Rusty Rueff: That’s right, everyone. You’re right where you should be. Here on the Faith Driven Investor podcast. Thanks for joining us once again. Our guest today is Richard Okello. Richard is a co-founder and partner at Sango Capital. Sango is a premier partner for global institutional investors looking for attractive, risk adjusted and impactful returns in Africa. Prior to that, he was a principal at Makena Capital, a large private endowment which invested over $15 billion into over 300 funds. Richard also worked with Ray Dalio as a partner at Bridgewater Associates. That’s a $150 billion global hedge fund. Today, he’s joining us to share his story and his insights about the investment landscape and the rising opportunities in Africa. Let’s join in.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. This is an episode that I’ve been really looking forward to recording for a long time. God has done something that in my heart, as I looked to steward the capital He has entrusted me with in Africa. Some of you may know part of my story, and that after an entrepreneurial background we started Sovereign’s Capital and we did not start investing in Africa. We invested in the United States and then Southeast Asia. We have an office in Jakarta and through the grace of God, that’s worked out really well. But I guess it was probably three years ago that I went on a trip that was half adventure, half safaris, and then half service with my family and another family. And it had been since 1985, since I’ve been East Africa and Nairobi had completely changed. You know, I was astounded by the extent and the scope of economic progress in that time. And I looked all around me and it was business. And there’s the marketplace, you know, it’s booming. And yes, there are food stalls and some of the things that you might see in developing economies. But there are some big high rises and there are lots of people dressed up as if they just came out of Wall Street. And I was like, oh, my goodness, here’s an economic powerhouse and somehow I’ve missed it. I wonder what the Faith Driven Entrepreneur scene is like here. I wonder what the Faith Driven Investor scene is like here. And so I got a great opportunity to go back a couple of times. We did a couple of Faith Driven Entrepreneur events and then a great trip to Nairobi to talk to local Faith Driven Investor to talk about what they are seeing and what they’re investing in. And that began this quest of mine to figure out how to deploy capital there and how to do it well. And what does it look like to be invited in and who is doing it? Who is doing it? Well, that question for me, that theme, that concept was furthered last year during the Faith Driven Investor conference when we had Finny Kuruvilla talk. And what I thought may have been there’s so many great talks in last year’s conference, but Finny’s talk about Christopher Columbus really, really resonated with me, and I’m going to paraphrase it a bit here. And he said effectively, you got to know that Columbus was an Italian. And when he went to get venture capital for his endeavors, he went first Italy and it didn’t work out. And then he went to Portugal also didn’t work out. He went to Spain. It did. That’s why they speak Spanish and Ecuador and Chile and Peru and all over Latin America. And then he went on to say, Do you know that in Africa, over the next 20 years, there will be more entrance into the job marketplace in sub-Saharan Africa than either India or China? It’s a young population. It is one with a lot of economic vibrancy. And Finny effectively posed this question to us What language are they going to be speaking in Africa? Are they going to be speaking the language of looking at bring God’s glory through all that they do, through the restoration and redemption of the price and services they make through the way that they love their neighbor, are they going to be doing excellence in bearing witness to God, or are they just going to be worshiping Mammon? And that was a great question. I think there’s so much of any type of market development comes from who the investors are. And we’ve seen that over and over again in society. And we’ve seen one Christians step up, as the Moravians did in Suriname and so many others did in Africa in the 1800s. And we have this opportunity to do the same now in Africa. Now, I don’t know what kind of image is conjured up. When I talk about Africa. You might be thinking of a safari trip in the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro. You might be thinking of starving folks in Ethiopia. I don’t know what that looks like, but I’ll tell you that my picture was completely redefined through the trip that I took three years ago. And why I’m really excited about a trip that we are having to Nairobi and to South Africa coming up this fall. But my hope is that during this time, in this next 30 minutes or so with an interview with Richard Okello at Sango Capital, that you will have a more nuanced, a more textured, a more up to date, a more real vision of Africa and its potential and its impact and potential for societal change and what that means to you as an investor. So without further ado, I want to welcome Richard Okello to the podcast. Richard’s become our friend and somebody who’s been a great encouragement to me as I’ve been able to track with Sango Capital now. Over more than a year. Richard, thank you for being with us.

Richard Okello: Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here.

Henry Kaestner: It’s awesome to have you on the program. It’s awesome to be a financial partner with you, which I should probably mention in full disclosure, our family office has invested in Richard, and you need to know that. But we will be featuring many as we have before. We’ll be featuring many other guests. And not all of them will be ones that we invest in, but all of them will be ones. They’ll give you a sense as to what’s going on and what God is doing in the marketplace there. Richard, as we get started, can you tell us a bit about your background, who you are, where you come from? One of the things, of course, that’s made such an impact on me is to see this heart that you have for Africa and then also some very real investment experience information in the United States as well. Bring us through who you are and how you’ve gotten to where you are now.

Richard Okello: Thank you, Henry. So my story could be very long and I get very passionate about it. But if I was to summarize it in four words, I would say it is the providence of God, literally. It is the providence of God. And so I’m going, run it through some of the snippets and you start to draw a thread. So I grew up in Uganda at a very interesting time in Uganda’s history. I was born halfway through Idi Amin’s reign. Idi Amin was sort of the worst president that Uganda had. Most people would sort of agree with that. Most people know who he was. And then I lived through the early parts of seeing the country transition to some of its best times. I went to school there. I was fortunate to get a scholarship to complete high school in Wales, in the U.K. and then I got another scholarship to go to Swarthmore College in the US. That scholarship happened at the time. I thought it was very accidental, but as you’ll see, it wasn’t because the then dean of admissions of Swarthmore just so happened to visit Wales that year. He has just so happened to come to that school for the first time. I just so happened to run into him in the hallways thinking he was lost. We had a great conversation and he said to me, You got to apply to Swarthmore. And I applied Swarthmore, I got in, could not get enough financial aid, could not afford to go. That was just about to decide to go elsewhere. And then I got a call from Swarthmore saying, hey, we’re sorry to let you know that Dean of admissions had a heart attack and passed away while he was hiking. This was a 40 some old years old guy. Right? So now I thought to myself, well, now I got to go to Swarthmore. I got to figure out a way to go Swarthmore. So anyway, eventually made it to Swarthmore, completed Swarthmore in three years, and the year that I graduated was the first year that Bridgewater Associates decided to recruit from Swarthmore in five years. Okay, so I interviewed Bridgewater. Don’t get an offer. Two days before I’m due to take another offer. Bridgewater calls me and says, Hey, we’d like you to come in, meet the team, want to make an offer? And I almost say no. Right. Because it’s, you know, two days before my other offer. Right. So anyway, get down to Bridgewater to meet Ray Dalio for the first time. What a phenomenal meeting. Get sold on Bridgewater, decide to join. And then of course, part of the rest of that is history. You know, the farm grows incredibly quickly, doubled every year that I was there. I was fortunate enough to become a partner there five years in. And as you can see at this point, I’ve used the term fortunate enough, fortunate enough enough that you start to see that this is really not just being fortunate. Right? This is about the guided providence of God at each time along the way. So anyways, so fast forward nine years at Bridgewater went to work for a new farm because at the time I felt a nudge that that was the time to leave and go over from the public side of investing to the private side of investing. So Bridgewater was all public markets, equities, bonds, currencies, etc. went over to Makena Capital, which was just getting started. Lots of people at Bridgewater thought that was crazy to do, did not make sense to them. Lots of things we do well, guided by the providence of God actually do seem crazy at the inception. Right. But we went anyway and Makena was a great story. Five and a half years, that tremendous experience investing in private equity, real estate, other just other investments. And that is where the seed of Sango capital, which is my current venture, started, we started investing in Africa. Well, we’re there and eventually felt the nudge again to leave Makena and come set up Sango. So that was about 8 to 9 years ago. And here we are. We’ve been investing here for quite a while now. We’re up to about half a billion dollars in assets. We’ve attracted some really interesting investors who who had never been to Africa physically or invested in Africa. And again, to sum that up, that is in four words the providence of God.

Henry Kaestner: So when you talk about investing in Africa, you are in Africa now. So at some point in time you said, in order for me to be a really good investor in Africa, of course I need to be there and on the ground. And so you did not move back to Uganda. You’re in South Africa, correct?

Richard Okello: Yeah.

Henry Kaestner: Tell us about that transition. I’m just you’re at the top of your game and you’re Wall Street. And for those of you don’t know Ray Dalio, Ray Dalio is like the investment guru, for lack of a better word, been remarkably successful. Bridgewater one of the most successful firms in the history of Wall Street. And you’re there during those formative days, and there must have been some real temptations or draws to keep you there when you are at a successful financial firm like that and you’re in on the Wall Street crowd, and there is you have the house in the Hamptons, you have the ski house in southern Vermont. And the trappings there are pretty significant. It’s not often that somebody will break out of that environment and then go and set up shop for a new fund in Africa. Tell us about what that look like.

Richard Okello: So I think it was it could have been a lot tougher, frankly. And if I hadn’t had the history that I had, if I had just sort of grown up in a fairly well-to-do family and let’s say my parents had paid for me to go to school in the US, I’d gone into Bridgewater. I think I might have relied a lot more on the trappings of the position around me than I did on oh what did God think about this. What was the nudge? What was the calling? Why was I here? What was I doing right? And I think often times we struggle with those two pieces, right? So, you know, we pray and we ask God to help us do certain things and we try to walk by faith. And He puts us in this incredibly privileged position. And it is very, very difficult to not forget it is easy to forget once you’re in those positions, how you got there, why you’re there and not appreciate the fact that you’re only there for a season, you’re there to steward set in things, to accomplish certain things. And only in looking back do you realize that if you keep with those seasons, you will do some phenomenal things. And if you overstay your season in a particular places, it’s not like you’ll kind of fall off a cliff or anything, but you’ll miss out on a bunch of really cool stuff. And when I start to talk about some of the things we’re doing in Africa, I mean, they are phenomenal things. You know, I’ve gone from trying to be a good investor, trying to run a good business and be respected in a certain space to affecting millions of people. With our investments, literally seeing millions of people’s lives changed. I’ll talk about examples. So I think what helped me during those times Henry, I look back on the journey and I realized that this journey had very little to do with me and my abilities and everything to do with being guided and being nudged in a particular direction. So when the nudge came. I realized it was time to leave. And so then putting the trappings within that context made it easier than it otherwise would have been, I think, to walk away. Just to give you a practical sense of that. I mean, when I decided to go out for my Makena, I had a 15 minute conversation with Ray Dalio. I basically called him and I said, Hey, I want to talk about something. And Ray Dalio and I, which was fortunate for me, had built both a professional relationship and a personal relationship over time. And so when I sat down with him, I said, I have this great opportunity to be one of a handful of people that have worked here and can go work for a large global endowment, investing lots of money in all kinds of things, getting great experience. His first reaction was not a typical hedge fund owner, a typical hedge fund, which kind of gets called security. How can you do this to us? We did all these things for you that sort of need the office, right? He said to me, let’s talk about this opportunity. What do you like about it do you know these people? Do you trust them? What do you want to do? And then he said, Look, if I was your age and this came along, I would absolutely do it. Now, the question is, how are we going to transition out? You’re the first person in your position that is leaving. That’s not being fired. I’m not retiring. And we essentially had a handshake because I said to him, I will leave when we’re all good here. That’s basically the deal. Like nothing written on. I’ll just leave when everyone’s happy. Right? And that’s what I did. And to this day, we’ve maintained that personal relationship. But I think that all comes back to, again, in my view, the providence of God, the hand of God, the unseen hand of God, guiding, helping, you know, nudging, taking you out of harm’s way. Right? Sending people your way that are helpful at the right time and so on.

Henry Kaestner: So you talk about the opportunity to go and do a bunch of cool things, and I have a sense of that because I’ve seen some of that on the ground and I’m encouraged by it. Help us understand what some of those cool things have been since you’ve returned to Africa. What are the projects that you’re involved in? And see if you can just kind of paint this picture at the outset. In the introduction, I mentioned the fact that there’s this all this opportunity. Help listeners to this podcast, understand what you saw as you move back to Africa and what you continue to see.

Richard Okello: Okay. So having grown up in Africa, I think my lens, I went back every single year since I had left to go to high school. Every single year I went back for good chunks of time to visit family and so on. So I was able to maintain a thread running thread of observation, you know, not with standing the fact that I was mostly out of the country most of the time. And I think the first thing that I noted was that it seemed to me that for the first time in Africa’s history, the people that stood to gain more from instability than what they lost had diminished relative to those who stood to lose more from instability. So what had happened? People’s incomes had risen. People have gone from you know, when I grew up in Uganda, when I was five or six or seven. My primary focus was safety. It’s Idi Amin, it’s volatile. It’s chaotic. It’s all about safety. Forget electricity. No one is talking about having your vitamins. Right. Like that’s just a non-issue, right? You’re just trying to be safe and alive. And I started to realize that that had changed as people’s incomes rose. You know, they sent their kids to better schools. They wanted to keep their kids in those schools. They started to become more focused on their health care and on the things that lots of people in this call now focus on started to become much more important. And for those things to continue, stability was very important. And that became a broad based theme across most countries that I went to. And that, to me, was the first real sign that the tide had turned permanently in this geography. Right. Like once that happens and people take that into their own hands, then they’ll do they’ll do everything to protect that situation. So that was the first observation. I think the second observation was that I was mostly operating in a world where private investments were all about squeezing out the last bit of efficiency.

Henry Kaestner: Richard, that’s fascinating. When you talk about this framework and I just hope that you can repeat it, because I think that there’s something really there that is going to help a lot of people to think about emerging markets, because there is a group of people that want things to stay the same. And then there’s a group of people that want to see change.

Richard Okello: Yes.

Henry Kaestner: And what you want to do as an investor in any type of emerging market and not all emerging markets are create equally. But you want to go in and you want to look for certain things. And what you had said was, I saw where for the first time the number of people and the power of people that wanted to see something new and see new opportunity eclipsed that of those who had a vested interest in seeing things stay the same.

Richard Okello: Yes.

Henry Kaestner: When you saw that dynamic shift, you said that’s where I need to enter. And so if we’re thinking about things right now and we think about emerging markets, and maybe there are 100 countries or 150 countries that might make that up. That’s a great frame. I’m thinking about investing in Venezuela. Okay. Are there more people there with power that have a vested interest in keeping things the same?

Richard Okello: Absolutely.

Henry Kaestner: Or are there more people now that are in the marketplace have a vested interest in seeing progression? That’s really interesting. Okay. Continue on, please.

