say, well, you know, we’re going to turn over a million dollars this year and at the end of the year, what they fail to realize is that if you don’t do that without really realizing it, the most important thing that you will lose is, is the trust of your investor. It’s nothing to do with the performance of the company or the ability or interest of the investor to invest. It’s this kind of trust thing. So the more the two parties trust each other, the more this thing is likely to grow. And I’m not sure there’s a desperate shortcut that I know of to to figure that out.

Henry Kaestner: I’m going to suggest something. And we’re doing a podcast as an audio podcast so people can’t see the video. And so I think that one of the secret sauce sources to you and your effectiveness, because you’re known as being very effective at this, is the fact that you have this winsomeness about you and you have a very encouraging demeanor. You smile a lot. You have an expansive expression, and you just buy who you are and you lean in. I mean, even right now, an audio podcast, you’re leaning in. And I think that there’s so much to the to the body posture and just the fact that I think that it’s impossible to spend too much time with you. And I get the fact that you actually are interested in being somebody’s friend. There’s an integrity there. There’s a genuineness there that can’t fake it. And maybe there are no shortcuts to being able to be a really good mentor. And yet, if you spent time with Alan Clayton, you get a sense that he actually really does care about you. And if he asked you about your weekend is because he’s actually really interested and you’ve got know, I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable, but you’ve got to winsome smile and just and I think that that’s really key and that’s so basic. Right. So basic. But, you know, whether it’s a doctor with bedside manner or just people in business, you miss that. You have a genuine interest in another human being which allows you to to do that. You’ve got an interest in you know, you are interested in the Lake District and and building footpaths and building restaurants and hotels. And you’ve got this lifelong you know, you’re living in a bucolic, incredible town in southwestern Ireland. You’re an interesting dude yourself. And so I’ve been blessed by spending time with you. Why? I’m always asked the same question of all of our guests as we close out. So, William, I definitely want to make sure we do that here, too.

William Norvell: I’ll just say I agree with Henry’s assessment to save us time here and grateful for your time, Alan. And as we do come to a close, the thing we love to do is try to encourage our guests and our listeners to come alongside God’s word in scripture. And so what we ask is, you know, is there is there a place in God’s scripture that may be coming alive to you during the season? Could be this morning. Could be something you’ve been meditating on for a while. But if you wouldn’t mind sharing with our listeners where he has, you would be most appreciative.

Alan Clayton: Josh. Yeah, um. That’s a really hard question. I think that’s

William Norvell: why we love it.

Alan Clayton: Yeah, I know. I guess the there’s a word, actually, so when I think of enthusiasm, I’m not great on translating these words, but somebody translated the word enthusiasm to me as an energy from God. And, you know, I think it’s a fantastic attribute. And if there’s anything I can do by way of encouraging and playing the role that I play, like God’s energy, enthusiasm is something that. Yeah, that makes me excited.

William Norvell: Amen, amen, may we all find more of God’s energy and enthusiasm this day and through your podcast?

Henry Kaestner: Allan, thank you very much. Grateful to have you with us.

Alan Clayton: No worries. Really a pleasure to meet you guys. And if you can edit that into something that is even half respectable,

Henry Kaestner: I’m sure I’m sure we can be grateful for your brother. Worries for the next time.

Alan Clayton: Thanks a lot. OK, cheers, William. Bye bye.

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If you’ve been following this podcast for a while, you likely know that last year we had our first ever Faith Driven Entrepreneur and Faith Driven Investor conferences that included guests like Andy Crouch, Jewel Burks Solomon, Chip Ingram, Lecrae, Phil Vischer, Jessica Kim, and many more. 

Thousands of you attended, making it one of the most encouraging days since the start of the FDE and FDI movements. Well, if you missed last year’s event, don’t worry. Because we’re doing it again. 

Today’s episode is all about what you can look forward to at this year’s event, and the unique twist that’s going to make 2021 even better…

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 to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast special edition, kind of halfway in between last year’s 20 20 Faith Driven Entrepreneur conference, which I thought was awesome. We can talk about that and maybe share some favorite moments with my co-host and great friends, Rusty Rueff and William Norvall. And then halfway between then, of course, and the one that’s upcoming. So a good chance to reflect on the things that we were learned last year, the things that we’ve been reflecting on over the course of the last six months, and then the things that were kind of anticipating and hopeful for over the course of the next six months leading into, of course, this conference. So Rusty, William, welcome.

Rusty Rueff: Always good to be together.

Henry Kaestner: So fascinating. You know, Justin and Sue, Alice and Jonny have come to us to ask us to talk about the conference. And there’s so much to talk about because this year we’re going to be rolling out a new watch party. We’re going to have much more of a local implementation. We’ve got an incredible lineup of speakers again, which is kind of hard because we had so many great ones last year. The thought is you go back to the same great people like Phil said, you say the same thing or not. But we’ll talk about how we’ve been able to avoid that and why we’re so excited about this actually being a new slate of topics and speakers. But before we get there, let’s reflect a little bit. It’s been six months since we did the last conference, and there have been some presentations that have continued to really make an impact in my life. And some I knew it at the time and then some have just been kind of creeping back up. Upon reflection. I don’t know if you guys have experienced the same.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I actually think it’s worth even before we dove into that, just let’s remind everybody that, you know, the conference that was the conference was not the conference that was going to be the conference. Right. I mean, we went into this planning for a couple of days of fellowship in Dallas and, you know, being together and shaking hands and giving hugs from people from all over the country and all over the world who’ve been our listeners and participants and guests and everything got turned upside down by covid. But yet we persevered through and we tried something that, you know, we didn’t know would work or didn’t work. And it did work by God’s grace. It’s actually now leading us as we talk about what we’re going to do this year, you know, into a hybrid of that. But, you know, it was pretty special given the fact that we were all doing it from our homes and our offices and, you know, sitting there on Zoome nonstop for a couple of days. But, you know, hats off to, you know, the team who pulled it all off, you know, and coordinated that. That’s not easy.

Henry Kaestner: No, it’s not easy. William, you probably had some favorites. I know you had some favorites. I know you’re a huge fan. I know you’re a fan much of all the speakers. And that’s one of the things the team was nice enough to allow us to get some input and last year’s speaker list in this upcoming one as well. But tell us about some of the speakers. And by the way, as we talk about that, know that we’re about to launch and maybe by the time this is released, we’ll have released the Faith Driven Athlete, all of these speakers, all these talks that we’re going to be talking about, you’re going to be able to see on your mobile device, on your computer, and really we’re just really fired up about that. But OK, William, would you like.

William Norvell: Yeah, it’s exciting. I’m excited to be up to another team and working hard on it and to be able to take a five hour conference, you know, that we did with, I think, close to 40 speakers and sort of distill that down into different topics and different areas. So you have to watch all of it right now. If you if you try to find it, you’ll probably find the five hour link or some some things. But it’s going to be amazing. And as I do hope, people will find that if they haven’t found it already once this releases and. Yeah, I mean, reflecting back, yeah, I’m a big fan and he just always is just amazing. I think Andy has a unique ability. You know, all of our speakers have some unique super power. And I think Andy’s is to just like get to the soul of what is going on. And he can speak to the soul of an entrepreneur better than anybody I’ve encountered. And so just as you know, 30 seconds of his talk, I think it was 12 minutes. I would encourage you to go find it and watch it. And we can and we can link to that in the app. But his main point was he talked about how. How to flourish as an entrepreneur and what he talked about was he believes that flourishing happens when authority meets vulnerability and the way he defined authority was the capacity for meaningful action. And the way he does, he defined vulnerability, was taking meaningful risk. And he said when you have the capacity to take meaningful action and you choose to take meaningful risk, that is where an entrepreneur flourishes and he teases that out over over 12 minutes and just walked through. And just to buy two guys, you’ll see some great two by twos and and just how Jesus fits into that paradox of of creating that flourishing moment for an entrepreneur. And I just just it just hits me. I’ve watched it five, six, seven times. I’ve sent it to numerous people that are thinking about being entrepreneurs that have maybe I put myself in this category, always been on the edge of maybe going out and trying something. And he just beautifully lays out the encouragement for that and says, yes, like God did design us this way. If you’re feeling that maybe he designed you that way to

Henry Kaestner: Rusty, what did you like? What is your impression?