Richard Okello: So, look, that was the first thing I observed. The second was that the lens that I had as an African on opportunity and risk needed to be adjusted. And that’s me as an African who grew up there, who has family. Who has a network there who has invested personally there. Right. So never mind. Listeners, on this podcast, who isn’t in African? Never invested there, never been. And so the lens really has to shift. How did it have to shift? I had grown up primarily investing in developed markets to a lesser extent emerging markets in Asia, but, you know, developed markets in much, much markets in Asia. And those markets were larger, more efficient, much more organized. And the types of opportunities and the types of risks you have in those markets are very different. So the types of opportunities you have are can you find someone who has a highly specialized skill, who can take a business and make him go a certain direction to squeeze out certain efficiencies? And maybe that gets you a great return and has some impact on the people that that business such. And if. I was to take that mindset into Africa. It would be a disaster because where Africa was was not there, where Africa was, was. Whereas a middle market business, for example, in the US might be growing at eight or ten or 12% a year. Businesses in Africa are generally growing at 20, 30, 40, 50, 100% a year. And when a business is growing that quickly, first of all, it’s generally a simple business. There is demand. You know, I remember going to Ethiopia and there was a water beverage business selling bottled water, and there are trucks going out the back and the guy was rationing the bottled water. You know, people would come up and he’d say, I’ll give you ten cartons or I’ll give you three. That’s right. I’ll give you 15 30. This is just water in a plastic bottle. Right. And it’s not like something you and I don’t think about when we go to a grocery store. Right. So those types of businesses, what they needed was capital, good governance. Right. So it’s probably run by someone and his wife or his cousin, you know, good governance, board structure and so on. Probably help expanding a factory or help defining the route to market or trying to get them out of things they shouldn’t be doing right that they’ve had to do in order to get off the ground and so on. And the impact on returns that you could generate and the impact on the people that it touched was just unprecedented. But I hadn’t seen anything like this, meaning you could go into markets and deliver very interesting returns and you could impact millions of people at the same time without a tradeoff between the two. So that to me was particularly attractive because from where I sat, the trade off was acute and you generated lots of returns and it wasn’t clear if you had any positive impact on anyone. Right, or you had impact, but it was basically a charitable phenomenon. Right? Right. I think that was the second thing that was really attractive. I think the third thing was realizing just how much skill had gone back into Africa. So as I was growing up, lots of people like me would have left, gone to school abroad, walked abroad and so on. And as global crisis started to happen. So, for example, when the global financial crisis happened, lots of people moved back, people lost their jobs where they were in New York. They moved back and then they realized, gosh, the opportunity is actually quite significant. So the aggregation of skill sets had risen much faster than I anticipated, again, as an African. Never mind, if I wasn’t in African. Right? They pull those things together and you’ve got a shifting mindset, you’ve got a differentiated opportunity set and you’ve got skillsets that are on the ground. And you can do that in a way that delivers returns that has impact, I don’t know where else in the world at scale where you can do that. So that for me was the attractive point.

Henry Kaestner: You mentioned something in there that’s incredibly important and that’s governance. And governance is going to be a novel concept in some of the markets in which you’ve invested. Talk us through a little bit about that because I think it’s probably twofold, right? It’s setting up the right governance on the ground and then having some sort of rule of law and court system that can uphold that type of governance. Where are you seeing that happen and where are you finding the type of countries that you have confidence in investing less? There be a problem and there’s some amount of rule of law there on force, the contracts that you put in place.

Richard Okello: So in Africa, you essentially have three legal systems. There’s an English or Anglophone legal system that was driven by the English colonialists wherever they were. There’s a French system written by the French colonialists, and then there’s a Portuguese system, legal system. What we found in general is that the strength of those systems goes English, French, Portuguese. That’s the starting point. So if you are operating in a country that had a huge English influence, colonial, otherwise the law is generally strong, pretty strong. It is very commercial in intent, it is less personable. It’s just, you know, a deal is a deal and it’s kind of that’s the law. Yes. People want to connect personally, but the law is the anchor. And the law has been well-tested for decades. Yes. So people have started. Businesses lost them, bought, sold, sued the government, the government sued the people. All of that’s just established. So you’re not establishing precedence at all. All you’re doing is stepping into an environment where people know and I used to what kind of what you’re trying to do right now. There’s a handful of countries that, you know, if you’re in West Africa, for example, in Ghana and Nigeria, that that is the case. You know, if you’re in southern Africa, in Zambia, that’s the case in South Africa. Obviously, that’s the case in East Africa. In Kenya, that’s generally the case. So there is a bunch of countries where that’s the case. I think the French law is I would put, you know, not far off from the British law in that sense, which is where you’ve had a long history of the French. So Francophone, West Africa, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, pretty well established law, well established law firms, judges, the court system, the precedents of legal interpretation and so on and so forth. I think the Portuguese is generally where we would have struggled and we’ve generally stayed away from those countries. Angola is still challenging. Mozambique is still challenging. You could do a lot of really good things to impact people there, but the legal system is quite challenging and so you have to tread carefully. So that’s the legal system. But I think the notion of governance to me is the legal system is important within that context. But what’s much more important is the who do you do business with? Because as we’ve seen in many countries, whether investing in Brazil or in Russia and China, people can figure out ways to get you tied up in the legal system. So the legal system by itself is not sufficient. I mean, you know, the places in the U.S. where you do business and you might just be stuck in court for two years to give up the legal system doesn’t break, but you break before it breaks, right? Mm hmm. And what’s important I find in Africa, but in generally emerging markets, is really understanding your counterpart. Are you doing business with people who are just honest, honest before you ever met them? They have a track record of being honest. They pursue honesty. Honesty is part of who they are viewed as. They will operate with you in a transparent fashion even after you’re gone.

Henry Kaestner: That that’s I mean, everybody can gather that, of course, you know, can you trust the person or not? But you have to be able to diligence that. What does that look like for you when you’re investing? You’ve got an entrepreneur, a business leader. It looks, you know, a great opportunity and yet you’ve got to trust them. How do you figure out whether it’s somebody you can trust?

Richard Okello: It is lots of hours talking to people in your network locally. It’s lots of hours talking to people in person about someone else, watching their body language when they respond. There are certain countries, for example, where people just don’t like to talk about bad things culturally. And so if you called them on a Zoom call, you might not unless you can really read their body language well in the zoom call, you might not get the sense that you might think what they’re saying is actually true, which is true. But they’re just kind of they’re just nervous about the situation now with some other person. And so I think we do a lot of kind of 360 degree cross-referencing. You know, it’s not just talking to the people you’re trying to do business with. It’s talking to their competitors. It’s talking to people they’ve done business with in the regulatory authorities, in government. It’s talking to lawyers who do business in those countries. It’s talking to auditors and accountants. But it’s also I mean, we’ve done things like several years ago with diligence to fund that had a lot of self-professed Christians in it. So I flew out to this country and I went to two of their churches. Unannounced. I just attended the church and asked about them, you know this person, right? Yeah. And they were shocked that I was there. I mean, like they figured out I was in the church right when I was in the church, like all of a sudden. So you can’t really defend against the persons that are attending a test service. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I got a much better sense talking to different people, just getting a sense for who the person is than I would have, just getting someone drawing a kind of back office due diligence operation in the background. And so that really needs you to either be local or have a very strong, trusted local partner. There’s just no way around that. Yeah.

Henry Kaestner: You know, I’ve heard of a new initiative that’s going on in Kenya that’s really encouraging, I think. And it’s effectively a group of business leaders and political leaders that are all part of a group where somebody is thinking about doing a deal with somebody and they email the group with the person’s name and it comes back red light, yellow light, green light, and that’s it. So you don’t have to go ahead. And it’s anonymous. Yeah. And it’s done through a central administrator. So you go ahead and said, you know, this is coming in from one of our members, John Jones. Red light, yellow light, green light. They answer red light, yellow green light goes back to John Jones. And then he keeps that confidential. And then he says, okay, well, again, 87% green, this percent yellow, this percent red. Couple of people said volunteer. I’ve got some more color on this. You can give me a call. And I thought that was really an interesting thing. You know, I’ve been fascinated for years about microfinance and the power of social collateral that results in much higher repayment rates than you might expect 98, 99% all throughout Africa through microfinance. And it’s the power of social collateral and the power of relationship and and wanting to avoid shame. It seems that that might even apply in the business world as well. Do you see that type of system as being something that gives you promise and hope amidst this reputation of some level of corruption?

Richard Okello: So I think that. Anything like that is an improvement. But there is a challenge which is a very nuanced challenge. The challenge is the following. Most countries that you would want to do business in in Africa. Are very siloed into either tribal groupings or set in groupings of clusters. So, for example, if you in Nigeria, you are Yoruba, you are Igbo, you are this, you are that, and the trust circles within those units are very strong. and the understanding of what someone says within that unit and the interpretation of it is not. Linear English interpretation, right? It is a cultural context around them. And if you’re in Nairobi, you’ve got different clusters. You’ve got, for example, within the Indian business community, there are several clusters. And the way in which you would interpret what they say about someone in that community is not the same. And so you obviously haven’t progressed to a point where that interpretation kind of through AI makes sense, right? And so it is critically important to be able to say, okay, when, when someone in Ghana hesitates to talk about something, something bad is going on because culturally that’s how people are trained. They just hesitate to talk about bad things. They will delay and they will soften the blow and all that. Right. But in Nigeria, they will tell you that to your face immediately. Right. Right next door. And so so I think that’s important. Now, I do think, though, that if you are doing you I mean, we’ve we’ve done this now for close to the decade. We haven’t had problems like this. Now, portfolio companies, we have tons. We have over 100 portfolio companies. We invest through funds and we invest directly. So it’s not just because we have a direct investment, a portfolio company, it’s we invest through funds who are investing in companies as well. Right. And so how is it that that’s the case? I think it’s because we spend a tremendous amount of time making sure that the people we partner with and the people they partner with are high integrity people. And if you do that, I think you make a lot of headway.

Henry Kaestner: Okay. I want to ask you another question that I think a lot of people are wondering in the back of their mind and that is currency. And so I get the macro picture about why to invest in Africa. I understand how to go about doing it. I understand more about governance and rule of law, how you go about trusting, establishing trust. What does it look like if you make an investment and you’ve got currency devaluation? How do you think about that? How do your Western investors think about that?

Richard Okello: First of all, I think our Western investors don’t really have clarity on that necessarily before we have the conversation, because most private equity investors don’t have clarity on that, going to buy a good business with a good management team and growth sales and hope the team kind of fixes the currency problem if it does occur. What we say to investors is we’re in an emerging market, sometimes frontier markets. You should expect that they will be volatility, currency or otherwise. Like the very notion that an economy grows at ten or 16% a year implies volatility has to, right. Like, you know, other economies are growing up 1% a year. Right. So what you have to do is you have to expect it. You have to do your best to underwrite it into what you’re doing. You have to try to buy businesses that are resilient to it and build portfolios that are resilient to it. So we walk in eyes wide open and we say we just assume they will be currency depreciation across all the countries we operated, all currency volatility. When we underwrite to fund team or deal on investment, we basically say, okay, this is a South African investment. What’s going on in South Africa’s currency the last thirty years? Here is what? What what’s happening? What are the pressures now? So having a macro view of the country you are in is actually much more important than it is in a developed market. In a developed market, you have a macro ecosystem that’s fairly established that does some of that work for emerging markets. You do have to have a macro view that says, I want to be in South Africa. I’ve thought about that, and then I’m going to go look for businesses of funds that operate that. Okay. What we’ve seen is if you take, for example, our first fund, we started investing that fund at the beginning of what was the third most aggressive period of US dollar strength in the last 50 years. And my context on this is, you know, when I was at Makena, I ran a big currency book for Makena. So I’ve been in and around currencies like a good chunk of my life. Bridgewater’s kind and so I’m so we watched our portfolio respond to this theoretical construct that if you went in expecting volatility, you underwrote it and you built a portfolio that had some resilience that you’re going to be okay, and it has turned out okay. So what’s happened is the companies that are growing at 40% a year, probably in local currency, probably ended up growing at 25% a year because 15% was currency taken out. Well, if they grow at 25% a year for five or six years, they’ll give you a 3 – 3.5 x on just growth alone without any other bells and whistles. Right. And so what that’s done for us and what I would say to the investors that are on the call, let’s say, think about emerging markets in general and think about the currency question is buy growth because growth will make up for a lot of errors, currency or otherwise. My really good management teams that have lived through real challenges because they know how to you know, if you talk to companies that were operating during the Arab Spring in Egypt, they figured out how to pay their people when it was unsafe, how to manage around currency situations, how to manage their safety issues. So all day long, we want to buck people like that because they will improvise where no solution exists ahead of time. And I think if you do that and you build a diversified portfolio, which is a side piece of this, then you’re okay.

Henry Kaestner: I also think it’s worth mentioning that even in a country like South Africa, you look at the Rand, it’s been relatively flat. There’s been some volatility against the US dollar, but we’re not talking about massive depreciation. So it’s a very, very rare event when you see something in Zimbabwe or Venezuela. So I want to make sure that we don’t overstate that, and I think you’ve answered it really well. I want to shift back to the fund a little bit, and I want to ask well, I really would love to get a story about a company that you’ve invested in that you’re most excited about. But before we do that, I actually want to shift into the theme. Of course, that’s always pervasive in our segments, which is faith. And you talked a bit about the beginning about how faith and God’s plan have made such an impact in your life. But I know about your partner. I know about how you think about things, share how your faith impacts how you invest.

Richard Okello: So I think I mean, we were believers in Jesus before wherever business partners or frankly, employees, right? So we were fortunate in that sense that we did not have to fix a bunch of errors before that happened. So some people do the second thing and then they got to do the first thing and they have to pull back and kind of fix a bunch of errors. So we’re fortunate in that regard. I think the way in which we view this is we feel called to do what we’ve been called to do. Which is a to be really good stewards of the capital that’s been entrusted to us by investors who are most of the time never been to this geography. And are are called, that sort of the respect, the walk, the focus that it requires. And I can come back to that. But we also feel that we have been called to steward other things that are much softer. So we’re both family people. I’ve got wife of 19 years, two boys. My partner’s got a wife for kind of similar 20 years, 21 years now with three kids. So what we do as husbands and what we do as fathers is going to be far more important to what we do as investors. Now, don’t get me wrong, we have to do a phenomenal job as investors, but the bar is really, really high on the other stuff, right? Because yeah, when our kids go out in the world as, you know, like we hope we’ve done a good job when they go out in the world because then they can impact other people in a way that perhaps that we can’t. We’re also stewards of our employees. Right. Their families, how they see us operate, how they see God infused in our business.

Henry Kaestner: So give a little more color. This to your partner was a pastor, correct?

Richard Okello: He is an elder discharged. You know, he preaches a sermon, I’d say probably once or twice a month. And so we how God affects us can’t just be a thing we talk about or a label. Right. Because there’s so many of those labels, the things that people talk about that lead people in the wrong direction. I think people need to see how we operate, when we have to let someone go.

Henry Kaestner: Mm hmm.

Richard Okello: How we operate in crisis. When we got into COVID, how did we operate in COVID? So if we believe in this God that’s supposed to be in charge of this situation that when no one seems to know what’s going on, are we all panicked and have we lost track of what’s going on? In which case then how we different than someone who doesn’t? So I think like taking the notion of stewardship in a 360 degree fashion, you know, the people we partner with, the fund managers we partner with, the companies we partner with, how we view the way in which those funds or companies affect their communities. Right. All of that comes into this kind of single time of stewardship so I think to me, our work, what we try to do is as much as possible. Stay as close to God as we can. Without which we couldn’t possibly be half decent stewards of all this stuff. And we feel like if we do that and we can be I won’t even say phenomenal stewards, but just half decent stewards guided by him, then I think we’ll be okay. So that’s how we think about that.

Henry Kaestner: Okay, so that’s the bigger picture and I love it first. I mean, is the ordinaces is so important Matthew 6: 33 Aim first for the Kingdom of God, righteousness and all these other things will be given to you as well. And so you’re talking about ordinance, let’s make sure we’ve got the right relationship with God. Let’s make sure we focus on our family, provide the right culture for our employees. And so then that then continues. And what I’d love for you to do is, is we talk about an individual investment.

Richard Okello: Yeah.

Henry Kaestner: How does that faith actually manifest itself? Now, clearly, your faith provides a foundation that allows for all these things to happen. It allows for a culture of excellence within your staff and your analyst.

Richard Okello: Yep.

Henry Kaestner: It provides for a culture of excellence in how you think about diligence and discovery and showing up at people’s churches and understand more about their character. What does it look like when it actually meets the ground in an investment? Maybe you’ve got a story or something like that. You can say, okay, this company did this and this is how our faith helped us make the decision or how we’ve managed the investment. Give us an example, please.

Richard Okello: Okay. So I’ll give an example in the grocery retail space. So the first recorded organized grocery business in the US was, I think around 1915, a business called Piggly Wiggly in Tennessee, a tiny little business. At that point, the population of the US, about 100 million people, the largest US city, I think New York City was 5 million people. So let’s fast forward to 2015. 1915, 200 years later. Okay. Hmm. Let’s zoom in on Nigeria. 200 million people, twice the population of the US at the time. Okay. Largest city in Nigeria, Lagos. 20 million people, give or take, four times the size of the largest city in the US. Largest grocery store at the time in 2015. 15 stores. Wow. 15 stores. One five. So like anyone on this call that’s in a developed market or, you know, bigger country, Brazil, Brazil in 2015, the largest store was 2200 stores. Brazil has 200 millions people just like Nigeria. So therein lay the opportunity and the challenge because the behavior of the people in this let say in Brazil as in Nigeria is not that different. They go to work they work hard and they have less and less time. They want to be able to go to grocery store that’s organized, get what they want, find it at a good price, know that it’s fresh and reliable, go home to their family. It’s very simple request. It’s not a very complicated request. Okay. So so in 2015, after doing a bunch of work, we decided that we wanted to do more in this sector. And we found an entrepreneur that had built a successful fast food business and who was building a closet grocery business, closet imports, because people are coming into this fast food restaurants at lunch time buying their food, their fast food, and then basically asking for milk, tomatoes. And they say you use this stuff anyway to do our food. Why don’t you just sell it to us besides the refrigerator? And so he said to us, I got to tell you guys, this is a much bigger opportunity than the fast food. We were attracted to him because of the fast food. They said to us, no, forget the fast food restaurant. The grocery business is billions of dollars, lots of opportunity unmet. So, you know, we’re skeptical. So for a period of two years, starting from about 2013 towards 2015, we spent time with this guy. Getting to know him, visiting his businesses, taking him to Kenya to show him how this is done in Kenya, to Uganda on our dime is like we say, Hey, why don’t you come spend the weekend with us, we’ll show you around, whatever. Bring him to South Africa where you have proper institutionalized grocery, you know, thousands and thousands of stores, people running back whole, you know, super efficient. Right. And kind of open his eyes, get to know him and so on. Now, eventually, we get to a point where he says, hey, we need to do something enough talking already. Let’s do something. We say to him, okay, now this is a startup, and because there’s a startup, we’ve got to get some sort of security to start up in Nigeria, essentially. Plus, they’re going to move your crowd into a shop but it’s a start up. So we say to him, we want to take a backing equity position in your fast food business. So if this thing doesn’t pan out, we got to have some protection. That’s the first real test of someone’s conviction and their integrity. All of that in real time. Right. So he says, okay, I’ll give you a backing position that will make you a 25% IRR in my existing business with 35 stores if this thing doesn’t pan out. Then we get into the work. All the work you have to do around the new investments, all the legals and all the groundwork, all the market research and all the rest of it. We finally get to a position of decision and couple of things I think happened. One is we got to know that he I wouldn’t describe him as a believer in Jesus necessarily, but he was a super high integrity person, much more high integrity and lots of believers actually that we knew in this space. But he was also a very tough he’s had to be a tough person to build a business that he has, and you need someone like that in that industry. So we had to decide could we deal with his toughness? Knowing his integrity or not. Okay. So some of that for us really comes to, you know, we go back to our closets and we consult and we say, like, how do I feel about this? Do I have a nudge that’s positive or negative? We’ve done all the work. The memo says we should do it. The teams agree we should do it. The demand is that people want it, people already buying stuff. That’s all that now. But should we do it? This is the right thing. Okay, we both come out, Charles and I like, okay.

Henry Kaestner: When you say, hold on a second, when you say you go to your closet. Is that code for prayer?

Richard Okello: So I wouldn’t call it code for prayer, but we pray and then we say, How do we feel about this? Is there a hesitancy? It’s not like you hear a loud voice from somewhere that says, I absolutely do it right. This is not right. That’s not how it works. But do we have a hesitancy? Do we have a check? Because in this particular case, we have a very strong personality. We’re going to partner with one of the 5050 partners in a country that’s not South Africa. We are not there physically every day. Should we do it? So at that point, we are always well-advised to check here and say, how do we feel about this? What’s the gut? What’s the nudge? What’s the leading What we feel about it. We pray. What do we feel what do we feel back? And that’s important. Now, that doesn’t happen on every single transaction because asset and transaction where you have that sense right through the process as you go through it and you’re fine and you just run through the person, you’re done. In this case where, you know, I’m being annoying. And I remember one weekend having a conversation with Charles where we needed to make the call by Monday, and we’re just like, Let’s sleep on it. Let’s see how we feel, let’s pray, let’s see how we feel. On Monday, all the backing information’s there. Everything says we should do it, but let’s just make sure. Okay, that was 2015. We are in the process of selling that business now. It’ll be about somewhere between 17 and 20 stores this year. Mm hmm. What has happened in Nigeria during that time frame? The currency has lost. 60% of its value. There have been two elections. There’s been one recession. That entire time. The business has been open. The stores have been open. They have put stuff on the shelves. You know, when COVID happened and the governors of the different states wanted to start shutting down public congregation points, the public got out to the store and they say to the governors, you cannot shut this store down. People just stood outside there like you have to keep it open. It is our lifeline right now commercially. We think this is a business that, based on the bids we’re getting now, would make us five times money. Not withstanding all that noise in the currency. And that is another right now. But it’s also a business that if you think carefully about what happens when people organize groceries retail, it starts to change their behavior. They can get home to their kids and help them with homework because they don’t have to be stuck in traffic trying to go to market 2 hours away to get food just to get basic right.

Henry Kaestner: So it’s an extension of what you see in agricultural communities where we’re having to walk for an hour or two to get water. It’s a challenge in the urban equivalent of that is having to go far to get food.

Richard Okello: To get food. And most people. Africa is urbanizing faster than any other geography today in the world and will be for the next 10 years. Right. So this problem and this opportunity will get more and more acute. So that’s, I think, one example where how our faith weaves into business the type of what we do, a simple sector that people understand all the way through to exit and commercial return and also just sheer impact. You know, it employs hundreds of people. Right. It’s a business that I’ve just done a five year plan to go from their current size to about 50 stores. You know, this could be 200 stores. Right? So hopefully that gives your listeners a sense for business where you can kind of do both and, you know, kind of deep in it.

Henry Kaestner: That very good. We’d like to end every podcast where the question we asked of all our guests, which is What are you hearing from God through His Word? And maybe it’s something in the Bible that you read this morning that struck you, maybe something last week, maybe something in the season, but what’s something that you’re learning from his word?

Richard Okello: So I think for me right now, I would go back to John 15, where it says Abide in me and I in you know, you know, you read that portion in the Bible and it’s such a simple thing, right? It’s like not even ten once. Such a simple thing. So incredibly difficult to abide continuously right and I think what I’m realizing as I spend time around this, listen to other people talk about this and so on, is that a lot of the times we have taken this notion of God and made it this big thing God’s out here, this big guy, you call him when you’ve got problems, you know, you treat him in a certain way. You kind of, you know, like, hey, just stay over there. Like when I need you, like, come help me. You’re kind of like this. You’re my problem. concierge, right? Whereas what that really speaks to, I think, is, is someone that’s right here. It’s almost like you’ve got a parrot, like a pet parrot that sits right here, that talks to you all the time, but listens to you all the time and you talk about stuff. So, you know, I got up this morning really tired, decided to go for a swim on the drive down to the pool. I started I was like, I’m really tired. I have this FDE thing I got to do later on today. I honestly don’t know what you do to say, right? I don’t know what you want me to say, but I need you to help me. I don’t know if should. I swim. I don’t know. I feel like I need to swim. Like that’s the conversation in the car, right? And it’s amazing to me. I’m discovering I’ve just started to discover how powerful and how different of a trajectory you can have when you operate that way, how your life just starts to change, how things change in real time. Right? So that for me is that’s my current kind of focal point.

Henry Kaestner: So you’re suggesting that you can abide in God while even under the water.

Richard Okello: You can abide in God on this call. Listening to this call, your kid runs in the room, throw something at the screen, you know, on and on and on. And he actually wants that. Yeah, that’s the key, right? We’re not forcing it. He actually wants that. We most of the time are keeping him away from that and ourselves from that, which is like what we should not be doing. Right.

Henry Kaestner: Amen. Amen. That’s an awesome word to end on. I’m just very, very grateful for you, Richard. Thank you for your friendship, your partnership in the movement. May God bless you and your fund in your investments and very much looking forward to the next time. Thank you.

Richard Okello: Henry, thank you very much for having me. It’s been fun. And look forward for the conference.

John Coleman: Welcome to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. This is John Coleman back with you today. And I’m here with my partner Luke Roush, who appears to be in some sort of fancy hotel.

Luke Roush: Live from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Kinley hotel downtown across the street from Chattanooga. Choo choo. Big times.

John Coleman: How is the Kinley Hotel? It’s like a murder hotel, right, Luke? Isn’t it famous for some sort of high profile murder?

Luke Roush: That’s unclear, but there is a speakeasy in the lobby, which I’ve been told by others that it’s quite a good place to imbibe.

John Coleman: Fantastic. And what are you in Chattanooga for, Luke today? Just leisure, or you […] ?

Luke Roush: Yeah, we got a little you know, we like to periodically introduce our investors to our CEOs and we’re going to have opportunity to do that with couple of companies tomorrow here in Chattanooga and then also over in Huntsville. So big time.

John Coleman: Well, that’s fantastic. And I know we’re both really excited about today’s podcast because we’re privilege to welcome folks that we’ve known for a while, folks that a lot of people have benefited from their wisdom. John and Ash Marsh are here with us, and it’s difficult to really encapsulate who these two are because they’re entrepreneurs, they’re real estate developers, they’re creatives, they’re counselors. They generate a lot of witty repartee. And so I feel like this will be an edifying and wide ranging discussion for folks today. So, John and Ash, thanks so much for joining us.

John Marsh: It’s great to be here. What a great group of guys you are. And thank you for all the work the FDI is doing in the world. And FDE, you are a light in its penetrating dark corners as you share the powerful things you do. So thank you all for the work you’re doing is making a difference.

John Coleman: Well, thank you all for the work you’re doing, which we’re going to hear a lot more about. You know, just to get us started, some folks will be familiar with you, John and Ash, because you’ve been on the FDE podcast before, you know, some folks in the community. But just for those of you less familiar. Give us a little bit of your story. Where’d you grow up? How did you come to know one another? Your business partners now, as well as life partners, which we’ll dig into. But tell us a little bit about how that came about.

Ashley Marsh: So I am from Opelika. I actually grew up in a little mill village here called Pepperell, and I grew up in what was almost like perfect utopia. We had our own school, we had our own churches, we had a little marketplace. It was just wonderful. I honestly did not realize that I grew up on a side of town that was the other side of the tracks until I had to go to school. Somewhere on the other side of the tracks, I realized that we were poor. And so you didn’t know until you found out, right? So anyway, I grew up there and just had a very close family as far as all of my family worked at the mill and my uncles, cousins, grandparents, everything. But on along down the line, I meet John at about the whopping age of 18. They’ll head over heels. He was my James Dean, a little bit rugged around the edge. A little bit rebellious, actually. A lot bit rebellious. And he was my ticket out of Opelika. And here we are. We’re still in Opelika. So that worked so well. My claim to fame with John is I won him on a bet and that is a true story. I got bet that I could get him away from his girlfriend and I’m pretty competitive, so I like to win and there I go. I won them. So he’s all mine now.

John Coleman: And it was that a good investment Ash, has that investment paid off?

Ashley Marsh: Yes, it did have some negative interest in the beginning of it, but absolutely it is 100% the best investment I’ve ever made besides following God.

John Coleman: That’s awesome. In private equity, we call that a j curve. It’s that little dip before things get better.

Ashley Marsh: Right , right it’s a little dip and then it jumps off. Yeah.

John Coleman: That’s awesome. And John, you grew up in the area as well or what was your background?

John Marsh: I grew up in Albany, Georgia, about 2 hours south. People like, say, Albany, and that’s when, you know, you can know the difference. The test of them is it, is it a pecan or a pecan? Once you know that, you’ve got a true [..] on whether they’re from Albany but ended up here at 18 years old, you know, had this interesting start. My mom and dad tried to have a kid for 13 years. Couldn’t adopted me and 18 months later had my little brother. So my mom put the heavy […] in on me. She said, I’ve been looking at Anthony baby carrots for ten years. I’m going to love this guy and he can’t do anything wrong. So she still sticks with that. And just they gave me this amazing, you know, time of raising one thing. I reached out to my birth parents, and my father had passed away. Birth father. But I found my birth mother in an interesting way and didn’t really get to talk to her much. But I did tell her, Hey, I don’t know how that choice worked out for you, but it was amazing for me. And so this amazing story that God would take me from this place of where I couldn’t be loved because the situation to put in an environment where I was taken care of. So my parents loved me. I never had a real job and I still have it. And I started a business when I was 14, high end car stereos, and then just kept adapting. And I believe the same gifts I use today were the gifts I use in just God has continued to refine them, to see potential, give hope and see beauty and broken stuff. So it’s interesting to see that how it’s continuing to play out in different iterations. Our purpose was always running under the bottom, even when we didn’t use it in a way that honored the gift God had given us, it was still those same things.

Luke Roush: So how did you guys originally get started in the real estate? What was your draw there?

John Marsh: Well, actually, now we’re in the, believe it or not, the business. Before that, we were in the wreck used car business. So we built totals, we bought totaled Toyota, forerunners, Land Cruisers, Tundras and Sequoias and fixed them and sold them. I do all the framework and Ash should do the interiors and we’re putting these things together. And it was a lot of darned work we put all our money in. One of them, forerunners or Land Cruisers and take us about a month to do three or four of them and we’d be putting our hands on and praying they’d sell. We’d put all our grocery money and everything else, and the days our faith was at a very high level at that time. And then I’d drive to Atlanta and show it in about 50 people until somebody bought it. So from that context, were in the car business one day about this old junky house we lived in, took us six and a half years, one paycheck at a time, live in about a 600 square foot apartment, four of us to fix it. And when we got done, I said, What do you wanna do it? I won’t do another one. She said, What’s wrong with you? It was so hard, took so long. So I bought the house across the street and I just started realizing, Hey, I think houses are like cars with plumbing, they’re same stuff. And I said, Good thing about a house sit still and the car goes 80 miles an hour. And so that was started. We just found junky things that nobody wanted and we say what we can’t pay for. We don’t have any money. But would you lease them to. For $100 a month or $200 a month will pay you off in five years. We had no way to do that. But come to find out, there’s money in real estate. We didn’t have any clue. We just. I thought it was interesting and I normally change and don’t know it. Like, I’ll be changing careers and I don’t know. Ash will normally tell me, baby, do you know you’re not in that? Like I was saying, I won’t do these houses. She said, you already left the car business. I said, No, I’m not. I got cars to do in the shop. She’s like, No, your heart is left. You’re in the house business now. I am, huh? So that’s kind of how we got going.

John Coleman: That’s fantastic. And Ash, was it is immediate for you that you developed a passion for I mean, this is a peculiar type of investing kind of car flipping than moving the house flipping, I guess. When did it click for you or how did you get passionate about that?