Rusty Rueff: Well, you know, I got two instances with your former co-founder, Dave Morgan. Right. So not only his his discussion on why excellence matters, but also a little breakout session that we did together. And, you know, I just am always so impressed with the amount of humility he brings to the success that he’s had and just the way he can be. You know, I can imagine I’ve only interacted with him here on the podcast a couple of times, you know, watching it on the conference there and then having that panel together with him. But I can imagine that, Dave, you know, he’s pretty driven guy, right? I mean, there’s you know, there’s no you know, hey, I think we’re not going to make this goal kind of guy. He’s you know, we’re we’re going to take this hill. But at the same time, there’s a purity to him and there’s a gentleness, even with that ability to push that comes through in his humility that I thought was just awesome in both sessions. And, you know, I just admire and felt really challenged to step up my game, you know, and whatever I do to make sure that I’m being excellent.

Henry Kaestner: You know, it’s interesting that if I were going to talk about how he gets that, it’s interesting. It’s not a focus on excellence is part a function of the fact that he is being given by some really unique gift things and is making the most of them. But pragmatically, I think that the blend of excellence with humility that I really do think that he gets and is wonderful to continue to experience that through a 20 year friendship and partnership is the fact that he prays one hundred times a day. Plus he’s constantly in prayer and he’s got it. This is one of the podcast interviews we did with them. He’s always praying, God, thank you. God forgive me, God, please, all day. And if you spend that much time walking right next to God when your thought is that any time you have a thought. Delayed at God’s feet, then you can’t get to under yourself. You can’t, and I think that that’s kind of the secret there. And I think it’s interesting you pointed that out, of course, from my perspective. I love David talk. It was great having Victor Ho talk about Sabbath, some of the earlier podcast we did. There’s a part one, part two that we did with Victor. One hundred and sixty podcasts ago or something like that where he unpacks Sabbath. And a couple of things that I like Victor about. And actually coming back to our very first blog we ever put up on the podcast was Andy Crouch talking about Sabbath as a very first century we ever had. The second one was I think it was John Drexler’s essay on the Silicon Valley episode where they talked about you can be anything in Silicon Valley, but you can’t be a Christian. And the satire, the brilliant satire that that was. And John did such a great job. And I think we’ve had thousands and thousands of blogs since then. But Sabbath is so important. Victor Ho did a great job pointing that out. And what I’m talking about, Victor. Of course, we’ve got to go back to one of the favorite lessons I’ve ever learned from Victor is the emphasis on delighting our customer and the work he did at McKinsey, at Harvard Business School, and then now through five stars about what does it look like to delight a customer understanding that it is significantly more cost effective to retain a customer that was otherwise going to churn than to go out and buy a new one? Just the way he talks about that, I think is really good. But I think that my favorite interplay from the Faith Driven Entrepreneur conference is Phil Fisher and Casey Crawford, these two guys who are passionate about their faith and the interplay fills a little, maybe more bookish, very creative. And Casey’s Super Bowl, when a six foot six is completely chiseled, they’re different in some ways. They’re very, very similar in some ways in that they’re both students of entrepreneurship as it relates to knowing God. And the interplay that Casey had with Phil I thought was really cool. Now, they weren’t on the stage at the same time, but it really started off as a continuation of something that happened here on the podcast. Right. We had been talking about Phil’s podcast on identity. And if you go back to Phil Fisher podcast, I think it’s minute 16 to minute 20 or so. Phil talks about the identity of a Khristine entrepreneur. That is really, really good. And as we’re getting ready to interview Casey for his podcast, we were reflecting on it. And Casey was talking about, gosh, I know that we’re called the not have anxiety, but yet I still feel anxiety and I feel that Jesus was in the garden. He’s sweating blood. And I see David having some real stress and anxiety. And so how do I think about that? And Katie’s talk was on are we called to comfort as Christians? And that made a real impression. But it just I just love the interplay between the two of them. I love the fact that they’re both so thoughtful about being a Faith Driven Entrepreneur. They had such incredible experiences. And I love just the highlighting of the tension that comes about with the Faith Driven Entrepreneur. What’s the tension? How do we deal with things like balancing work and family? How do we integrate our faith? How do we think about financing? How do we think about our issues? And there can be a tension there. And it was fun just to see them both unpack that a little bit.

William Norvell: Yeah. You know, the last one I mentioned as reflecting on this is because you made me think of a delighting your customer. One of the most interesting talks I remember is, is Lacroix’s talk about being an artist. And I was really fascinated when he went on the riff of really trying to understand his his customer and design music for them because I just blew me away. I just always think of artists as, no, I’m just going to go in a box and create whatever I create because God told me to. And if people like it, people like it. But, you know, he’s like, no, I definitely see myself as a product and I have a product to sell and I have an audience and I need to understand my audience. And I thought it was kind of a really brilliant riff on an area that I’m not very accustomed to. And I think that’s what the government is grateful to. If you can come see different variations of people coming from different walks of life and how those things can be applied to your universe, even though you may not think they can be applied to your universe. And that’s what we we’ve tried to line up here this year to.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. What are you talking about? Lecrae That’s one of my most gratifying and hopefully it’s not a prideful moment because it will always be something I’ll struggle with to some extent. But when Lecrae really leaned into the ministry and really got excited about it through the podcast and then his participation in the conference and understanding that he as a creator is very much an entrepreneur and felt that we are his people in his tribe, so to speak, so much so that he has, of course, written the forward to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur book and just really great for us to be able to be, I think, in one way culturally relevant to a new generation. I think about my kids. I mean, I can talk about the 20 different presenters that we had on and the conference and and the one that they’ll get really fired up about as Lecrae. And that’s really important to me as a dad, because I’ve got three teenage boys who want to be able to have heroes that are thoughtful. About how to delight their customer, how to find their identity in Christ and then how to get out there and create and flourish, and so that was also a really cool moment.

William Norvell: You know what I said last time? But on that, too, talking about, you know, we talk about identity so much here, I thought Gelberg Solomon just did a wonderful job of talking about how the day she sold her company was the worst day of her life and how she woke up the next day and didn’t think she had anything to live for and how she had to fight to recover her identity, not as a CEO, but as a child of God. And we talk about that a lot. But her story of how she felt it and and when she felt it and how she had to recover it, I just thought was it was really fascinating.

Rusty Rueff: You know, if we were if we were given out courage awards, I think you’ve got to give it to Rob Thomas. Jeff Parker. Right. And that that segment is the one that I heard most from other people about. Right. Who said, hey, I tuned into this. I watch this. Wow. You know that. I mean, the idea that there could be that level of authenticity, that level of vulnerability, that level of sharing and walking through something as they did, you know, talk about courage, you know, just amazing, amazing.

Henry Kaestner: And it come on and tell the story again and again. And they, of course, were alive with us in the studio. And that was remarkably powerful. I think that

William Norvell: was it live in the studio

Henry Kaestner: was that everybody was live in Syria. That’s right.

William Norvell: Henry, Secrets, Secrets of the Calvert’s here. Slow down.

Henry Kaestner: Know some of the people clearly were calling in from other places, but they’re actually in physical proximity. With us is, of course, what I mean, I thought that was really good. Neither of them interestingly, we’ve had some incredible guests on the podcast. Everybody knows Phil Fisher with Trey Tim Keller, Chip Ingram, a lot of really bigger names. And yet those two guys, I think, are still in the top three. Most listened to episodes on our podcast, Carson and 60. And neither of them would nobody would know their name outside of that context. But the substance was so rich that people keep on downloading and forwarding it to people

William Norvell: because the title is 99 percent confession equals zero percent freedom. Was that right?

Rusty Rueff: About that last one percent? That last one percent, yeah.