Ashley Marsh: I’ve actually always loved restoration on old houses and historical items and honestly, I think John never really saw a historical homes when we first met. The same way that I saw them, he kind of look past them. But once your eyes get opened to not just the history of it, but the actual value of the craftsman and everyone that worked on it and how it really impacted the culture at the time and the community at the time. It just changes how you look at them. But my grandparents and my dad were all craftsmen, so I was always around people building, whether it’s building a room or a garage or spindles on a table or whatever. So I’ve always just loved it and putting my hands to things.

John Coleman: That’s awesome. And at what point did you realize this was going to be a successful model? So you’re living in this, you know, 600 square foot apartment. You’re rehabbing that and moving on to something else. Obviously, it’s grown into something far beyond that. But was there an inflection point where you thought, man, we actually we’re not just passionate about this, but this is a good idea. We can make money doing this.

John Marsh: It took a long time, I mean, definitely, real long time. Like, how could people be so slow kind of time? It was, like I said, slowly but slowly it was revealed Ash and I fixed our house. We’re in the middle of a hood and they’re like, Why are you fixing it so nice? This place is junky. And so we imagined we’d never get the money out of it. We spent on it at the time we took it, but we started fix another house and be honest what got it. So I started doing construction work and I was doing other people’s jobs. And so me and Ash start a construction company with like 12 or 1300 dollars. And that’s what we started. I just started taking jobs and I didn’t know anything about this, mind you, but I’m just taking a moment. And pretty soon we got like ten or 11 construction jobs going. We’re giving fix pricing and guaranteed time frames like we did on the cars. And nobody told us we shouldn’t do that.

Ashley Marsh: All right. I won’t have to interrupt him completely because he’s not telling you something. So whenever we first started, he was taking on every job he could find. If it was rebuilding a closet for someone, he was doing it and he was loving it. But what he was loving about it wasn’t that he was using his hands, is that in the middle of doing this, he was meeting all of these people and they were having church where he was. So he would be in there doing sheet rock in a closet and they would be in there talking about scripture. And it just kept going to the place to where people really wanted us or our crew to be on their sites because we were really bringing the presence of just the true spirit of God there and there was peace around us. And so word of mouth is what spread that. And the next thing you know, it was like John said in that place that we look up and you got ten full construction jobs and it’s like, oh my gosh. And then everyone calling and asking, can you move this house? Can you help restore this? Can you come downtown? It’s like you got a really big, really fast. And I believe that’s just the true nature of organic, right? That God shows sometimes […]blesses it.

John Marsh: Well and the thing we didn’t know, so I didn’t have any crew. So I just got guys from the car business because they seem like they yeah, it is like a car with plumbing. And so we started working on the house. We didn’t have any construction people, just car people. And then we started saying we need more workforce. And I realized that if I could go pick up the work release guys, we pick them up at five or 6 a.m. and take them back at five or six and they lay it out on you. I can tell you that they want to go. And so we had a whole crew of work release people and so we’re having a Bible study every morning, them guys getting saved by the truckloads. It was just it was crazy stuff and we didn’t know what we’re doing. Just telling people about this crazy God we found that loves idiots and we’re fixing stuff that nobody else would fix. And we thought, man, this is so much fun. I said, I see opportunity. I feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony. I just don’t know where to start when there’s so much opportunity. And it started making me trip breakers and there was everybody wanted me and I liked it. And then the city came to me and said, Buddy you got to get some license. I got to have license as they’re like, Yeah, you can’t be doing this much work without a builder’s license. So I had to go take study and take the builders test so I could get some license.

Ashley Marsh: And, you know, in that too, John, the amazing thing is being trusted with a little as always, God blesses you with much and the little that we were being entrusted with. I mean, we’re talking about thousands of dollars at a time. We weren’t doing as big a deal as we’re doing right now. Actually when I started our checking account for our construction company, we had $1172 and that was it. That was all we had and we had to be really wise stewards of that. But even with the men that John was going and picking up at work release, he developed such a trust with our judicial system and the judges and everything that they would call and actually ask, Hey, can we place this person with you guys? Because we know that you’ll be faithful to teach them and to steward them as a relationship. And so we had a lot of young men come out of that that actually started their own businesses. And it’s just been incredible to see that God blessed us in the midst of us really not knowing what we doing and just being willing to be faithful to what we had.

John Marsh: I think of one young man that came recently, has a huge roof, the commercial roofing company. I got him out on work release as a college kid that got a DUI and he was locked up. And then he did something else and got locked up. We got out on work release, learn roofing with us, and now he’s running, I mean, a monstrous roofing company. So it’s interesting. We just said it isn’t just witnessing this witness. I just tell him, go stand beside that Godly guy that’s done, got healed. And he just when he goes to bathroom, you sit outside the door. When he goes to lunch, you’re sitting with him. You commit two years. You do that. You read your one, your Bible, you pray, and you come to work every day. And I’m telling you, your life will change. And they have.

Luke Roush: So it’s not just witnessing, it’s with ness. And I think that, you know, it’s not just actually fixing broken buildings, but also what you’re really getting at is actually how God might use you guys to be participating in fixing broken people, of which we all are broken people. And you’ve made a comment before, John, around the way you approach real estate and the passion that you have for it is a mixture of making both your economics teacher and your Sunday school teacher proud. Talk through that a little bit. What does that mean? What does that look like?

John Marsh: Well, and a lot of that came from the original ad. Jess Corrals helped me a lot with thinking this through, because it it really is a challenge. But what God showed me when we were idiots and broke is that the answers and fishes and loaves you measure, you manage, you multiply. And what happens is you measure, you manage, God multiplies. That’s, you know, one of the fruits of the kingdom is the fruits are love, like multiplication. When you see multiplication, when God showed up everywhere. And so what we began to realize is that if we didn’t measure things well, how in the world could we manage them and how could God multiple them? So we were just as passionate about investing in the broken lives and making movement, whether it’s get them a budget, get them read in one year. Bible a good thing about reading the one year Bible We love you get a bunch of guys reading the one your Bible. You link up when you read the same piece of God’s word over and over. Not have guys. Did you see what David did? I was like, God said he loved him. I know he missed the dang thing. Was I bad as him? So we get on the same page and what we began to realize we want to move their lives and help them understand that if they measured and they manage their money according to God’s word, it would multiply. But if they did that with their life and their family, it would multiply. And so that’s how if we don’t feel like if we can only please the economics teacher and not the Sunday school teacher or the Sunday school teacher, not the economics teacher. It’s not for us. That’s our spot is to do both. And to be honest with you, we don’t consider deals any other way.

John Coleman: When you’re coming out of look, what’s interesting is you’re not traditional real estate investors. You dove in headfirst kind of fixing these places up, a totally different model, getting guys off work release, you know, patching together these teams. Not unlike how we brought Luke on the sovereign’s team. Actually, a bit unusual in the in the real estate space. You had to have made some mistakes along the way. It couldn’t have all been smooth, you know, as you built that, what did you what did you learn from some of the mistakes you made along the way?

John Marsh: I think my heart sinks when you say that. How many mistakes we made our not to do list is beautiful. We had tons of times where we felt like, you know, we called the defecation to hit the ventilation. We just did the dumbest stuff you can think of. But the challenging thing was that we didn’t know and didn’t have anyone who could help us. So some of the problems we were doing, number one, is we you know, we didn’t understand that the mindset to go from being a worker to a leader to an investor, all those are chasms to get over when you’re broke and right. I mean, one is I just got to survive. They’re like, I put everything on the line when you didn’t have nothing. That’s like putting up nothing, you know? I mean, you didn’t put any down if you don’t have anything, but then you start building and stuff starts moving and you, you have a little bit. And what one of our mentors did he told us, he said, John, you see what the guys in the construction business you’re working with, their vehicles are a pickup truck for Tempest Beyers, also because he owned a band good tires. So he said, you won’t drive the kind of truck they drive and live the way they live. I said, no, Sir. He said do nine jobs for other people and do one for yourself. And so he gave us this mindset of beginning to put some back and do some yourself. What that did is really helped us understand. But as we began and I hope we get to some more the investing part for us as investors, we did in my number one failure in business. I think in the early days it was that we played amateur providential assist sometimes in other people’s life and ended up hurting people. Because I had the gift to understand business, we could put money behind them and sometimes we’d put money behind people without experience that didn’t have the character to handle it, and we just helped them crash a car at a higher speed. And that’s probably one of the biggest things we messed up with our investment dollars. We call it a rent a Dream program. We needed rent and they had a dream and we’d invest in them and just it produced a dang mess.

Luke Roush: So, you know, I’m so glad you brought this up because it’s, I think, something that a lot of leaders wrestle with as companies grow. You’ve got to be able to recruit other people who can do what you’ve done previously, and you’ve got to be willing to let them stub their toes. You just got to make sure that they don’t, you know, end up with a massive chest wound, but like stubborn toes, skin and knees. That’s okay. How do you figure out what the guardrails are as you invest in individuals? What is sort of okay kind of learning by doing and some amount of minor failure in that versus know total high speed wreck. How do you make those judgment calls? Ashley and John.

Ashley Marsh: Yeah, honestly, we’ve learned that we want to make sure that we spend time with people and understand who they are at the core of how God made them and how they really process information, how they make decisions, how they show up, whether they’re under stress or not. And that has been key for us to really work well with our team and work well with our clients that we’re bringing on. So if we were looking to like we actually had a young man that came and visited with us not too long ago about opening a catering business. And he’s a wonderful young man and we really like him. But just to be honest with him, to say that we don’t know you and the capacity of how you handle your money, how do you steward your time? How are you behind the closed doors with your wife? How are you whenever you are with your. And that sounds like you’re getting too personal, but those are the things that drive how people really will show up whenever pressures happen. And what we were doing previously, like John said, was we were doing it off of what we thought their capacity was or we were doing it all our belief or our hope for them. And that’s a lot of weight for someone else to carry, you know, whenever they think, you know, I believe in you so much. So now you have to run and succeed and they’ll give it all they have, but they only have so much of that. And so John and I spent a lot of time doing due diligence where the people that we’re working to invest in, whether it’s our time or our money resources, because both of those are very obviously very valuable. One of them can be reproduced and one of them cannot. So, you know, to us, our comm is the most valuable thing that we can give to someone. So what do you have to say about that?

John Marsh: Well, two or three things. One thing I’d say is people don’t see the world as it is. They see it as they are. And so we get like give you an example. We build restaurants now sometimes in service of growing downtown’s hospitality businesses. And we’d have a fine dining chef come to us to say, and this happened to us, cost us a bunch of money. So it was a good one. He came to us, said, I’d like to just open a simple hotdog place. Well, next thing you know, we got $12 hot dogs because he’s gourmet in. I’m up. No matter what somebody tells you, they’re going to be who they are, not what they want. And so if you got a fine dining guide, don’t think you’re going to get them a hot dog because that thing will go gourmet. He’ll be toast on both sides of the bun and putting all kind of special sauce on it. And so we realized we got to ask ourselves, who are they and their identity, because identity drives behavior. The second thing with that is doing this personality test, you want to ask yourself, are they a future voice or a present voice? Do they stand in the present and go, okay, tell me what is or do they stand in the future and go Tell me what could be? Because the stand in the future kind of people say and tell me what could be like me. We’re highly excitable and sometimes I think we’re guilty of being high energy. Low IQ was a powerful combination. I mean, you give some stuff started, but like Ash one time she gave me a representation because she would be running all the money and back in before she took over all the companies a number of years ago, which made me feel a little bad because she’s done such a good job and made me look like I was less intelligent than I even think I was. But so anyway, we’re standing at the dryer and she says, Hey baby. And I’m talking. Waved my hands. Oh, baby, did what I won’t do. I won’t do this. She’d hand me a box, had me something else had me. This reason my arms are slam full. And I said, What do you want me to do with all this stuff? She says, That’s what you do to me. And so I would just keep piling stuff on, starting stuff, getting excitable. About the time, something new, the honeymoon went out of it. I jump out and hand it over to her. Now this thing, I’ve got it going. And somebody needs to make this like a trade journal down. And so we run now off a EOS type of system that we’ve adapted for our marriage. And for our business, which we call visionary integrator, the same way they do, we believe we need a Wall and a Roy Disney and everything we’re building. And if we’re going to invest in and we’ve got to have somebody who’s going to make the trains run on time and somebody who’s going to get excited and stir stuff up.

John Coleman: Well, talk to me. So one of the things you all touched on that I love so much is you’ve talked so much about the importance of the individual person that you’re investing in. And I think Luke and I see this across asset classes right now. You think entrepreneurs or owner operators or others, the person is what you’re evaluating almost first before you look at anything else. But there is a lot of complexity to the type of real estate investing that you all are doing, particularly as you’ve approach to rejuvenating whole towns like Opelika. You’ve really taken a lot of ownership. Talk to us about the mission of the real estate investing that you have now and things like community revitalization and how that intersects with good business principles for the types of investments that you choose.

John Marsh: Well, one thing we say is we call the work we do now, we’ve coined it irreplaceable real estate. The reason we say is irreplaceable is it’s been built by people who don’t live anymore with materials we don’t have anymore and methods we don’t do anymore with entitlements we can’t get approved anymore. So that makes it special. And then when you layer Ash’s gift of hospitality, which is her gift, and that definition is I thought of you before you got here. She said, that’s what God did to her and does to us. We layered that and great programing over it. We get something that’s quite incredible. And so our main focus now is helping. Now ten cities steward large amount of real estate where over 1,000,000,007 in depth in the portfolio size that we’re in. We’re helping them steward to make economic, social and spiritual capital. And we want it to make all three. I mean, that’s the story of the Good Samaritan is economic, social and spiritual capital. But people think the money is the problem and we believe the money for us has never been the problem. Money follows vision. Vision doesn’t follow money. You don’t get money. And then the vision come clear. You get a good vision, a clear plan. And so first thing we do is have models, okay? We model everything. Our business approach should look any private equity, any other real estate investor ought to appreciate and see sophisticated real estate development approach to it. Now we do it in a multidisciplinary way. We look from the very top and from the very bottom. We look from the investors point all the way through the deals, through construction, development, all these things. But we also go to the operators point. And so some of the questions we say is not just how much can we make in rent or our return, but how much should we make, and then how can we align above that? So if we’re starting a restaurant, we’ll say, let’s give them the best ramp we can. We’ll go in, maybe invest in the business, in the leader, and then we’ll also have the real estate and we’ll give them the best rate we can to get a break even. But then we ratchet up more percentage based rents as they succeed. Because they’re succeeding, we want to. And remember, in the restaurant business, the first millions got a little bit of money in. Second got more, thirds got more. It’s exponential because the hard costs don’t go up so much. And so it’s bringing sophisticated filters and alignment to that whole value chain. That’s the way we believe from every bit like some cities, our largest city, Winter Haven, Florida, they bought up a good bit of 80 blocks of downtown. It’s close to a $200 million portfolio and 100 million of that, or close, was raised from 60 locals. So it’s a community development fund with some very unique characteristics of getting liquidity when they need it of ownership and care in a city you’re in of a distribution model that makes sense. I mean, these are the powerful alignment tools of placemaking that we think allow us to forge and pioneer what we’re calling a new asset class of real estate, which is irreplaceable real estate, historic downtowns, lovingly restored and curated in a sophisticated way.

Luke Roush: So one of the things I’ve heard you speak about before is this idea of starting lines, finish lines and deadlines. How do you kind of overlay those constructs in with this idea of irreplaceable real estate?

John Marsh: So, Ash, I’ll let you maybe you want to tell a little bit about like how we work with these projects from hospitality and other things, how we layer that in to doing deals like say, for example, we did pass social or something like that. How did you in time that team of hospitality focus on that?