Henry Kaestner: How about on the Faith Driven Investor side I go first. Yeah, I Phinney Kerviel is talk about the role of an investor I thought was really seminal for me. This is a guy guys in my PhD is one of the smartest guys on the planet and really, really smart people can oftentimes just lose you. And he could have lost me. I mean, because you remember this guy is an M.D., Ph.D. who ended up getting his MBA, I think, on the side while he’s getting his Ph.D.. I mean, is that smart? So he’s clearly capable of writing white papers and treatises and things like that. But he has a special gift of taking that and distill it into a simple concept, which was for me was as follows. He talks about Christopher Columbus and says, look, Christopher Columbus was an Italian. He had an idea for adventure. He went around to all his buddies in Italy to talk about this new venture. He’s going to go on and they all said no. So it’s OK. I’ll try my luck in Portugal. And they also said no. He went to Spain and worked out and said, you know what, they should be speaking Italian in Argentina and Chile today, but they don’t. And the cultural impact that that venture investment made and then fast for that and the relevancy for us now for hundred years on in Africa, there is going to be more entrants into the job market over the course of next 20 years than India and China combined. What language are they going to be speaking in Kinshasa? Are they going to be speaking secular or are they going to be speaking Christian? And what I mean by that is, are they going to be speaking Chinese? Are they can be speaking Arabic or are they going to be speaking? Where are they going to be speaking? Or is the marketplace going to be inhabited by entrepreneurs that are driven by their faith, who are able to speak the language of looking to create and do it for the glory of God? And what are their identities in Christ, where they’re able to love their neighbor and be able to have a redemptive frame as they think about creativity in the marketplace. And that was really impactful for me, just the deepness of number one. It was the importance of investing. All of our investments have impact and means something. Capital has influence. I think that there’s some deep theological truth in what he’s talking about. And then he just made it really applicable. I can get it. I think that people in Argentina and Chile should be speaking Italian, and I think that people in Kinshasa should be loving their neighbor and inventing products and services that bring about God’s kingdom.

William Norvell: You know, speaking of cultural impact, one of the ones I loved was John Irwin. You know, John Amen, the filmmaker, which is maybe like a little bit of esoteric asset. You know, if you’re thinking about investing his riff on, you know, in his opinion that, you know, there’s so many Christians that are upset about where Hollywood’s go and all these things. And he just had this. And he said, you know, Hollywood didn’t leave Christians, Christians left Hollywood, and he had this push to engage in places, just as Jesus did, and said, you know, that is our fault, not anyone else’s. We decided to revert back into our bubble and not fight the good fight anymore. And he said, you know, I’m I’m living proof. I signed a deal with the big movie studio after some Faith Driven Investor said helped him get to a point where that was an option. And beautiful story.

Rusty Rueff: You know, I was struck by something you said there, Henry, about, you know, we overlook a lot of times the impact that can happen here, right, by Faith Driven Investor and sort of thinking down the river, if you will. And you know what Pete Kelly shares or what he does with apartment life on the surface, you look at it go, oh, that’s you know, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. And the integration of the spiritual side of that and then how that turns out to be really great for apartment owners, I take that one step further. I say if he’s saving money for apartment owners, then they are able to pass back that savings in a way that creates more affordable housing. Right. Which is, you know, loving on our neighbors. Right. Figuring out how to be able to extend those things that we’ve been given from God to make it better for others. And I think what Pete’s doing there is really, really impressive.

Henry Kaestner: Now, we’ve got another conference coming up, and while the final guest list hasn’t been announced yet and I can tell you one thing, I can tell you that we will by far and away have our most famous guest that is committed. And we’ve had some famous Gammie, again, Phil Fisher. We’ve had Tim Keller. We’ve had some really, really outstanding presenters. This one, I think that when we announced this and we just don’t have clearance yet from the agent, but we nonetheless have a commitment. I think that this one will be one that everybody be really fired up about. It’ll be fun. And I think, again, super culturally relevant, much in the way that the crew has been.

William Norvell: I’m excited about it. We’re really we’re not faking this. We actually can’t say anything, but I can’t wait to celebrate it. It’s not just like, oh, they’re names big. It’s like, gosh, they’re it’s a fun group. And they’re going to bring some excitement, energy to the conference that I just think is going to be phenomenal.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, I just I love Gene Simmons. I really don’t know. That’s not the fun group. It’s not I promise you, it is not fun group. But would that be something that they talked about? Faith driven entrepreneurs. Yeah, Rusty. As you look at the list of the speakers come up, any that stand out for you.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I’m excited, Henry. I’m a huge fan of Sue Warnke and what Sue has done at Salesforce. And you know for sure. Yes. And she and I had our own little moment of overlap at work and ministry thing at our church back in twenty nineteen. That was really exciting. She happened to be there while we were doing a thing called the Tightrope Talks, and I called her out. I didn’t know she was in the audience because I had read in the Trailblazer book by Marc Benioff where he talks about faith force and he talks about Sue Warnke and about how such an impact that that has had on the culture of Salesforce. I mean, stop for a second and think about that. You know, Marc Benioff talking about a woman and a group of who are sharing their Christian faith with each other inside of the workplace, inside of a company, inside of a public company. And I just happened to mention that. And I asked if anybody who worked at Salesforce, this hand goes up. And I said, really? You know, you work at Salesforce, what do you do? It she goes, I’m Sue Warnke. I’m like, you got to be kidding me. You’ve got to be kidding me. So she’s a rock star in my mind. And I think that’s going to be really exciting for us.

Henry Kaestner: I travel around, I’ve been asking people, where do you think is the Center for the Faith and Work Movement in the United States? And if I’m in Atlanta, they say national. If I’m in Nashville, they say Dallas. If I’m in Dallas, of course they say Dallas. Right. People think about, I think in Texas. But I say to them, I will submit to you that I think that the Center for the Faith and Work Movement in the United States is in the Bay Area. And yes, I’m a little biased because I live out here. But I say this out here in the Bay Area where there are new are resurgent faith driven employee resource groups at Google and Apple at Facebook there. Before COVA, they were doing prayer walks on campus at Dropbox. They’re doing praise and worship music. We’ve heard in the lunch room. That’s right. And then, of course, at Salesforce, where it’s called faith for us. I think more than a thousand members up there.

Rusty Rueff: Oh, I think it’s double that now. Wow.

Henry Kaestner: Amazing. And, you know, and it’s and yes, of course, you know, if you’re a force, there are other faiths that are represented. But of course, we as Christians believe that truth stands out in the marketplace of ideas. And so guys doing something amazing out here in the Bay Area, which we hope is an encouragement. If you’re a Faith Driven Entrepreneur, you’re listening to this right now. Thing I don’t know, Faith Driven Athlete Resource Group, that sounds like a little bit of a far fetched bunch of people getting together and praying together. It might be too much. And gosh, chaplaincy maybe. I don’t know. But I mean, if Facebook and Google and Apple, you know, what I thought of is like the epitome of this secular organization have come to understand that having Faith Driven Athlete resource groups are good for their bottom line and good for their culture. I think that that gives us great reference. So as our employees come out and say, you know, you’ve got a group of people to get together, pray for each other and that feel a little uncomfortable about it, I think a lot of them will be able to see the fact that it’s happened in some of the very best and forward thinking technology companies will help give some cover there. So I also I’m a huge fan of Sue William. As you look through the list, what’s what strikes out for.

William Norvell: Yes, a couple of things I’m excited about. So guest wise, super quick ones. Andy Stanley needs no introduction. He just if you listen to that podcast, his church had a big part in my coming to know the Lord in a deep way. And so I just always think he has just like hard won wisdom. And and then on the other side, Seth Dillon, the CEO Babylon Bee. And not just because he’s hilarious, but he is hilarious, but his theology of satire and why it’s important to the church. I was surprised by that. I was kind of blown away when we did that podcast where he had this really thoughtful framework for why he does his job. It’s not simply that he’s funny and he thinks he can be funny and he can make money on it. It’s I don’t know what he’s going to share there, but the Babylon Bee is getting more notoriety. And so I’m excited for that. And that’s an interesting one. I’m excited for that to be shared in community. So. I don’t think we’ve talked about yet, we’re rolling this out as a hybrid event this year, and so we want local host cities, right? We want people in their cities to host and kind of raise their hand and say, I want to have 10 people over to my house or I want to have two hundred people at my church, whatever that may look like. We’ve already got over one hundred cities signed up to date. And I just think we talk about local communities so much here, and it’s just as such an opportunity to come around, watch these things together. And, you know, we’ve got a great guest to come on and talk about that. So Sue Alice has been on the podcast before, is the director of community at Faith Driven Entrepreneur and investor Sue Alice. Tell us a little more about your vision for the watch party format.

Speaker 4: You know, this has been a really hard year. Entrepreneurship is already a lonely journey. But throughout covid, it’s been extraordinarily lonely in many ways. And as things are starting to open up more, we know that a lot of people aren’t ready to jump on a plane and cross the globe to come and join us in person. But we can certainly cross the city and join together with other entrepreneurs, investors that live in our area and come together. And so we’re going to be live streaming the conference all over the world. Wherever you are, we are coming to you. And we want you to gather together in community host to watch party. All you need is a screen and a space will even help you with food. We want to make this as simple as possible for everybody to try and come together and watch this experience sit together, be able to wrestle with hard topics together and remember that God did not create us to be alone.

Henry Kaestner: Did indeed sue Alice, as you look ahead and want to put you on the spot and something to a question that you probably didn’t expect coming your way. By the way, I’m just so excited about the leadership that you provide to the ministry in the way that you’re able to oversee small groups. And we’re just getting started with the small group curriculum there. Three hundred faith driven entrepreneurs going through the class together. Twenty three different facilitators, entrepreneurs from all over the world. And that happens through the magic of us. Who else does, in addition to looking at the conference, but to Alice, as you look ahead to the speakers that we have coming up, are there any of that jump out to you, anybody that you’re particularly fired up about listening to?

Sue Alice Sauthoff: Yeah, you know, I have seen on the list Laura Casey is on there and we hosted her recently at one of our other events. And I feel like just being able to hear from these entrepreneurs, all of these speakers have such authenticity and what they’re sharing. And I just got to meet Laura recently and see that in her. So I’m really excited to hear from her again. I just connect with her a lot as a mom as well. And so it’s really exciting to hear from her on that list.

Henry Kaestner: Well, thank you. Thank you for coming over and joining the team and providing so much leadership for leading the Faith Driven Entrepreneur group practice and the conference. For me, I’ve got a new favorite speaker and he’s kind of a cross between Francis Chan and BAM Phelps. If you remember BAM Phelps, you remember bum Phelps, who’s the Texan cowboy that always wore his ten gallon hat. It was

Rusty Rueff: a cousin. It was a coach, right?

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. Fantastic coach. There’s a guy named Jimmy Song and Jimmy

William Norvell: Jimmy Jimmy the other day. Oh really?

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. He is really, really good. He’s very thoughtful. He’s got great energy and charisma and he is really focused on what cryptocurrency means and grounding in theology and in scripture in a way that I didn’t think could happen. I didn’t think it could happen. And so he’ll unpack for us. What does that mean and how can a Christ follower think about the ramifications for cryptocurrency? Is it bad? Is it good? Is it neutral? And he has a firm opinion on it. And I tell you, you spend enough time with Jimmy song, you find yourself kind of coming along with his way of thinking because he’s just so thoughtful

William Norvell: in his book, thank God for Bitcoin and working through it so good. And he’s just so thoughtful about how God works through Bitcoin specifically. And he also has a famous story of buying maybe what could be called the world’s most expensive beef jerky. That’s Raichlen adopter. He buy bitcoins worth of beef jerky, which as of current day is a sixty thousand dollar thing of beef jerky, which I don’t think it was worth that to him. He said it was good beef jerky, but probably not that

Henry Kaestner: probably not dead

Rusty Rueff: yet. I’m I’m excited, as you guys are, about what we’re going to do in the fall. And I think one of the things we’ve got to remember, too, is that in our faith journey, there are these disciplines that we each are striving to bring forward in our lives and to internalize in our life. And, you know, this conference can be one of those it’s a part of the journey, because while we won’t be together face to face with our speakers, we’ll be through technology. We are creating community there and we are sharing and fellowship. But these watch parties that we’re talking about, the small groups that we have with FDE, you know, those are community. Those are people coming together and having the opportunity to fellowship and to strengthen each other. And as we know, iron sharpens iron. And we recently had an FDE podcast with our favorite entrepreneurial pastor, Chip Ingram, and he talks about how important it is that we have people in our lives that we can have strong relationships and friendships with and who we can be totally vulnerable and held totally accountable together. And, you know, what we don’t know is we walk into one of these conferences, we go to a watch party, we invite someone to our home to do this together. There in May be that person, right? That person. You know, God will deliver that person for us if we don’t already have them or if, you know, God will deliver more than one person to us. But we have to be willing to open the door. We have to be willing to share of ourselves and share of our time. And that’s part of what’s so exciting about what we’re doing here, is we are continuing to walk through that faith journey.

William Norvell: Amen grateful for all of you as part of my community and grateful for so many people that I’ve met through the conference and after the conference and became friends with because of some of the people that share their time with us so graciously did.

Henry Kaestner: We’re excited for you to come be a part. And again, as Alison said, if you have a screen and you have a passion and you want to share this community and encourage other Faith Driven Athlete. Noises, you yourself are encouraged. We really do hope that you become a watch party host, it’s easy. You can find it on the website. And thank you, Sue Alice. You know, you’ve been around the ministry not forever, but long enough to know that on our podcast, we ask every guest to share with us a bit about what they’re hearing from God and his word. And if you’ve also been listening to podcasts, you know that I’m not the one to ask that question. It’s William.

William Norvell: I thought you were just going to steal it from me.

Henry Kaestner: I thought for a second. And I was like I was

William Norvell: like, he’s going for it, tag. I’m going to have to have that truth and love talk after this episode. But, you know, no, we love figuring out where God’s story is. And and I know, you know, that’s where it’s coming. But just yeah. If you wouldn’t mind, share with our audience. We’re just glad to have you today in his word. And where is he taking you in his scripture and how is that impacting how you see the world today?

Sue Alice Sauthoff: Yeah, I have been spending a lot of time in Psalm thirty four and verse one says I will praise the Lord in every moment, in every situation. And I have to spend meditating on that a lot that whatever comes, the joys, the struggles, whatever, that I’m still looking to the Lord, I’m still praising him and that and I could go on with more, but I’m going to turn the tables around because our audience wants to hear from you three guys. And so I’m turning the tables. William, you always ask the question. So I think you should go first and then Henry Rusty up next.

William Norvell: Oh, goodness, I didn’t see that coming. I didn’t see that coming. Oh, gosh. Where would I go? Oh, gosh. Two to two verses come to mind that I’ve been meditating on. I’ll try both. One Old Testament, one New Testament I’m going to go to and I’ll do it quick. It’s not my strong suit. But first, Peter, five, six and seven, where God says that some version of the paraphrase is that, you know, we need to humble ourselves before God and it’s his job to exalt us. And that has just been meditating hard on my heart lately that my job is to is to serve him and to walk with him and it says that he chooses the time to exalt us if he wants to. And just what I’ve been frustrated when I found times that I thought maybe I should have gotten credit for something or something should have been viewed differently. I’ve tried not that I’m doing it well. Going to God’s. I got. If you want that to happen, you find the time. It’s out of my hands. And it’s not it’s not up to me, right? And that’s really hard and it’s really hard, but I think it’s truth in the second one is a piece of that. These are both sides of humility. Deuteronomy eight, where God says pretty clearly that he took the Israelites through the desert for 40 years so that they would learn humility and just to think at rest there, too, that God does not require anything of me or want me to think of me other than to recognize who he is and to love him for that and to humble myself at his feet and to walk with him every day. Amen.

Rusty Rueff: That’s beautiful. You know, as I reflect back over this year, one of the things that I’ve maybe I was actually projecting when I was talking about how important it is for the conference for us to get together, because one of the things that I miss the most is I’ve missed the intimacy of friendship, like not being able to hang physically with, you know, my most personal friends and have those sort of conversations and things that pop up because, you know, you’re just you’re out working in the garden together or you’re taking a run together, you know, and conversations that come up. And so it really has had me thinking about the importance of reminding myself that Jesus is to be my best friend. And the verse that’s been on my heart is Matthew, six eight for your father knows the things you have need of before you ask him. And, you know, that’s what best friends do, they know the things that you have needs before you ever talk to them about it. And they bring it up to you. And, you know, I I’m I’m such an emotional guy. I mean, I cry at American Idol auditions, so you just need to know that. I mean,

William Norvell: hey, wait, who’s who doesn’t.

Rusty Rueff: So but, you know, I’m just reminded that Jesus is my best friend and that he knows the things that I need before I need them and that he’s gone, you know, in front of me for those things and is has taken care of me. So that’s what’s been on my heart most recently.