Ashley Marsh: So what I believe we do really well is we help people remember their story and they end to understand that what they’re selling is the experience, not the business. It’s really easy, I believe, for creatives to think that they just have a great idea and they have a plan with that idea, but they don’t really understand the execution of it. And it’s a daily execution of beauty, of experience, of knowledge and execution. And so our team comes in and actually make sure that they understand their story, understand who they are, and. That story and understand how to actually bring the client or the customer into their role in the story. You know, that’s one of the things we do. The other things I think that we do really well, and that is making sure that we hold the proper attention on the vision and don’t let them get astray on it. Because as we all know, because we are entrepreneurs, it’s really easy, especially if you’re married to an excitable entrepreneur. It’s very easy to get distracted with shiny things and new things and, you know, new opportunities or new ideas. And we’ll pivot and change and pivot change. That’s very expensive and it takes a lot of time and it gets you off all those deadlines. So, you know, making sure that you have people on your team that are working with you, like John said, that you got to have that visionary that’s out there doing those things and helping you hold that vision, that helping you also dream big. And then to have the other person or people that are there to keep things in order and check in on the timeline and making sure that the construction happened the way it needs to happen and so forth. So that’s how we I think we work well with making sure we have those timelines and deadlines and making sure we meet those and honoring the vision.

John Marsh: We say we’re like general contractors for vision, but what we do is we created we took a scrum method from software development, the Agile process, and we adapted it for project and city and community development. And so we run two weeks sprints with teams, we have a backlog, we have an upcoming sprint, we have a current sprint, we have a refined sprint, we have a done sprint, and we run two week intervals with that with the week in between, being an agile meeting between one of our team leaders and their team leader. And so it’s holding the tension on the 20% of the things that if they don’t, our special attention will never get done. And what we do is we draw lines in the sand because everybody works better. If you got a deadline, we have to get to something. So we’ll set a launch for a restaurant, we’ll set a log for hotel. We tell them to listen. Now you can wait until the end and work 24 hours a day. People going to sit and in wet paint. But we’re open and we don’t care. We are where we ahead. We’re going to do it. And we’ve always worked good. We don’t do projects without a deadline because one thing about making a plan and making a deadline is not just what it does, it’s what it does to you. It makes something of you to set a deadline. And so we do that with them and we make sure we line up the economics to it to where they get it incentivized, excited about it. Everybody on the project should be excited about hitting that deadline. And we don’t we don’t miss deadlines. It’s just not what we do. We tell them, come hell or high water, we’re going in 24 hours. If we get close, we ain’t going to make it. So we get real, but we don’t fix pricing, guaranteed time frames, construction for all these years. And if you didn’t do well, you wouldn’t been in business very long.

Luke Roush: So that’s I think that’s powerful. You know, it speaks a little bit to the whole salt and light thing. If all you are is light, but there’s no salt and then, yeah, every project ends up slipping past. So you got to be able to have both. And from my observer’s perch, seems like you guys dance on that line. Really, really. Well, one of the things I want to come back to is this idea of irreplaceable real estate. And, you know, just as investors kind of marketers, we always think about kind of market size. I’d love to hear y’all riff just for a couple of minutes on the market size for small towns in America that need to have life breathed back into them and both TLC, but also some accountability and redevelopment. Maybe just speak to how big is that opportunity? It certainly is bigger than the two of you can do that maybe for our listeners or other people who are out there in the real estate arena that might be thinking about trying to infuse more meaning in what they do day to day, maybe just share a little bit of how big are we talking about?

John Marsh: And that’s a good question. I mean, I just know it’s it’s so big that it breaks my guessing machine like when I think as far out as I could take, I go, oh my gosh, it’s bigger. I tell Ash, I feel like as a baby, even a blind dog, go find the bone. We have landed on something that is amazing. I get so darn excited about it. And it’s because, I mean, we’re already stewarding the type of portfolios we talked about and we’re just getting started. So, I mean, it’s billions and billions and billions of dollars and the greenest houses that exist are ones that already exist, not ones we’ll build. And the most attainable houses that exist are the ones we don’t have to build. They exist. And the most amazing materials that were trees that from the time that Adam was here till we cut them exist, hidden up in these historic structures. I mean, think about today, they want to make and say that a sheet rock box would drive it on. It is worth the same thing as my 100 year old building with a two foot thick masonry wall. That’s beautiful. I mean, that’s dumb. That’s some banker said that the dadgum amortization term determines value. Well, that’s only if you’re looking out 20 years. We’re looking 50 or a hundred. We’re asking ourselves, what can we do for the good of our city that would last 50 years and no one be able to undo it? So I’m dreaming. I was talking to a guy recently, two guys I’ve had called me in the last six months that said, John, we’d like to deploy a half a billion dollars in the things that you’re doing this type of work from families that were out of the country, one in Hong Kong, another one Brazil. And then we will deploy it for 50 years. And so I believe that what we’re talking about, the cost of redeployment of capital and the velocity of capital is so powerful if you can do it over generations and understanding that, gosh, what we have is irreplaceable, they’re not building another downtown Opelika or any other small town. And you just think how many small towns we drive through that sit there with embedded value that people don’t know how to do anything with. And you know, if you ask them, they say, Can we do something with it? It’s impossible. And so our job is to take people from impossible to possible, but probable. We’ve proven this model can be done in towns as small as 3000. So, yes, it’s everywhere. I mean, everywhere we go, I’m tripping breakers are told, Ash we gotta buy this place. Like you say, that everywhere we go. I just think it’s amazing. So our goal now we started doing this, didn’t know what to charge, but we had godly people. We did it for fees, then we started doing it fees and we did some equity. So we’re they’re partners. The third iteration of this is fees, equity, and we bring capital. That’s what we’re doing now a lot of times. And so I think the fourth iteration will be imagine if there was a sophisticated design instrument, a fund that could bring shared services to this type of work, could restore cities, and could give people like Ash and I and others a way to have liquidity at some point for generations to put it in there, a stewardship vehicle that could look out 50, 75 and a hundred years like we do for our portfolio. We’re over 275 properties we’ve done in our city. We still own over 200 and we’ve never taken outside capital. We put our butts on the line personally, guaranteed it all the way through. And so imagine what we could do with a little bit of a little bit of additional horsepower.

John Coleman: Amen, man, I’m like ready to open my wallet and move to Opelika after that.

Ashley Marsh: You should it is the center of the universe. So, I mean, you’d be in a great place.

John Coleman: That’s right. That’s right. Well, we’re going to pivot to a very fun topic, I think, Luke, we almost have to employ a lightning round here. It would be a violation of our fiduciary duty not to. But just very briefly, before we do that, talk about Faith again. Ash talked about it at the beginning. Obviously, you’re casting a vision for community here, but on a day to day basis, how does faith influence your investment strategy? To tie that together for us.

John Marsh: Two things. I’ll say actually and give it to you. One is unity and others peace. If Ash and I are not in unity, we don’t move because the place of unity is the place of command and blessings. We want unity between each other, unity with the spirit we get on our knees and ask God. And then with also we want the multitude of godly counselors. There’s wisdom. But then that second thing is peace. We believe the place of peace is a place of power. And so we look for people of peace and places of peace, and we want to operate in projects that have peace around them. And so if those two aren’t there, we don’t go forward.

Ashley Marsh: So I totally agree with John, but also the fact of Paul’s being sensitive to when the spirit says, hey, pay attention and pause for a minute. We actually had one of our mentors give us a question yesterday that he just like I just I would like to throw this question to you for you to consider. For you and Ash to talk about and consider. And whenever John brought it to me, instead of, you know, blowing up and thinking, but we’ve already decided we know God is going to bless him. We already […]. It’s like you have to pause a minute and say, Hey, wait a minute. You know, this is an opportunity for us to again hear really the direction God wants us to go and to remember that he is the one that directs our path, you know? And so it’s like allow that allow that movement to happen and to be adjusted. And that sensitivity brings the greatest peace into our home, I believe, and into our businesses and everything, because we will absolutely slam on the brakes if God tells us to stop right in the middle of the road and don’t care if we get creamed. It’s just like it is what it is and all of the other things of unity. John and I had such a broken marriage and so many broken parts in our business very early on that when we found the unity and the peace that God gave us, we refused to move from it. And so staying unified and trusting God, honoring one another, honoring the gifts of each other that keeps us in that place of unity. We can be effective there.

John Coleman: That’s awesome, y’all. So we are going to conclude before asking you for a good scripture reference at the end with a short lightning round. The rules are Luke and I will pose a question and then we’d love to get 15 seconds responses from y’all. So short and sweet. I’ll kick us off and then pitch it over to Luke. Best and worst investment you’ve made.

John Marsh: Best investments buying up a downtown when nobody wanted it. The worst investment we made, we allowed somebody to sell a restaurant to a new operator and learn to find out that the guy who can fly a 747 can’t necessarily build one. That cost us a couple million bucks.

Luke Roush: I got one for Ash and then my turn around and John get an opportunity as well. Ash, what’s your favorite saying that John uses and you can’t use the mosquito in a […] Because that’s my favorite. That one’s off limits. But anything else is fair game.

Ashley Marsh: Oh, my gosh. Okay, so we actually have a thing called John isms and it’s an actual language. And I don’t know if you ever used to watch VeggieTales, but I used to tell him all the time, you know, you can’t correct the language of the king is what the little cucumber said. Anyhow, I would say dumb as a sack of hammers is one that’s a really good one. Doesn’t translate well in other countries, by the way. They don’t know what to do with that. What do you say? Let’s see another way. Because he uses my speech in the nudist colony a lot. I’ll have to go back on the second one. Dumb. Yeah.

John Marsh: I’m saving that.

John Coleman: One. I’m saving that one.

John Marsh: One of mine is the goal is to disappoint you at a rate you’ll stand. And we’re on a journey that looks like a detour.

Ashley Marsh: Oh, I’ve got a word. He uses two words that he uses that are so interesting to me. He says a goalds with a D and insteaed of goals, and he says “miracle” instead of miracle. I don’t know if that’s a Southern twang ism or a that’s just his words.

John Marsh: Well, in the goal of our companies is front row seats to miracles.

John Coleman: That’s awesome.

John Marsh: You know, we say, God, we want front row seats to miracles. 50 yard line seats, God, they got to be our miracles. But we want to close. We want to see that. And I guess the other thing is that, you know, as you think about this, I say marriage is complicated. It’s more complicated than your transmission. And I used to think it was just about sex and supper, but there’s a lot more to it. Oh.

John Coleman: I feel like The Lightning Round actually just led itself to a conclusion there. Luke, we got a lot of good aphorisms and we love to conclude this podcast just by asking each of you, if you don’t mind, for a piece of scripture that’s really influencing you right now that you’re learning from just to take us home. So John and Ash, anything that you’re reading in the Bible right now, it’s really changing the way that you see things so that you’d like to share.

John Marsh: I can start, I guess, well, it’s this Galatians 2:20. You know, the idea that we are crucified with Christ and not I live, but Christ lives in me on further study that word is co crucified. Not only are we co crucified, we’re co resurrected. And so something happened a very long time ago, this very significant today that we’ve been co resurrected. We don’t get eternal life once we know when we have it. I’m riding in the dark suit, but all the power that raised Christ from the dead inside this crazy person and that just blows my socks off. You know, the fact that God loves idiots and he’s got a plan, and if I’ve got hope for my future, I got power in my present.

John Coleman: Wow that’s powerful. What? Speaking to you Ash?

Ashley Marsh: Well my scripture that I always hold on to and I come back to is Jeremiah 29:11, which is I know the plans I have for you, but the actually what I love is in Jeremiah 13 reads on his life plans to prosper you not harm you. And he goes into saying The very place that I’ve caused you to be driven and held captive is the place I’ll deliver you from and. There was a time in mine and John’s life where we tried to escape Opelika. I mean, hard. We tried so hard to get out of here. I mean, we felt like this is not where we were supposed to be after we reconciled our marriage, after we crashed businesses, all the things that were happening. And God brought us back here to use us as a seed and to be used so beautifully. And so that is my scripture. And it I keep it in my mind and my prayers every day is that he’s the one that knows the plans and he’s the one that caused us to be here. And it’s such a blessing to be here.

John Coleman: Wow. That’s powerful, y’all. Well, I’ll tell you, doing a podcast with y’all is like being a mosquito in a nudist colony. That was a lot of fun. I think we could talk to y’all forever. And I know we’re really grateful both for the work y’all are doing out there with these irreplaceable communities, the way in which you’re lifting up individuals within those communities, and also just for sharing that wisdom with us and with the community here. So thanks so much. It was great to have you on.

Ashley Marsh: Thank you.

Luke Roush: Appreciate all you.

John Marsh: Thank you guys.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Africa podcast. I’m here, as always, with Ndidi. Ndidi, good morning.

Ndidi Nwuneli: Good morning. Great to be here.

Henry Kaestner: I am so fired up about today. We’ve got a really dynamic and very, very successful man of God who has an incredible story and you know it infinitely more than I. But tell us a little bit about why you’re excited about our special guest today.

Ndidi Nwuneli: Well Strive Masiyiwa is recognized within Africa and around the world as one of our leaders in the business sector in Africa. He’s Zimbabwean started as a young entrepreneurs built multiple businesses in telecoms, in financial services, in construction and is also recognized as a philanthropist. He’s been the chair of many, many boards, including AGRA. He serves on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation, most recently joined the board of the Gates Foundation, this pioneer board. And he is just absolutely brilliant. He’s also recognized philanthropist. His wife and him have started the Higher Life Foundation, which serves millions of young people across Africa, and he’s recognized as a speaker. I mean, he has the biggest social media following. And I know Henry was a bit envious when we look at the number of people who follow him on Facebook, on Instagram, millions of young people who draw inspiration from his life and his walk with God. And he’s so authentic when he shares his life stories on all of these platforms. So I’m really excited to hear what he has to share with us today about his walk with God, about his business, about his role as a father and his role as a philanthropist.

Henry Kaestner: Indeed, one of the things that I’m really excited about today is that we infrequently have so many from the world of telecom, and that’s my background. It’s how God has blessed me and I’m grateful for it. But telecom is not always the most interesting thing. But when you look at somebody like Strive, it becomes incredibly interesting. And yes, because of the size and scale of what he’s done with Econet Wireless all across the continent, but also the way he’s taken on just different power structures like even Mugabe and presidents. Right. You’ve seen a guy who’s fearless on behalf of the marketplace and fairness, and what an inspiration. Strive. I’m so grateful that you spent the time to join us today, and I’m looking forward to our audience hearing from you. Before we get started, give us an overview, a bigger perspective, if you will, for Africa.

Strive Masiyiwa: Well, let me just give you something people don’t often hear about Africa. Let me show you Africa as an entrepreneur, as I see Africa. Africa is a continent of 1.3 billion people. It has a GDP of $2.5 trillion. It is almost twice the size of the GDP of Russia. It is the same GDP size as India. It is a huge economy. We trade with the world at 500 billion a year. We receive less than 20 billion in aid, and most of that goes to less than a dozen countries. So Africa is a real place. It’s a real economy. Okay. There are people building businesses in Africa, the continental businesses that are huge businesses. We have them. We have companies in Africa that make jet aircraft. We have nuclear power stations in South Africa. So, you know, today 60% of the world’s young people are African. By the turn of the century, 40% of the world’s population will be Africans. You know, so Africa is a fundamental part of the global economy. And what Africa needs today is people who think of it in terms of an economy, a vibrant place of entrepreneurs. Yes, we have our challenges of poverty and injustices. We have wars in some places. But hey, there’s a war in Europe right now, and they’ve been trying to stop wars for a long time. Okay. But I can tell you that we’ve never had an African country invade an African country, even though we have a lot of challenges over borders. We’ve never, ever seen an African army cross the border to another African country. Not in my lifetime. Okay. We don’t allow that. Do we like where our borders are? No, we don’t. So there’s an Africa. We want you to engage with the Africa of Africa’s entrepreneurs. The Africa. We have more Christians than the population of the United States. Okay. We have more Christians than America. And we have bigger churches than America. So come. Come see that Africa.

Ndidi Nwuneli: Right. Thank you so much, sir. And I have followed you for many years. Met you a few times. And obviously I consider your wife, my friend and mentor. And I’ve met your amazing children. And when I think about your walk with God, there are a number of things that strike me. One is how you’ve been able to almost enter the lion’s den in many countries with a fearless spirit motivated by your faith, but also by your vision and passion. And in sectors like telecoms and ICT that are highly regulated. How have you navigated that from a faith lens and in the business world?

Strive Masiyiwa: Well, you know, I’ve taught my children I have five daughters and one son. And I have told them that prayer occupies when you have fear, push it out with prayer. When you have doubt, push it out with prayer. So we should never have fear. We should be wise. But we should never have fear. So I never think in terms of the lion’s den or anything like that because that just would be wrong. I am the lion. It’s not the other way around. I have never found a place on the earth where I cannot tread. The other side should be the one that fears you. Okay, so sometimes we forget who we are. Okay. So I’ve never been in that place where I had to fear somebody. It only meant, perhaps, that I hadn’t prayed sufficiently.

Ndidi Nwuneli: I love that. I love that it pushing away fear. And in your context, you’ve clearly stared fear right in the face and then the lion. And can you just speak to specific context? You’ve written widely about your Niger experience, about your Zimbabwe experience. When the team was doing research on, you know, the the man who sued Mugabe came up as one of the taglines, but taking on ethics and integrity and taking on some of very difficult issues around corruption. How have you navigated that and what strategies and additions of prayer and courage and boldness have been utilized?

Strive Masiyiwa: Sure. Look, these are things that have gone on in the past. I think that for any young believer who happens to be an entrepreneur or for that matter, it really doesn’t matter what walk of life you’re in. Never approach it as the opportunity knocks once. The Angel of God is always at the door. All you have to do is open the door. So you should never feel that you cannot walk away, that you have to somehow compromise because you’ll never have another opportunity. That is not correct. So if the fundamental doctrine that you hold. That comes out of the Word of God and the word of God is the full body of the Bible. You see, when I study the Bible, I have no New and I have no Old Testament. I have the Bible. You see, you will never understand Genesis chapter one if you don’t understand Revelation chapter 22. It’s impossible. You will never understand the Gospels if you don’t understand the Epistles. You will not understand the Book of Joel if you don’t understand John’s baptism, you know? So these are all fundamentally intertwined. And when you engage with it, you never have to deal with fear.

Henry Kaestner: I’m so grateful that you said that. I was about to ask you if there are specific passages that helped informed the faith that you have that you’ve found most applicable. And maybe you might answer that if indeed you feel that that’s helpful. But I think that the greater lesson is the totality of Scripture, the entire narrative. And I think that a lot of us in the Faith Driven Entrepreneur world might be guilty of having 20 or 30 verses that kind of like drive us. And they seem to have direct application to what we’re doing. And they are and they are good. And there are things like the parable of the talents in the parable, the sower, etc. But you are offering up and I agree with you that any one of those taken by themselves, you’re just seeing it in black and white, that you need to see it in the totality of scripture, and then that really brings it alive. Is that indeed what you’re saying? And or with that understanding of a holistic view of God’s word? Are there different passages or lessons that you found most applicable to you in your life?

Strive Masiyiwa: No, it has to be the totality. If you’ve been a Christian for at least five years and you can read if you haven’t read for yourself the entire Bible you are missing a lot the path to maturity is to know the entire body of the Bible. And Jesus himself said that the prophets were writing about me. They were writing about him. Okay. So Moses was writing about Jesus. That is the core. And you have to study the Bible and look for him. Look for him in Moses. Look for him in Abraham. Look for him in Joshua. Understand that whole body and everything opens up. So I never say, Look, I have a particular passage of scripture. No, I love the whole body of the Bible. Faith is defined almost scientifically in the Bible. As you know, I’ve never seen anything that comes to that level of definition as faith. It is also extraordinarily simple to understand how you get faith. You don’t get faith by being a Christian. You get faith by being a Christian who meditates on God’s Word, who spends time with God’s word, who dedicates themselves to God’s word. I spend roughly 2 hours a day studying the Scriptures.

Henry Kaestner: Wow.

Strive Masiyiwa: That is what I have done for over 25 years now.

Henry Kaestner: Wow.

Henry Kaestner: How did that start? So 25 years is a long time. But has faith always been a part of your life? Is it something that’s always been part of your business life? Or did something happen where you said, this is the thing that’s going to be the most important thing for my life and help drive my business?

Strive Masiyiwa: No, I don’t I don’t look at it from the perspective of to drive my business. It is about to drive my life. You know, so when I was, I guess about 33 years old, 32, something like that. I’m now 61. I wasn’t a man who believed particularly strongly in God. I’d never voluntarily ever gone to a church, and neither did I ever read the Bible. But when I was about 32, I had my encounter with the Lord. And from that day on, I picked up the Bible and I read it for the first time. It took me about 2 to 3 weeks, something like that, to go from Genesis to Revelations using the NIV. And I never put it down during most of that time. And so, you know, that’s my personal journey. So it guides my mindset. How I approach things. And what I pursued and how I go about pursuing it.

Henry Kaestner: What guides you during your time in Scripture? 2 hours is a long, long time. Do you have a systematic way of reading through the Bible? Tell us a little bit more about your discipline on that.

Strive Masiyiwa: The way I read a book, start Genesis Chapter one and read through it, and I try to do that at least once a year. But then I have particular things that I study that I’m going through in a particular period, and I write extensive notes on everything that I read today. For instance, I was on a wonderful time. I was studying Ephesians chapter two, verse 15 in the Amplified Bible. That was it for 2 hours Ephesians chapter two, verse 15, in the Amplified. It’s a fascinating verse because it talks about the fact that Jesus annulled the law. Okay. So for you to understand why he annulled the law, it goes to the very core of the doctrine of the cross. What happened at the cross. So I would engage in something like that. I will go and look at what others have said and written about it, and I look at the different translations. I’ll even go and look at what the Greek witness said about it. Try and just engage in such a fundamental passage.

Ndidi Nwuneli: Amazing. I love it. You know, as I reflect, I’m listening to you, a lot of young people in our continent and you have a heart for young people look to you as a role model, but many of them are getting disillusioned by the church. I don’t know if you’ve experienced that, but it’s something I’m seeing in my own network, especially the successful and intellectual Africans who are questioning the role of the church in Africa. What would you say to that?

Strive Masiyiwa: Well, I would be naturally very disappointed, but we are not in the church because we want to follow a particular pastor or a particular evangelist. It is about the word of God. Okay. If you are engaged in the word of God and for some reason you become disappointed because something happens somewhere, it doesn’t change your calculus. You find the church, but it’s not about being in a church per say. It’s about your personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Someone says that disappointed in the church, are you saying, you’re disappointed with God. You know, that’s a that’s a pretty interesting place to be. So the key thing is to have like a calculus.

Ndidi Nwuneli: And in terms of finding role models like you who are men of God, reflect Christ and also an inspiration to the next generation. How do we create that ecosystem of apostles in the marketplace, especially in environments where the line between honesty, integrity and hard work is often blurred with a get rich quick mentality?

Strive Masiyiwa: Well, first of all, we must avoid creating terminologies that are not in the Word of God. There is no word in the Word of God which says Apostle in the marketplace. We are not called to the marketplace. We are called to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. That’s what we are called to do. See, I’m not called to be a business man. I’m not called to be an entrepreneur. Not called to be an architect. There’s only one calling, which is the great commission. Okay. That’s why the word of God tells us that preach the gospel in season and out of season, wherever you are. Okay. I could have had a great conversation with you about anything, really. We could have talked about telecommunications or cryptocurrencies or blockchain, whatever you want. But here we are. We’ve got a Christian audience. Okay. Preach the gospel. Saint Francis of Assisi said, you know, preach the gospel. But if you must use words. Okay. So sometimes I don’t use words, but.

Henry Kaestner: But you use words a lot and it’s unbelievable. So we’re all in big trouble if our identity is tied into how many people go to Faith Driven Entrepreneur groups or how many people listen to this podcast, or how many people go to a Facebook page or LinkedIn page. And lest I think that we have a Facebook post or more appropriately maybe for us or LinkedIn post it as widely read. I then look at the posts that you make and you will get 450,000 likes when you use words and walk people through a framework on how to think about scaling a business. So, you know, I go for instance, right now that’s something I’ve been reading, which is the three S’s that you have where you talk about scaling a business. Can you walk us through that a bit about how you are able to take some of the lessons that you’ve learned in business, steep them in Scripture, and then share them through constructs like this with the three part series that you have on scaling your business.

Strive Masiyiwa: Sure. So I explained to people that you don’t overspiritualize these things. These things are fairly straightforward how you scale a business. And I’ve built a multibillion dollar business that’s. It’s fairly straightforward. I teach of the three P’s. And I say, First, you got to have a product. Okay, what’s the product? And it’s got to be a product that somebody is willing to pay for. Okay you kind of run around with the product that no one’s going to pay for? Okay. You got to have some sort of revenue model around the product. Now, after you have a product, you must have people, okay? Particularly if you are the one who started who invented something. Okay. You got to have good people. That’s the second P is the people. And the third P is process. You’ve got to understand the process. Okay. Because we scale through process, understanding IT systems, understanding payroll systems, and, you know, all those are processes and then the people coming together around a product to scale. So now I noticed that I don’t have an M in there. I don’t have an M for money because it’s in people. It’s the skills you see raising money for a business. It’s just a skill. It’s one of the core skills. Okay, so I gave an example. I said, you know, when I was scaling my telecom’s business, I realized that my skills for raising money were not sufficient, even though at the time I had been an entrepreneur for nearly ten years, but I had never had to go out and raise 20, 30, 50 million at a time. So I went out to find somebody. My CFO was a Christian brother and he was a banker, and he was about to start his own business as a banker. And I said, Listen, why don’t you join me and be a co-founder with me? You understand money? You know how to negotiate with banks. I’ve never done that before. Not at this level. So I did it with people. It was the other P. It’s the P for people. So you pull in the people. You pull in the people and those people. In this case, he happened to be a Christian. It doesn’t have to be as long as you had common values. You have values of integrity and you can work with people. So you open up your business to the second P and the three are in come mesh. So there’s no even if you’re building a church. Okay. There are many great evangelists who never or pastors who don’t build big churches. All they have to think about is my three Ps. They don’t have to think about the product because the product is Jesus, and that’s the best product in the world. Okay, but if you don’t have good people, you want to know the Bible says about this. Go and see what Jethro said to Moses. The whole management philosophy of how you run a big organization was laid out by Jethro to Moses three or 4000 years ago. He said, Look, Moses, you got to learn to delegate. You got to find the right people. You’ve got to delegate. You’ve got to allow them room to operate. You’ve got to give them good policies as the leader. Okay. They’ve got to have a clear vision of where you want to go. We didn’t invent. Delegation was done by Moses and Jethro because Moses couldn’t organize himself. He had just been out there as a shepherd. But Jethro laid it out for him, says Moses. how it’s done. Otherwise you’ll tire yourself. Okay. So if you’re tired, if you’re a pastor or you’re an entrepreneur and you’re always tired at the end of the day because you don’t know how to delegate. You don’t know how to find the right people to delegate to and trust them to get the job done.

Henry Kaestner: I’m reflecting on that framework and the principle of delegation. And I’m also thinking about how you’ve been so generous, not just on our podcast, but in a way that you’ve been able to pour into a younger generation. Again, when you have that many followers on Facebook, you’re clearly reaching a younger generation to help instill some of these principles and are providing them some level of mentorship, some leadership. And I know a bit that you’ve looked to some leadership yourself over time, and I know that Andrew Young, for instance, is a mentor. Can you speak a little bit about the roles of mentors that you’ve seen in your life and how you think about that playing out in the marketplace or just in life?

Strive Masiyiwa: Well, you know, what is core in mentorship for all of us, you know, is don’t approach it like you’re in a cafeteria, you know, trying to pick fish or chicken. What shall I eat today? You know, what is important, first and foremost, is you must be anchored in the core doctrine of Christ, because people, even great people, can fall over sometime. Okay. And you’ll find yourself out and see. But you are going to have people on your journey, okay? And some people will come in almost like actors on a stage because you’ve got stage fright. Okay. And some are there for the journey of life. Andrew Young turned 90 this weekend. We celebrated him at 90. I met him when I was, I guess about. 35, 36, something like that. And he asked me to help with something which required me to stop, to spend time away from my business and travel with him. Speaking to young people across Africa for an American funded venture capital fund. Young entrepreneurs. I was one myself, but I was considered successful. So the money wasn’t for me. It was to help him get this money out there. We traveled a lot and one day, you know, I was sitting with him on a plane and I reached out into my jacket and I pulled out my little Bible because we didn’t have computers in those days. And he said, You know, that I trained in the seminary. I’m reverend Andrew Young. And he says, I haven’t had a young man pull out a Bible like this. So what are you reading? So we went through it and that became the anchor of our relationship, you know, literally for the 30 plus years. We have a chat about what’s going on in Africa. He says where are you in the word of God. And I love that. And he loves it, too. So you need people like that.

Ndidi Nwuneli: I love that story. And, you know, one of the things I think when I think of you is you give your time, your talents and treasure. And giving has been a core value of yours through the Higher Life Foundation, but through so many other initiatives. How do you inspire the next generation to give as well as you mentor them?

Strive Masiyiwa: You know, when I started my business was 1986. That was when the HIV pandemic broke out. We didn’t know what it was. I run a construction company, and every week I was burying somebody. We didn’t know what this disease was, but I noticed that being in the construction industry, a lot of my low income workers were leaving young children. And. I couldn’t just bury them. And leave the children. So I started a program. To pay for the school fees of the children. I wasn’t married when I got married a couple of years later. I told my wife about this. She was fascinated that I had a program where I funded about a hundred children. To go to school, just paid their school fees every term. And she said, you know, she wanted to get involved in it and she’d actually like to run it. I said, Fine, you know, so that’s a good deal. Should I get the money? You run it. Let’s expand it. So here we are, kind of, I don’t know, 25, 30 years later, we call it the Higher Life Foundation because God has blessed us along the way. We could expand that. We are sent to schools some 250,000 kids in that time. We have thousands of graduates at all levels. We have kids even in the United States at the moment. At any given time, we have about 50 or 60 kids in the US. It’s a great system, it’s a great education system. And particularly when we have very bright kids, we can partner with the universities. So we’ve partnered with universities like Morehouse College, Yale University and New York and so forth to send our kids there. So the greatest philanthropy is education. You know, when all else fails, you want to be a philanthropist one. You don’t believe that. You have to wait until you’re a billionaire before you’re a philanthropist. That’s a misnomer. I’m not a Christian philanthropist. You start today. And as I’ve always said, I don’t give in order to have. It is the other way around. I have in order to give and that is scripture. If you go to I believe it must be two Corinthians chapter, nine verse about nine and ten, somebody correct me. It lays out why you would have to have seed in your hands so that you are never left in a position that you can’t help. But then we narrow where we want to help. Africa is an amazing mission field to help. Everywhere we turn, we have an opportunity. What an opportunity we have. The opportunity to be able to be a vessel to help others. So if my business exists, let it exist for that. Not the other way around.