William Norvell: Amen.

Henry Kaestner: Well, I really should have gone first because you can’t top either of them two things that have impacted me from scripture recently. One is just the lesson of the good kings of Judah and second Chronicles, where these are the good kings. They’re not the bad kings of good kings. And yet each of them made a really, really bad mistake and not seeking God before making a major decision. For one, it was a trade deal. For others, it was about whether they go off in a war or not. And I think, oh, so God put that second chronicles. So I’ll I’ll be able to make sure that I don’t do the same thing. And because I’ve got the benefit of this type of teaching that they didn’t have at the time. And yet I still find myself not going to God with all my important decisions. And maybe I get the majority. But the good kings are due to have the majority of them. And they just one time, one time didn’t see God and it went really poorly for them. And I just I need to see more of God. We talked about at the beginning of this episode about how David Morgan does that so well and so regularly, habitually, if you will. And I need to do a better job of that. That speaks to me. And the other thing that speaks to me and I shared this with a larger Faith Driven Entrepreneur group that gets together in the area. We’ve been kind of inklings and I shared with them yesterday that as I go through the Bible with my boys and devotions, I love it when you kind of get a summary of the Bible, when somebody says, OK, what really matters is this. There isn’t a moment like that. The other day, as my family and I were going through Galatians five, and it was because we were going to look at the fruits of the spirit together. And of course, if you look at the fruits of the spirit, if you just focus on the fruits of spirit, you won’t find them. If you just focus on love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, you can’t find it. You find the fruit of the spirit comes from our relationship with Jesus and the fact that we have this relationship with Jesus. Well, what how do we know that we’re really in line with Jesus Christ in us? Is this fruit? So I was going to talk about that with them, but I didn’t. Instead, we just got hung up on verse six and is the second part of verse six. So the first part is for increased Jesus is neither circumcision nor UN circumcision have any value. The only thing they can’t. There’s a second part. The only thing that counts and like, oh my goodness, here we have in the second part of a verse, Galatians five, six, be the summation of the entire Bible. Three thousand pages of it. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. And what I was able to process with them and, you know, just partially, which is, oh, my goodness, if that’s the only thing that matters, how are we as a family, how are we as individuals thinking about how our faith expresses itself through love and how does it even happen? But I just love that just a simple thing to kind of just continue to meditate on. So, Sue. Thanks for turning the tables on the fair turnabout is fair play. That’s never happened. And we’ve probably recorded one hundred and seventy five different podcast episodes. And I’m glad that you did it. I’m glad because I was blessed by William and Rusty. Sharon, thank you.

William Norvell: Need to keep your head on a swivel here on the FDE podcast. Never, never know what’s coming at you.

Henry Kaestner: Head on a swivel and Kleenex next to the computer.

William Norvell: Hey, man, that’s a that could be our first brand Kleenex swag for the conference.

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Ross Baird co-founded Village Capital in 2009 with the goal of investing in entrepreneurs building successful businesses, and also making a difference in their communities. 

After making some initial investments in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he realized something: local businesses built by local capital have a great effect on local communities. 

Today, he’s the Founder and CEO of Blueprint Local where he’s working to create the best way for people to thoughtfully invest in their communities. On today’s episode, he’s going to teach us a new word—topophilia—and why that concept motivates his work.

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.

Ross Baird: Topophilia is the Greek word for patriotism, and if you think of Greece, you have the city state like Athens means something. Sparta means something very different. It’s the warrior city like love of place. Patriotism is love of your specific place for specific reasons. And so if you think of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, all wonderful cities, all very different. But if you live in Boulder, you live there for a specific reason. And if you live in Colorado Springs, there specific reason. And they’re very different cultures and neither is better or worse. They’re just they’re very different. And what Governor Hickenlooper said is like we have so many places in Colorado that have such a good sense of themselves that people are just very into getting involved in their place because they love it and they come here for a reason. And if you are a place with a sense of yourself, you’re going to have a dynamic entrepreneurial culture.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. I’m here, as always, are mostly with one of my very best friends in the world, business partner, ministry partner, life partner, Luke Roush in the house from Durham, North Carolina. Today, I see

Luke Roush: it is going to be on. Going to be on.

Henry Kaestner: It’s great to have you. So we’ve got a special guest. Speaking of Durham, North Carolina, I got to know Ross’s brother Henry when he was a student at Duke and I was a Sunday school teacher for Duke students, which is ironic. Many of you will know some of my story that I’m a huge road Carolina Tar Heels fan. But God loves Duke students, too. And I get to know Henry and also a little bit Henry’s twin brother, but they have an older brother, Rothbard, that has blazed the trail and has been super intentional about his faith in the marketplace for a long time. And I know at least Henry’s follow in your footsteps is he is a manager at Cloud Factory, which is this awesome, awesome organization. We’ve had Marc Sears on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast in the past, but I’ve been looking for this podcast, Luke, because of Ross’s intentionality of modeling out a different way of local community investment, bringing in real estate, bringing a community. He’s done it all over. But there are a couple of cities where he’s done it that have really made an impression on me. And one of them is New Orleans. And then the other one is Baltimore, because I grew up in Baltimore and that’s a big deal for me. So, Ross, welcome to the program. Luke and I are really happy to have you on.

Ross Baird: Thank you. Henry and Luke and Justin. The work you do, all of you do, and the ministry you are really practicing every day here is remarkable. And I’m a longtime listener. First-Time Caller, I would say great to be on the bike.

Henry Kaestner: That’s awesome. All right. That’s a great encouragement. I’ve told more and more people recently that when they say nice things about our podcast, because, you know, I have some amount of insecurity about it because I’ve been told that I have a face made for radio, but I’ve also been told that I have a voice made for print journalism. And so whenever anybody says something nice about podcasts, it just encourages me. So thank you for that. One of the things, as a frequent listener to the podcast, you’ll know, is that we always like to get started by asking somebody their background, who you are, where you come from, maybe a little bit about your faith journey. But what brought you right up to Village Capital?

Ross Baird: Yeah. So I guess starting at your question and working backwards to Village Capital is an organization I co-founded over a decade ago, really seeking to invest in entrepreneurs that are building great businesses, building successful businesses, but also having an intentional impact on the communities where they are and going. The first investment we made was in a couple of entrepreneurs in New Orleans. As you mentioned, Henry, post-Katrina, where there was an amazing all of the big companies had left New Orleans after Katrina and there were all these forecasts the city was dead. People will never come back. But there was this amazing community of entrepreneurs doing their best to rebuild the city from education to food to different types of industries. And what brought me to New Orleans as an anchor of this company I was starting going through the journey really was shaped by my faith and really was shaped by people who walked and guided me and walked along with me. A mentor of mine at university, I went to University of Virginia. So we have Duke and Carolina and basketball

Henry Kaestner: number in football for like 20 years.

Luke Roush: A rare opportunity, Henry, for you and I to tag team and just beat up on a guest together. Yes, it’s a shared a rare shared

Henry Kaestner: history very few times that we had that opportunity. And so let’s not let’s not miss it. Yeah.

Ross Baird: Keep it coming. You can make fun of me at the pace of play in Virginia. Basketball you have.

Henry Kaestner: Well, yes, so there’s that. But you do have the national championship. We’re going to leave out the fact that you had lost to my hometown, you MBC Retriever’s. But that’s clearly not important. But if you listen to the podcast before you know that I love the sport of lacrosse and there is a reigning national champion in lacrosse and unfortunately, it’s not Carolina.

Ross Baird: That’s right. But we’ll take it. So I was at the University Virginia, and one of my mentors is a woman. She was a religious studies professor named Nicole, heard very deeply committed Christian. She’d done her PhD work on Saint Katharine Drexel. And I was very interested in education policy and kind of education is the theme. And Saint Katharine Drexel had gone all across the country and set up these Catholic schools serving the poor and cities like Philadelphia and New Orleans. And after Katrina hit, this was 2005, right after the storm, Nicole had had a very strong relationship still with these nuns who ran essentially schools for poor black kids in New Orleans. And she contacted these nuns that she had built these lifelong relationships with and said, well, how can we help? And there were three schools. There were St. Augustine, Saint Xavier and St. Mary’s and St. Xavier Prep is right off Magazine Street. It was on high ground and it didn’t flooded St. Augustine and St. Mary’s had. And the nun who ran the school’s sister, Eileen, said, we are. Trying to do whatever we can to keep the doors open because not every kid is left and they need to go to school and they literally need to, Nicole organized students from UVA to go down. And we slept in the gym of Xavier Prep, which didn’t have power or hot water. And we did what we could. We cleaned out teachers homes. We worked on moving student records from trying and trying to get these schools back open. And I really was amazed and inspired by these nuns working to keep the school open and the teachers going back. Just the resiliency of everybody flashing forward a few years later. I have always been an entrepreneur, always been working on different ideas. And as I think about my journey, I think we’re really shaped by the people who come before us and the people who are examples to us. There is a guy who was a mentor of mine from church growing up. He saw around him might be listing name is Bob Patiala. He was a very successful real estate entrepreneur in Atlanta, and he got very into angel investing in startup investing, particularly in mission driven companies. And I started an education idea coming out of college at UVA. And I originally went and asked Bob for a grant to support my company, I think setting up as a nonprofit. But we had actually gotten a couple of contracts for sponsorship and we had some revenue coming in. And we need a little bit of money. And Bob, because you don’t need a grant, you need a loan. And I said that’s like you need a bridge loan. I would do that. I guess that sounds great, Bob. I’ll take it. What’s a Bridgland? And Bob said, let me take you waste when you have cash coming in, but you don’t have it today and someone makes a loan to you, you can pay them back. The Bob, explain to me the relationship. If I’m your grant maker, then you’ll just come back to me anytime you need money. But if I’m your investor, then we’re partners, then we’re in it together. And that was a real insight of and this is something you talk about on the Faith Driven Investor, Faith Driven Entrepreneur community all the time. The spiritual relationship of an investment relationship is two way. It’s a very different power. Dynamic partnership. I have money. You are someone who wants my money. You will do what I say because I’m the person with money. And so Bob really showed me why investing just was a valuable and resonant thing to begin with. And Nicole had introduced me this amazing community in New Orleans. And so make a long story short with Bob, I started what became village capital, which was one of the first impact investment funds, investing in entrepreneurs that had a core mission driving the company. And we were really looking for people who were overlooked and undervalued and off the beaten track. And so what I did, I called up Sister Eileen and went down to New Orleans and spent a few days down there with Sister Eileen, who still ran the school. And we met a number of New Orleans. And I think the insight of why start in New Orleans? And I think we’re going to talk about this podcast of investing locally. If you build a great business in New York City, you’re one of a million people who are making money in New York City. If you build a great business in New Orleans, there’s a greater civic and public and community good. And just seeing how people building, whether it’s a charter school or an agricultural company or something, how people in New Orleans were committed to the greater project of rebuilding New Orleans in addition to their own business success was I mean, it was a moment in time that was incredibly inspiring. So that’s a long answer to your question. That’s I guess that’s

Henry Kaestner: a great answer. I mean, you’ve got your origination story in there and a lot comes out. There’s the part about mentors. So I’ve heard about connecting with Bob a couple of times and I know how formative he’s been in a lot of people’s stories. I didn’t know that he had been formative in years. I think that’s super cool. I want to get back in to and just explore this a little bit more, because you’re right, we tend to be drawn to financial capitals. I live in Silicon Valley. People tend to think that companies that are started in Silicon Valley, at least in some sectors like tech enabled consumer goods and general technology, are better here. And yet there’s something different about investing in your backyard. And there’s even a name for that. And I tell you, this University of Delaware grad, I’m always grateful for a new word to be added to my vocabulary. I’ve got a long way to go, but top Ophelia. What is top aphelion mean and why does it animate so much of your work?

Ross Baird: So I studied Greek in college mainly for a number of different motivations. One is I wanted to read the New Testament and the original, which was. Wow.

Henry Kaestner: So my so my story on Greek is that I had to say the Greek alphabet three times before the match burned my finger. So we had different experiences learning the Greek language.

Ross Baird: I am Greek life and a number of ways, but so village capital we.

Henry Kaestner: But seriously, I’m sorry I’m running all over you on this, but that’s fascinating. As a college student, you wanted to take Greek so that you could read God’s word in its original language. I mean, that’s not bad.

Ross Baird: And the interesting stories in the ancient Pallot, I mean, I think we live with truths that are enduring. And so, you know, if you can read Plato and Socrates and Jesus in the original written tongue, that’s pretty enduring wisdom. And so the idea of these stories, insurance that have persisted for a long time and understanding what human rights are, is just that resonates with me a lot. So I took Latin in high school and loved it for a lot of the same reasons. And being able to study Greek, to be able to read Homer and Plato and the New Testament was really meaningful. I didn’t think we would get into that. But you asked to Ophelia. So long story short, I got to become obsessed with the word to Ophelia, which is now maybe my favorite word, because it’s a village capital. We built a portfolio of one hundred different enterprises, ninety five percent of which are outside of New York, Boston, San Francisco. We have a broad range of entrepreneurs. About 40 percent of our CEOs are women. About 30 percent are people of color. We have we have some amazing, amazing people in this portfolio. And I was in Colorado a few years ago and I was fortunate enough to have breakfast with John Hickenlooper, who was then the governor and now the US senator and Colorado. That year there had just been a study that came out that said Colorado had four of the ten most dynamic entrepreneurial cities in the country. And I said, Governor, what is it about Colorado? And he goes, I can tell you in one word, top Ophelia is, you know, it took a few years and I wasn’t like, oh, yes, I studied. I was like, no, tell tell me.

Henry Kaestner: And it was just a moment of real mischief. Did you know it? But you didn’t want to say it.

Ross Baird: I did know it. Friend of mine named Erik in high school one time told me, like Ross, you’re such a know it all. Like you try and finish everyone sentences and stories and it’s really annoying. Even if you knew the answer, just keep your mouth shut and let people tell their stories. And I mean, I don’t always like that is a good lesson. So, you know, I was into my high school friend and let him finish his story, which was great. And he said to Ophelia is the Greek word for patriotism. And if you think of Greece, you have the city state like Athens means something. Sparta means something very different. It’s the warrior city. And like love of place, patriotism is love of your specific place for specific reasons. And so if you think of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, all wonderful cities, all very different. But if you live in Boulder, you live there for a specific reason. If you live in Colorado Springs, are there specific reason? And they’re very different cultures and neither is better or worse. They’re just they’re very different. And what Governor Hickenlooper said is like we have so many places in Colorado that have such a good sense of themselves that people are just very into getting involved in their place because they love it and they come here for a reason. And if you are a place with a sense of yourself, you’re going to have a dynamic entrepreneurial culture. And that one word tip, Ophelia summed up probably ten years of observations from New Orleans in two thousand nine. If you move to New Orleans in two thousand nine, you’re going there for a reason. If you’ve lived in New Orleans for fifty years, you have history and tradition and things that matter. And so I think to Ophelia, for all of us, the place we live, the city we live, and how our family gets involved, the church we go to. I mean, my wife and I got married at a church in Atlanta as a church plant called Chiros. That is still, you know, we don’t live in Atlanta. It was still one of the most vibrant communities. I mean, when you’re in a place that has to feel it, you know, you just do.

Luke Roush: Well, the other thing but that just raises for me is this idea that as people are more mobile, there’s more and more self selection into different places in different communities and different environments. And there’s both opportunity in that. There’s also risk in that. Right, because you can find yourself in an echo chamber because you self select into a community that’s naturally more comfortable. And so it’s interesting. I want to get just tactical for a moment. And just if you wouldn’t mind sharing on to meaningful ways that you’ve discovered better invest in communities. So common threads that tend to correlate with more impact, maybe even more effective value creation financially. What are some common threads there?