Ndidi Nwuneli: I love that. I have two other questions. I’ll just ask them quickly. One is, I once heard Elizabeth tell a story, one of your daughters, about her birthday. I think she was seven. She asked for a big birthday party unless she got to the venue. It was all children. She didn’t recognize children from motherless babies homes that have been invited to this party. And that was her early introduction into philanthropy and giving. And I just think you and this is am have a phenomenal philosophy on how you engage your children in your faith, but also in your work. Can you speak to that? So as our listeners think about raising children who love God, who love humanity, who serve God, who serve humanity. How have you been deliberate about that?

Strive Masiyiwa: Now, thank you so much. You know, my wife, when she was running the program, she used to meet all the kids every single year. We couldn’t do it now because it’s just too many kids. But she there was a time when business was very small and she used to organize these events where she’d call them history maker events, where the children were brought together at a college forum to spend a week with her. And she wanted then to reach out and to believe that they could be history makers, that one day they would be President Roosevelt. Okay. That a disability or a parent missing or anything like that does not stop you becoming what you set out to do. it was on these occasions. And she was there, and there were a group of nuns there. And they came and they said, Mrs. Masiyiwa, you know, we have a two year old here. And my wife said, but, you know, we said the kids should be a lot older. They said, well, this little boy, we brought him for you, and she just took him and brought him home. And he’s our son. And you know, some of my daughters love their brother, who’s about six foot three, you know, eats all the food here. But it was so important for them. And these are barriers we must break through all of us, because people say they don’t want to adopt. So we adopted in order to break that. No, no, you adopt. He was just we took him there. You know, that’s my son. And so our kids, we taught them, for instance, that Christmas is not about gifts for you. It’s about a gift for somebody else. So you give them each money and you say, go out and buy a gift for somebody else, and you’ll only get a gift when you have a gift to give. So they zip through their little gifts. Okay. And they look at this. Sisters and brother in the hope that, you know, you really remembered me because I remember you, you know, and these are little principles, but they’re core to how you break through to the ability to get.

Ndidi Nwuneli: Thank you so much for that. That’s so powerful. My last question is, what is God telling you about Africa and Africa’s future? What is the word that is placed in your heart for such a time like this?

Strive Masiyiwa: Well, first of all, you must always have a perspective of history. Okay. Because we can see events around us and believe that this is only us. Since the age of the church. When the Holy Spirit arrived at Pentecost, there have been many pandemics, sometimes wiping out half populations. So because we have seen a pandemic today, we mustn’t behave as though this is it is the end of the world. I’m sorry. It isn’t. It’s the same with war and conflict. But what is important is to be always relevant. Relevant! Okay. There are no moral equivalence. You can’t say, hey, why are you caring about Ukraine? You didn’t care about Ethiopia? No, we always. We care about everybody. I am fasting today. I just broke my fast. Okay. I am fasting over the conflict in Ethiopia and I am fasting over the invasion of Ukraine. Because this is the most powerful thing I ever do, which is to respond to an issue from a spiritual perspective. So once I positioned myself like that, I’m saying, God use me. I fasted and fasted over the pandemic. And then I took a call from the president of South Africa one day says, I’m putting you in charge of Africa’s response to this pandemic. Okay. I knew I could do it because of where you start, how you position yourself. But don’t expect that you’re going to be used because, you know, you just really don’t care about it. You’re you can’t afford to miss a meal. You know, we should be deeply concerned. So as Africa is part of the world. It is part of the world. It’s not an exotic place. It is part of the entire world community. So it’s not about having a prophetic message. I am not a prophet. I leave that to those who sit in that ministry. But we have challenges. We have to address them and we address them through the next generation as much as the present.

Ndidi Nwuneli: That was phenomenal. Positioning yourself to hear from God to the use of God. Thank you. Thank you for inspiring us today. Thank you for your work. Thank you for your faith. And thank you for being a shining light and a hope for my generation. Henry, do you want to close us out?

Henry Kaestner: Strive I’m just very grateful. I think that one of the things that Ndidi and I had wanted to do through this podcast, which bridges some number of folks from the West who have followed our other programs in the past is to give them a re-imagined vision of the opportunities in Africa. And we have a sense of that. You know, clearly you’ve been able to show through your leadership about thriving business, but you’ve left us with something far greater, which is just the spiritual underpinnings of an economy and a culture that’s focused on God. And I’m just grateful for the fact that you spend time with us. You’ve got lots and lots of folks that look to you for inspiration, encouragement, and I’m grateful for you to being able to do that with our very small audience. And our hope is that God will use that. Thank you for having blessed me and all of us.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast and indeed welcome back. Today we’ve got a special guest that John and I have on the program, John Cortines. John has written a couple of books now, the one that you may already know about. If you’re listening to Faith Driven Investor podcast, it’s preaching to the choir here a little bit. God and Money. How he discovered true riches at Harvard Business School is a formative work in the space of an ambitious marketplace investor that’s wrestling with Where does God have them? As we before we get back and we get to the regularly scheduled program here, I wanted to set this up because the work that John has done and through the organization, he’s spent a tremendous amount of time with generous giving. And then the Maclellan Foundation has had such an impact in my life. At age 28, I came to faith. It changed everything. I had a career on Wall Street. I pursued all the things that an investor might pursue on Wall Street that does not yet know God. And then at age 38, as bandwidth was becoming more successful, I met Daryl Heald at the Maclellan Foundation and the co-founder of Generous Giving, the organization that John has spent a lot of time working with. And he asked me this simple question and I alluded to this a little bit in the outset when we talked about may we do this out of gratitude, of gratitude for the gift given us? Daryl asked me, Henry, why do you give? And I had no frame to think about the answer there. I probably mumbled through something theologically […]. I think at the time Kimberley and I were probably giving away 20% because God had really blessed bandwith and we thought we should do it. I may have even answered something like, I don’t know, I want to pay it forward. I hope it wasn’t something as corny as that, but it might have been. But through the next six months and God’s Word, God and Jesus and the and the teachings of the Bible helped me to see that so much of the Bible has something to do with money. In fact, it felt that every single one of those six months, every single one of the days in the six months, had something to do with money. And it changed my completely changed my walk with God. I credit Daryl and that time in Scripture with my born again again moment, I credit the whole season one in going from black and white Christianity to Technicolor. And John’s here to talk about that. John, thank you very much for being with us.

John Cortines: Thanks so much for having me on, Henry. It’s great to see you and John as well.

Henry Kaestner: So as we get started, give us a foundation. And I think this is really important and that is we have some certain assumptions that we make as a foundation in thinking about how we invest, investing for the glory of God. How do we think about that across different asset classes, stocks, bonds, real estate? We’ve recently had some folks in talking about investing in cinema and in culture, but there’s this underlying premise and belief that we as Christ followers, have a different way that we might think about money, but we really haven’t gotten into that that much on the podcast. So there’s the formative experience that each of us has that we can go through that then leads us to how do we invest our assets for the glory of God? John, speak to us a bit about your work. As we do with every guest, we like to start off with an autobiographical flyover. So do that, but then bring us right up to the work that you’re doing right now and help us to understand how you came, to understand how you might answer this question. They’re all asking, like, why do we give? Why do we invest?

John Cortines: Absolutely. Thanks, Henry. Well, you know, the quick flyover would be I grew up in North Dallas, grew up in a wonderful Christian home, so thankful for my parents. And I’m going to focus on the money element of this because this was transformative. I love how you called it Born Again Again. And I really point to that in my own journey. So I love Jesus from an early age, wanted to follow him with my whole life. And I also had imbibed this, you know, Christian money formula, which is something like work really hard, live frugally, save a lot, don’t have debt, and by the way, give 10%. Like there’s this obedience thing. And I thought, Hey, that’s cool. And I really started loving accumulating money, starting with mowing lawns in high school, socked away $10,000. I went to engineering school and had scholarships, and before I ever stepped foot into my first full time job, I had $100,000, you know, internships and scholarships and all of this. And so my plan was to be a millionaire by age 30 or retire by age 40. And I had all the spreadsheets to prove it. And giving for me was actually that annoying cell in my spreadsheets that I could toggle lower and I’d be able to retire sooner. But I knew that I had to keep a certain level of giving to be an obedient Christian. And I was kind of the way I thought about it. I even enjoyed some of the giving I was doing, but I just it wasn’t a source of life for me. And so fast forward in my journey, I was working in Big Oil. I wanted to pursue a career track with them and I ended up at Harvard Business School after having launched my career with Chevron, and I was going to go back as an expat after my MBA. And that’s a very lucrative opportunity for those who know about, you know, that kind of a deal. So very, very excited about that. My classmate and I, who are in the business school, found a class at the divinity school called God and Money, and it just piqued our interest. We said, this is so cool, you know, a theology class on money and God and we love God and we love money. So how can we not take this class? And long story short, the next few months we went Genesis to Revelation. We were digging into Scripture and we were meeting all kinds of extremely generous Christians who had been impacted and were living their lives in radical ways, ways that we’d never heard about, even growing up in the church in terms of the ambition and percentages and commas and zeros in their giving. And we thought, this is unbelievable. The most striking thing was that it wasn’t an act of obedience. It was an act of joy and gratitude, as you were just alluding to. And so that led us to write a term paper that became the book, God and money and really changed our lives forever. And so for the last seven years I’ve been working post MBA was called by God out of Big Oil. I let Chevron know, hey, I’m going to work for a small nonprofit in Florida called Generous Giving. And they didn’t even try to talk me out of it. I think they thought I’d lost my mind. You know, this guy’s a lost cause. So 60 to 70% lower pay than what I had thought I was going to be going into. But it’s been this rich adventure with the Lord and so on. My coauthor, Greg and I have had both sides of the adventure. He’s been in the corporate world and has been living and giving in a radical way. And now I’ve had the privilege of being on the ministry side of this and meeting hundreds, if not thousands of givers and talking to people about their journeys and getting to spread the joy, the message that this is a source of joy and intimacy with Christ rather than the way I used to view it. Right. Just obedience.

Henry Kaestner: The highest education I ever had was the University of Delaware. Some people call it the University of South Jersey. We did not have a class on God and money. It comes as a bit of a surprise to me that HBS had a class called God and Money, but maybe it shouldn’t have, because I know that much of John’s formation is through some really great Christ following men also at Harvard Business School. John, did you take the God and Money class?

John Coleman: Well, to be clear, I think it was at the divinity school, right, John? So I actually was aware of it while I was there. But I would say, you know, HBS was a much better Christian community than I had anticipated. And John, I don’t know if you had this experience, but there was a very active Christian fellowship on campus with small groups in the different sections. And so I found that my faith was actually able to grow during that time in groups with others. And John, I don’t know if you experienced the same thing, but it sounds like you you did, at least to some extent. What was that like for you?

John Cortines: Yeah, I’m really thankful for the Christian Fellowship. It’s such an awesome community, you know, it’s a small minority, but it’s very vibrant. And yeah, it was a Tuesday morning men’s Bible study that formed actually what has become lifelong community. So there’s a a text chain and some annual get togethers in this group that I’m a part of from my time there. And these guys have been a real catalyst for spiritual growth in my journey. So I really praise God for that.

John Coleman: That’s awesome. Now, you did make a very different decision than most HBS students do or HBS graduates do. First, I’d love to hear just what the reactions were when you came to this decision. First, when you gain this insight about giving and then came to the decision to enter the nonprofit world first, how did that conversation go with your wife? I know you were probably married at the time. And then secondly, how did your classmates react?

John Cortines: Sure You know, I want to answer on a personal level first, because God did this foundational work in my life and honestly, my coauthor, Greg’s life for both of us, where we talk about this and God and money, it flipped the question we were asking. We kind of came into this big project of studying God’s word to ask, how much do we need to give? Is that a 10% tithe? Is that something different? Is there another way to think about it? And we left that exploration asking how much do we really need to keep it just flipped it for us and God has abundantly provided for us. We had these educations, these careers, these salaries. And so to the extent we can define what enough looks like and live, you know, not this poverty lifestyle, but just live a nice life and be blessed and put a guardrail in place. The upside and the financial upside of our career gets allocated to God’s kingdom in a different way. So there’s this really freeing mindset shift. And then when the call to go into nonprofit arrived for me and for my wife, who is, I would say, more sensitive to the Lord and more able to make those pivots than I am. We had already reframed our lifestyle expectations around a finish line, so then it was like, okay, we may not have that upside we were thinking where we can give six figures every year, but we already recalibrated our lifestyle. And so it actually becomes more possible to move into the nonprofit sector and live on those kinds of salaries. That’s the personal side to it. And then how did people react? You know, certainly surprise. I mean, that’s the big thing, because you just I was surprised. Right. Is like I didn’t go to grad school to take on student loans to then go earn less money and work in a nonprofit that it just it’s an upside down formula. So all I can say is that God made his calling very clear. And that’s what we told people like, you know, I don’t know what your faith position is, but this is a call from God situation and all we can do is answer it.

John Coleman: That’s awesome and encouraging. Talk to us. I mean, if you don’t mind. For listeners who are unfamiliar with the book, talk to us about the thesis of the book and what you offer to people who are trying to consider the role that money plays in their life in God and Money. The book.

John Cortines: Sure. So the book grew out of our term paper. So those who have done business school will appreciate this. You know, we don’t really write papers. John, I don’t know if it was harder when you were there a few years before me, but not a lot of paper writing going on. And so then we when we were in the divinity school, the professor says, Hey, you have to write a 15 pages paper to conclude the semester. And we said, Wow. So we said, Can we write it together? And he said, Sure, just make it 30 pages. So we’re like, Oh, shoot. So we started a research paper. Honestly, we said, I want to investigate Scripture and interview experienced Christian givers. And try to build a framework around how do we think about money and giving and the Christian life. So that’s really the foundation of the project. And so it starts, you know, the whole first chapter is just a fly over Genesis to Revelation. What does it say about money? And it was funny, even the publisher saying, you know, people aren’t going to hang with you for a chapter one that’s just a Bible flyover. And you say, well, we got to anchor it on that. And what we do throughout the course of the book is try and build a framework for a higher income or a more financially successful business leader in the 21st century who’s wrestling with what do I do with this money that God has provided and how do I be faithful? And so we propose down to numbers and frameworks around what that looks like.

Henry Kaestner: So John, I want to get into something right off the bat that I think is really applicable to our audience. I think that some number of folks are coming to understand that actually there’s a great opportunity to understand that God owns it all and we can worship by giving to God what is already His, participate in the work that He’s doing. And there’s been a movement of biblical generosity that I think is really picking up steam in the church, which is to be celebrated. It’s not as clear that the concept of investing according to faith through this knowledge that God is at all is at the same level yet. I think it’s building toward that. But as you come at things from the foundational level, which I think is the most important level about God owning it all, do you have any reflections on how we might think about our investment portfolio in light of God and money?