Ross Baird: One thing that I think about all the time when we think about investing locally, I think in in the entrepreneurial world, in the San Francisco Silicon Valley, where people are so obsessed with scale, scale, scale, scale, scale, scale, how do you invest in Greenville, South Carolina, or Colorado Springs, Colorado, and a quote on quote, scalable way. And if you look at Jesus’s understanding of power, when he sends out the disciples, he thinks about scale in a very different way. Jesus never leaves about a 30 mile radius in his entire life, because I think part of the lesson that I draw from that is active engagement and ministry is, by its nature, not scalable. And Jesus is fighting against the Roman Empire in a very profound philosophical way, where Jesus is asked to be the king that controls everything. And that’s the understanding of power through the eyes of the Roman Empire. And he says no. Instead, I am going to have a number of disciples and we’re going to be in a community together and we are going to minister to each other. But we are going to send you to Thessalonika or wherever you’re going, and you’re going to have your own 30 mile radius where you’re going to do your ministry. And that is what it looks like. And so I mentioned people like Sister Eileen in New Orleans or Bob Patillo in Atlanta, or he was on the podcast recently, my very dear friend and co-founder of Blue Print Local Brice Butler. Brice Butler is a great influence on me and a very close friend. Bryce has been a huge influence on my thinking of community investment with and he talked about this on the podcast. But his investment in one street corner and one neighborhood has had both really good financial outcomes and really strong ripple effects into projects we’re working on in places like Baltimore. It’s like, oh, we did this in Louisville. Here’s what we do in Baltimore. So the way the way to think about starting is if you are an investor allocating capital and you say, I care about Durham, I want to invest in Durham, figure out who is on the ground doing the work already, who has a very well thought out point of view and its values aligned with you. Or if you say I’m from Baltimore and I haven’t been back to Baltimore and think about who is on the ground locally, because I think the most effective people that we invest in and with have been doing the work for years, if not decades, and will be doing the work for years, if not decades.

Luke Roush: Yeah, yeah. Well, we’ve seen this too. And just, you know, communities here in the US and also communities internationally, people who are really committed to present steady direction, long period of time tend to have the biggest impact because they really understand sort of the local context. So as you think about kind of wading in in that manner, how do you think about identifying who the right partners are? Kind of on the ground? We’re huge fans of Bryce. His knowledge of Louisville is a great example of just kind of understanding the local context. How do you how do you find that you do that as you work in different parts of the country?

Ross Baird: I think the embrace of this on a prior podcast, I think the idea of one pocket investing or one pocket thinking is a critical precondition. And when I was raising those capital’s first fund early on, I pitched a very successful Atlanta entrepreneur who actually was very strong Christian, very moral guy, very big philanthropist on investing and mission driven companies to get a young man. I got two pockets with one. I make as much money as I can with my other. And his wife were extremely generous. He is with the other. We give it all the way. And so he goes, boy, which pocket are you asking me for here? And turns out I tried to explain what I meant and he didn’t get it. And it was just that was not my most success. He had a couple of those conversations. Yeah. Yeah. That was not my most successful new relationship conversation, but it did. The two pocket. One pocket has resonated with me. I mean, we for example, so we are doing a project in Richmond where we’re backing a local group who are from there. They’ve been there for thirty years. They’ve acquired an entire city block in a historically distressed black neighborhood. They’ve organized project four years. It’s going to open this summer. There will be mixed income workforce, affordable housing. Richmond’s fastest growing startup is relocating its headquarters, the neighborhood, which will be great for economic development. And then there’s a ground floor. There will be a food hall for local food entrepreneurs, nine men and women from the neighborhood who have always wanted to start a restaurant or a food truck. They’ll have space to do it. The financial engineering to do a food hall for local entrepreneurs, a headquarters for a great local company, and affordable housing is way more complicated. Even more complicated than if we just wanted to build a nice cookie cutter apartments that didn’t have any kind of affordability or community, but the person leading the project is from their lives. They’re so deeply committed making. And for him, all of these things flow together. To have a healthy community, you need to have a mix of rents. If the place is going to be worth living, it’s much better to have the local guy making barbecue than Dunkin Donuts or some kind of commodity. And I think when you get into business and impact, there is a false sense of trade off that if you are more intentional about your values and what you want to show up with your leaving something on the table, I think if you’re more intentional about your values, what you’re going to do is better. And I think this is why investing locally is so important in the abstract. You don’t see it, but when you put money into something locally, you have to live with the outcome every day for good or for bad. And a lot of the problems with our economy is people are short term thinkers and don’t see long term externalities and the long term externalities of a really bad project, if it’s in your neighborhood, like you’re going to feel that much more, you’re going to work harder to make it an awesome and redemptive project, because living with it every day will be a joy. Yes.

Luke Roush: Yeah. Well, I’m from Richmond, so I love the fact that you’re doing something there is in Churchill or what part of the

Ross Baird: Manchester south side of the river. So, yeah. And that’s be not a lot of investment has gone there, but it’s a very cool project

Henry Kaestner: and it’s like this emphasis a lot on local investments. And it’s amazing that you’ve got a project going on in Baltimore where I’m from, and Richmond where it looks from. It makes me think about for whatever reason over the last half hour as we’ve been talking, it makes me think about first to Jerusalem, then to some area and then to the ends of the earth. And so there’s some sense of locality like right behind, you know, this comes out of Jerusalem. So first here, then summer. And there’s a progression that includes this kind of a both in both local and then overseas. But there’s a sequence there. And I think that that’s really key. Also touch on something that Louis and I both have seen in our investment careers, which is the importance of local capital. Now, there’s a little bit different application here because you’re doing things in America. Look, of course, has much more experience overseas. He started the sovereigns in cofounding Sovereign’s Capital. He moved his family over to Indonesia. And one of the things that we found that was most successful was being able to invest with local partners. And without that, we would have been completely sunk. But with it, we’ve been able to have extraordinary returns to the fund, which we’re very grateful for. But if I was going to go back to something other than divine providence as to why that has been successful, it’s finding local partners, local skin in the game, if you will. So you are not living in Richmond, you’re not living in Baltimore, you’re not living in Louisville or New Orleans. US a little bit about that. For somebody listening to the podcast saying, how do I go about that? I think I get that intellectually. But how do you do it?

Ross Baird: Yeah, I mean, I think a huge part of investing is translation. And so the name blueprint is very intentional. We do not show up. I’ll give you an example. We’ve made an investment in Houston, which is workforce affordable housing, right by the Texas Medical Center, Texas Medical Center, a huge driver, biggest economic success story going on in Houston. The average employee think of a nurse or a frontline staffer has more than an hour commute. It’s not affordable for the young people who work there to live nearby there. So workforce housing right next door to Texas Medical Center, huge economic development priority for Houston. You go to Baltimore, there’s plenty of affordable housing. There’s a lot of Baltimore. The first investment we made was in the redevelopment of Penn Station, the Amtrak station, which is one hundred years old, historic landmark connected to DC, connected to New York, and connectivity to the economy and commercial activity is a much bigger priority in Baltimore. That’s kind of going pretty well in Houston. And so we didn’t show up to Baltimore or Houston and say, hey, everybody, we read a book about Baltimore. Here’s our idea for how to help Baltimore. We did a lot of sitting and listening and waiting for projects. And in both the cases in the Houston project and the Baltimore project, there are local people from there who have been working on those projects for a while, who led and where the investment capital behind it. The biggest challenge that the entrepreneur or the developer or the visionary in Louisville or Fort Collins, however, has often is translating what they’re doing to the capital markets. And I think a good investor is a translator of value. So if you are investing in mission driven businesses in Indonesia, the average person with money in the US would be like, why would you ever do that? How will I make money? Whereas if you’ve been on the ground in Indonesia and village capital, about half of our portfolio is in emerging markets. I’ve been to Indonesia in many places like it for many years. It’s obvious on the ground that there’s a ton of value, so. Translating value from where the capital markets are to where Main Street, literally or figuratively, is, is hugely broken, I think being a good investor means doing that. And so what we do and I think to give you a how does someone get started? I guess the question to ask is, what are your goals? Are your goals hyper local? If you live in Greenville, South Carolina, and you want to make an immediate difference on Greenville, figuring out who in Greenville is working on a compelling, mission driven project to bring a premium, because there’s an interesting project called The Chapel by a guy named Matt McFeely, who you should have on the podcast. He’s a wonderful guy. He’s building affordable housing event, space, commercial corridor in a distressed neighborhood in Greenville. Even if you don’t have a million dollars to invest in Matt’s project, maybe you could, as part of building an intentional community, locate your business or your nonprofit with the communities trying to build. Maybe you could send him referrals of people who could go there. There are ways that you can tangibly help with projects. That’s one way to I think the other than to say Henry is taking a step back outside of what you do in your day to day life, finding random people and figuring out how to help them look at what your money is already doing in the world and see if it reflects your values. So I would bet, for instance, the average resident of Greenville, South Carolina, spends more than 30 percent of their income on housing. It’s one of the most unaffordable cities in the country, per capita income. And also I know this from trying to invest in Greenville. There’s a lack of investment capital interested in Greenville, even though it’s a thriving city, mainly because the real estate funds of Wall Street view Greenville as a third tier kind of podunk southern town. And why would we ever invest there? Now, I would bet that the pension funds of the teachers who live in Greenville are invested in Wall Street firms that are investing in loft apartments in Brooklyn, in Miami. And so the people of Greenville, whether or not you’re rich, your money is in some ways making the problem worse because it’s being run through Wall Street without a values lens. So looking at if you’re wealthy, good for you. You have a lot of say over where your money goes, even if you’re not wealthy, asking questions around what is your money doing in the world and what are the problems you see in your community and how can you make different decisions with your money no matter the size of your pocketbook? Those are really important questions to ask.

Luke Roush: So I just want to double click on that, because I think it’s such a good point about the dislocation between Greenville pensioners and their capital going to New York and then somehow just kind of never finding a way back to kind of round trip back into the community where they operate and maybe just speak. Is that part of kind of one pocket versus two pocket kind of gospel of abundance versus scarcity like?

Ross Baird: Oh, yeah, I think I think about this all the time. I mean, I think about 30 to 40 years ago, this started happening. But Wall Street figuratively went to places like Greenville and Durham and Tulsa and said, we know how to run money. You keep doing your thing, send us your money and we’ll send you seven percent a year and don’t ask any questions. And then those firms started doing things like buying and merging the major employers of Tulsa and Greenville and laying people off. I mean, you could say if Ford or GM, six ships, seven thousand jobs overseas, that’s great for Ford and GM stockholders who might live in Dearborn, Michigan. But if you’re a Dearborn, Michigan, would you rather have seven thousand more jobs in your community or would you rather have 12 cents rise in your stock holdings, which has a lot less? So this detachment and I think this goes back to real spiritual questions around power and agency, this detachment of your own money and your own agency and who’s making decisions has been has been harmfully destructive, I think, for well, in

Luke Roush: somewhat amazingly, you know, in part borne out of a desire to protect consumers. A lot of the Consumer Financial Protection Act actually eliminates the ability for people to invest within their own community because it all has to go into publicly held stocks, which then pushes you in that direction. So it’s actually over the last 20 or 30 years, I think it’s become more difficult for the mass affluent or even to sort of the mass of humanity to be able to direct their capital into their own community.

Ross Baird: Yeah, I mean, it’s really it’s really interesting that Indiegogo, the crowdfunding site, the founder, tells this story all the time about how the Statue of Liberty was actually originally crowd funded by citizens of New York. I mean, this great American icon, there was a movement in New York to say, we want to say we’re welcoming. We want to you know, this is the first thing people see when they come to America. And the people of New York passed the hat and put in a couple of dollars and built the Statue of Liberty. And so if you are a pensioner or a schoolteacher or a twenty two year old recent college graduate. And you have some vision of what you want to invest in in Greenville or New York. It’s extremely difficult.

Henry Kaestner: I thought it was the French, I thought the French, out of their benevolence and open heart and love for all things American, just gave it to us.

Ross Baird: Well, there was some compensation for it.

Henry Kaestner: Oh, we pay them. Yeah. Oh, that story’s getting twisted. I’m not going to eat French fries anymore. OK, I want to ask you a question that we’re starting to ask all the guests that are coming on this show now, sometimes live on air and sometimes not. But it’s something that’s a big topic for both Luke and I and the team here, which is the biblical message of generosity. And in my story, I had my born again again moment when I came to understand how giving might really change my life by bringing me into the work that God was doing in the world. Talk to us a little bit about the way that you give and how you think about it, because I know you’ve thought this out and it’s consistent with how you invest. But how do you and your wife think about giving?

Ross Baird: First of all, the benefit of Google is I just Googled the Statue of Liberty story so our listeners have the right facts. The French gave us the statue. The crowdfunding was for the pedestal and oh, which was extremely expensive because it’s a big statue. So we didn’t sorry. The people of New York built a pedestal for the statue.

Henry Kaestner: It’s a very nice pedestal. It’s the best pedestal I’ve ever seen. So that is interesting. So I can still eat my French fries.

Ross Baird: You can sell your French fries and feel good about local investing when you see. Good job. So how do we get I mean, I think that the invention of the spreadsheet is one of the most seriously harmful things that has ever happened, because I think there are spiritual and non-financial benefits or harms to everything that we do. And I think that to say I give X and it does. Well, I think one thing that my wife and I have started doing in the last few years is turned our giving into a conversation and a practice within our marriage. We actually have a tradition of doing our annual giving in like a date night on New Year’s Eve. But we talk through what do we value, what do we care about? Last night of the year, a couple of years ago, our kid was up late. We didn’t get around to 11, 11. So start earlier in the night if you’re going to do this. But, you know, we thought over the last year about all the pain is happy in the world and how grateful we are for our family. And also all of us living across the US have spent a lot more time closer to home in our family. And so as part of our giving, we thought, what are things happening close to home for our family members that we value and they value? And if we make a donation to that, it will be a way to honor my brother, my sister, and also speak to our values of being in your community is something that’s fundamentally productive. So, for example, my sister lives in Austin, Texas. We gave to the Austin Food Bank because Austin’s a city with a lot of growth and a lot of inequality and a lot of food security. My brother Henry, who you mentioned, lives in Durham, and he was involved in starting a bail fund that’s been a hugely important driver of criminal justice reform in North Carolina, started a nonprofit bail fund and we gave to the nonprofit bail fund in honor of Hindry. And I think, you know, the conversations around why are we doing this and not that. One of our biggest donations was the city of Alexandria, Virginia, where we live. This nonprofit just built a really, really nice, very large homeless shelter about ten blocks from our house. And we walk and drive by it all the time. And we didn’t know anything about it, but we for not ever having visited, we gave them a large sum of money for us because being able to contribute to something down the street that was extremely meaningful meant meant a lot.

Luke Roush: That’s wonderful. I love the idea of what that demonstrates to your family also is that you’re plugged in to what matters to them. And it’s a great way to demonstrate that, you know, how you’re getting. We always like to close out each episode just by hearing a little bit of what God is teaching you right now. So what have you found in God’s word that has stuck with you recently?

Ross Baird: I think more than a year into the pandemic, I think I am just hearing from friends. Family for everyone is just so exhausted. And it is everyone’s in kind of a malaise and it’s a really challenging time. About a month ago, our very, very beloved family dog died and it was just like the worst thing to happen in a really difficult year. Her name was Greg. She was the best dog that will ever live. And I think I was way more broken up about it than I anticipated. I mean, I like crying like a baby. And she was seven and she had aggressive cancer. It was really, really, really sad. And I was talking with one of my best friends from grad school who his father died unexpectedly in the last month. And he was very close to his father and obviously very broken up about it. And I didn’t even I wasn’t even like, yeah, that’s nothing. My dog, just that I was like, I hear you’re suffering and I understand a lot and I pray for you every morning. And I was like, it is no comparison, but I’m really sad about my dog, too. And he said something that he’s a very religious guy. And he said, all of life is suffering. And it actually, you know, I actually feel like I can process what I’m going through with you because you’re suffering with something, too. And that matters a lot. And the verse that resonates with me. This is Second Corinthians one three. Praise be to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of compassion and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. There are probably very few people who have had an amazing and stress free year. I think that we are all suffering in big and little ways with a really massive disruption to our lives. But I think God is speaking to me a lot about kind of processing my own suffering and figuring out how to find comfort with. The Lord and also I am feeling called to try and identify suffering and others probably more proactively than I would just because of what’s going on. And I think the idea of this in some ways goes back to the local theme. I mean, we’re meant to worship in community. We’re meant to suffer in community. We’re meant to rejoice in community. One of the most deadly effects of the covid pandemic, I think, has been chronic loneliness. So it God is really speaking to me to to identify and call out what I am struggling with and what I need comfort with and also what other people in my life might be struggling with. It might be comfort with, too. And it’s been an amazing spiritual conversation.