John Cortines: Thanks, Henry. You know, one of the most compelling things I heard a few years ago, and I know these concepts are familiar for the listeners of this show and the work that you all are doing and advocating for. So I just I’m really thankful for your partnership in this space biblically to advocate for this perspective. But the thing that changed my perspective on this was when someone said, you know, if you think about all the giving that someone will ever do or all the giving that even Christians will ever do, in aggregate, it’s a small slice of the overall wealth. And if you think about the investment portfolios, the size is just radically, radically different. And, you know, we could even say in round numbers, you know, the giving is in, I don’t know, tens of billions probably. But the investment portfolio is in the multiple, multiple trillions, even the tens of trillions. And so how we allocate our giving dollars and the fact that we do give radically, generously as believers, that’s a that’s a mandate. That’s a call. That’s an invitation. But I think you’re right. There’s less of an awareness to say, hey, what does it look like to invest according to these principles? The one thing I’ll say and I love your reaction to this, too, as an expert here, we see this real push around ESG in the secular world. And depending on when people are listening to this podcast, you know, the FCC has even just come out and said they’re building frameworks around this for disclosures of publicly traded companies around ESG. And that’s coming from our, you know, the postmodern, confused ethical soup that we’re all swimming in as a broad society. So I think there’s a massive opportunity for believers to be out in front of that, which we honestly haven’t been, but to really articulate so many incredible faith driven business leaders who are running their companies by these principles, but probably haven’t written that down in a thoughtful way or publicly disclosed it necessarily. So I would love to see us be more forward and articulate in saying, here’s how we’re running our companies, here’s how we’re investing our money. Not necessarily in this same exact definition of ESG that the secular culture may create, but in a biblically anchored way, some of which is going to overlap and some of which is going to look a little bit different. I’d love to hear y’all’s reactions to that.

John Coleman: Yeah, John, I think this is such an important topic. You know, what’s ironic is that Christians and other believers, whether they be Muslims or Jews for a thousand years, have been at the forefront of this issue. You know, some of the earliest codes about how you should invest, what you should invest in, what you shouldn’t invest in, actually came out of the great monotheistic religions in particular. And yet if you look at the modern ESG movement, as you described, it’s largely been a mainstream or secular phenomenon for the last 20 or 30 years. And I think we had gotten to the space for many Christians you mentioned earlier had divided their life in two and said, I’m going to make money and then I’m going to give, which was kind of a false dichotomy. And I think that many business leaders and investors had also said the same thing that, you know, the corporation’s only duty is to its shareholders and the investors only duty is to make a profit or to maximize return and had segregated those two areas, living their values in one area and giving, but not really trying to impose those on the way in which they ran companies or gave. In the meantime, I think the mainstream world led by a lot of large international institutions. Decided that it had to enforce its values or they had to live their values through their investing. And so they started to require companies to meet certain criteria on climate or on governance, etc. And that’s grown now. I won’t go off on too much of a tangent here and to something like a $35-40 trillion segment of investment management is ESG now. And yet if you look at Faith Aligned Investment Management, it’s really between $50 and $100 billion right now. It’s a tiny sliver of the market. And so what we encourage people to do I think is to not draw a false dichotomy in their lives that if they truly believe in the values of their faith and how those can help people flourish, and how loving God and loving your neighbor can actually transform the world, that they try and exhibit those through their investing strategies and even through the ways that they lead companies, not necessarily as Christian companies, quote unquote, but really embracing the values of their faith and beginning to live those out in every sphere of their lives. And we kind of have a catch phrase for that, which is all investing is impact investing. It’s this idea that impact investing isn’t 2% of what you do when you’re feeling generous. It’s really 100% of your portfolio because that whole portfolio is having an impact. The question is whether you’re going to control that impact, whether you’re going to wield the influence that you have through that portfolio or yield it to others who have their own agenda to pursue. And so I’m seeing and Henry, I think you’d agree with this. I’m seeing a lot more people and institutions waking up to that. But it’s interesting to see how the faith aligned or Christian world actually fell behind after starting this whole movement, you know, hundreds of years ago and is only now waking up to what the mainstream world has been living for a couple of decades.

John Cortines: Yeah, and I so appreciate that. And the historical context is fascinating as I reflect on my own personal journey. You know, I’m very analytical and I anticipated building this nest egg. Hey, retire by 40. So what does that look like? And I kind of cut my teeth in the bobble head world, if that’s a familiar term. You know, the founder of Vanguard, and it’s this idea of index and forget about it and you’ll be okay. And even the idea that you’ll probably be a head of active investments anyways, net of fees, and even if you’re not, you haven’t spent any time thinking about it so you can sleep easy at night. You know, I think there are many believers who would fall into that camp. And so the argument needs to be, you know, regardless of what you think about what the return, you know, returns one way or the other. I love what you said, John. All investing is impact investing. So when you buy an index, you’re buying a lot of stuff you probably don’t want to buy. And so to set it and forget about it and just collect your returns for 30 or 40 years, I think we can start setting that aside in light of a broader picture of the kingdom and the impact that those funds are having.

Henry Kaestner: So, John, we do a segment here toward the end of every podcast called Lightning Round, and we’re not there yet. But I just want to prepare you just so you can start getting ready. We can up the tempo a little bit, but I want you to spend as long as you need to answer this question, because I think it’s really, really formative. We know from Scripture that God loves a cheerful giver not to give out of reluctance or compulsion. And I think that it’s fair for us to take that and extend it towards how we think about faith driven investing as well. He wants to have a joyful investor, one that doesn’t feel like they have to go ahead and invest in this fund or that fund, because otherwise they’re going to be beaten with many blows. Right. How is it that you are able to find joy in giving and joy in investing? And what are some of the things that you’ve seen others employ as well?

John Cortines: Yeah, thanks for that question, Henry. I would say that here’s the biggest thing about how to become a joyful and cheerful giver, and we can apply this to investing as well. You know, why do we give let me start from that. We start from the character of God. As Christians, we believe that God is the giver. He gave his only son. We have eternal life. We’ve received so much. And if we’re made in the image of God, we are made to be givers. And so if we start from the character of God and we recognize the priceless gift of the Gospel, then we move into a posture of gratitude. And so that is actually my answer of how do we maintain joy in our giving and in our overall stewardship of money is to wake up every day with a posture of gratitude for what we get to do and for what God has blessed us with. And I would argue we talk about this a little bit in the book. True Riches, that the opposite of gratitude when it comes to stewardship, the opposite of gratitude is pride. And those two words aren’t often put together in contrast to one another. But I believe financially it’s true, if you think about King Nebuchadnezzar in the Old Testament is the ultimate example of financial pride. He says, look at this, Babylon, the great city that I’ve built to display my power and my glory. And he’s struck down. You know, he’s a negative example for us spiritually. But if we start from that posture of gratitude and receiving all that we have. As a gift from God, it becomes so much easier to have open hands and to give or to have the freedom to do our very best in our investments. But know that we’re going to miss some. We’re not going to be perfect. We’re not going to pick the perfect fund, but we’re living in the freedom of gratitude for what God has given us. So that’d be my one tip on living with joy in our financial gifts and investments.

John Coleman: That’s awesome, John. What a great testimony. I want to pivot to some of your work at Maclellan here shortly, but before we jump off of the topic of God and money and how you started to investigate this, I was really fascinated that you went Genesis to Revelation through the Bible and then part of your term paper was studying people who were good at this or were living this out. I was wondering if you could make it real for us. Who are, you know, one or two or three people that inspired you on this front in the Bible? And then who are a couple of folks that really inspired you out in the world today on this topic of God and money and living generously?

John Cortines: Absolutely. You know, one thing I’ll highlight in scripture is this awesome contrast. Luke is the most financially oriented gospel writer. So the gospel of Luke has all these extra money stories we don’t get in the other gospels. And there’s a contrast between the rich young ruler who actually does appear in multiple gospels, and Zacchaeus who actually appears in the we don’t need to get all into biblical theology and interpretation here, but Zacchaeus appears at the apex of the journey into Jerusalem that Jesus is on. It’s a key story for Luke in writing his gospel and the rich young ruler comes to Jesus, has a bunch of money, can’t get over the hump of realizing that He’s called to give in a radical way. And he walks away, sad, and Zacchaeus is met with the grace of Jesus Christ and in his joy, he gives away half of his assets and beyond to do restitution for where he’s wronged people. And Jesus says today salvation has come to this house, you know, an acknowledgment of what Zacchaeus has done. So just kind of looking at that contrast like, man, I want to be a Zacchaeus, not a rich young ruler who has the money but walks away from God because of that. Yeah. Making it real in terms of some people. I’ll give one example. I’m a saver. I know many people listening that will have that saver mentality as well. And I met this guy. We spoke over the phone. He’s a hedge fund guy and shared quite openly, you know, hey I am blessed with like a $5 million plus kind of an income in the last few years. And and he said, but I don’t save money. And it was kind of on the phone. It’s like, come again, you know, tell me what that looks like. And he said, Well, you know, we have our house. Our house is paid off. We’ve got some money set aside for college, for the kids. I have really good life insurance and disability insurance. So, you know, my family’s covered. But, you know, as far as retirement, I’m not in a hurry. I’m in my forties, you know, why would I save up a big retirement nest egg? And so we make all this money. We live a decent lifestyle, and then we flush the rest. We give it to God’s kingdom every year. He said, I think I need maybe 3 million bucks to retire on, but I’m on a glide path to save that. I’m not in a hurry. And we just give whatever we make beyond what we live on, we give away. And I just was so floored. I think I probably hung up the phone and sat down on the floor of my living room, you know, just like I can’t believe what I’m hearing, because if I was him, you know, I’ve saved for six months and then call it quits. And I think just kind of hearing that kind of ambitious generosity was very transformative in my own journey.

John Coleman: And I’ll tell you, one of the most encouraging things for me, entering the faith driven investing world about a year ago was just the extraordinary number of examples of that, you know, whether it be people like Alan Barnhart or Casey Crawford or others who are so generous with their financial resources and live so radically differently. I wanted to pivot here quickly, John, to your work today. So you’ve joined the Maclellan Foundation in a role related to giving. Tell us a little bit more about Maclellan and about what you’re doing there.

John Cortines: Absolutely. Well, you know, it’s been such an honor to be a part of the Maclellan Foundation, who is the founder of Generous Giving, where I worked for five years, and I’ve been directly on their team for two years now, and the foundations existed for over 75 years. And so the family and this foundation has been passionate advocates for this perspective on biblical generosity for literally longer than I’ve been alive on this earth. And so I’m so grateful to benefit from that. And there was this key revelation for them that giving is not just a means to spiritual ends. You know, it’s not that we give in order to see people discipled and baptized and all these things. But giving actually is spiritual fruit in the life of a Christian believer. It is a component of our discipleship journey with the Lord. And in recognition of that, they started this organization generous giving that shares that message. Many people will have heard of a journey of generosity, retreat, or their celebration of generosity conference, which are these no pressure environments where people who have, you know, more resources than the average person. Come together with peers and explore the kind of conversation we’re having today and hear stories like we’re talking about today and just get fired up as givers and in that journey. And so through that, it was really impactful on my journey when I was kind of wrestling through these topics, watching some of their videos online and meeting people who got their start at these conferences. So yeah, it’s been a great joy to be a part of it. And I’ll just say that for anyone who’s thinking about stepping into those kind of environments, the beauty of it is the neutrality. It’s just this is not a fundraiser. This is not a conversation with a certain end in mind. This is a non prescriptive but prophetic environment to talk with people and say, Hey, what is God’s calling on my life as a giver given that He’s entrusted these resources to me? And how do I make the most of the opportunity I have?

Henry Kaestner: All right. That’s beautiful. I want to affirm that. I also want to encourage people that might be listening to this is that while traditionally generous giving and the work of Maclellan foundation have tended to help people who are struggling and trying to figure out how do they give well? It’s the biblical message of generosity is equally applicable for a college sophomore, somebody who’s in India. I remember one of the things that really brought me into the work that you all do out of Maclellan was Daryl going over to India and spending time with the Dalits, the Untouchables, and preaching to them about how rich they were. And that translator like, Dude you know who you’re talking to? And Daryl was like, No, no, just translate like that. And of course, he is preaching a second Corinthians 8:9 and just, you know, to that God who was rich, became poor so that we are poor and might become rich. And so they could understand the new view of riches through the biblical message of generosity. And there’s a beauty in there that’s really about heart transformation. And I think that that has so much overlap with Faith Driven Investor, because Faith Driven Investing at one level is yes, absolutely. How do we steward investment capital across? Yes, it could be patient concession return, but absolutely market based return as well. How do we think about doing that? Well, how do we respond into that? And I hope that listeners will get a good sense for that. But ultimately, all of this is about bringing us back to God and knowing God and how much He loves us. So much. So anybody who’s struggling with money at all, the spirit of Mammon, if you will being able to understand that biblical message of generosity that you all have espoused for so long, sets us free regardless of our financial background. And I think that that’s an important thing to mention. Okay, we are here at the end of our time together. Just so you know, this is how this is going to end. The question you’re going to get at the end. You are not going to get the questions early on because it takes away the fun of it. But the question you’re going to get at the end is what is God speaking to you about through his word? And maybe it’s today, maybe it’s over the course of last week, maybe sort of last month. That’s what we can end with. That’s when you know this is all going to be over. But John and I have a couple of Rapidfire questions we’re going to throw at you first. Okay. You ready?

John Cortines: I’m ready.

Henry Kaestner: Alright good Okay. Number one, we see the exercise equipment in the background. I also know you enough to know that you’re really fit. What’s your favorite thing to do to stay in shape?

John Cortines: It is lazy exercise, which I would say is fasting.

Henry Kaestner: I was not expecting that

John Cortines: Trick answer Once a week, 24 hour fast spiritual and physical benefits. So that’s my lazy exercise.

Henry Kaestner: Wow. Okay, so that’s the second podcast cast that we’ve had on today that’s talked about how important fasting is in their spiritual life. And so you’re not spending time on that exercise equipment. That’s for somebody else behind you. You do fasting.

John Cortines: It’s theoretically for me, but I’d be ashamed to tell you how often it’s used.

Henry Kaestner: Theoretically. Okay. All right. Number two, we’re talking about the biblical message of generosity so I am going to put you on a spot here and maybe you shouldn’t have a favorite in this. And no, I’m not asking you about your kids. I’m asking you about a charity, a ministry that you and your wife have given to over time, that there’s just something about them that’s really inspired you.

John Cortines: Oh, man, I have developed this beautiful relationship over the years with Compassion International. Everything they do is about Christ and children and working through the local church. Those are their three C’s and they are so I’ve known their executive leadership and I’ve talked to their volunteers through translators in the field, and they all speak the same language, so gospel centered. So I can’t say enough about them. They’ve been our number one allocation as a family.

John Coleman: That’s awesome. We love compassion in our house, too. One of the great things you can do if you have kids we found is that for each of the kids, we have a kid overseas who’s about their age that they’re a pen pal with now that we’re supporting. And it’s an easy way for any family to get into supporting others overseas. I have a slightly different question for you all. Preface this by saying, you know, John has written two books, God and Money and True Riches. Everyone should pick those up, I think. And we can be certain that any proceeds from those are going to good used, as you’ve heard today. So buy extra copies for your friends. But John, what are you reading right now or what have you read? Recently that you think would be helpful to people investigating these topics?

John Cortines: You know, I’ll give a very unique answer, something people haven’t heard of, but especially if somebody has read three or four books I’m giving and they’re kind of like, Hey, I wonder what’s out there. There is a guy named Saint Basil the Great, and he preached some sermons on money and giving 1600 years ago. He’s one of the church fathers. And so you can find a translation of several of his sermons that’s called On Social Justice by Basil the Great. Man. It is good stuff. He’s a little bit in-your-face. The church fathers were a little bit in-your-face. So if you can get past his aggressive style, it is convicting and inspiring sermons on money and generosity. So in centuries past, the message was the same as it is today.

John Coleman: It’s awesome. So maybe we’ll close it out. John, what do you think is God’s call in your life right now and what are you learning from him?

John Cortines: You know, it’s interesting that there’s this theme I found in the community of biblically generous people that God has allowed me to be a part of. Whereas you start giving your money away, you start giving your time and your life away. And then very often the call of God emerges to adopt or foster. It kind of comes inside the home. So Isaiah 58, beautiful passage. Bring the homeless poor into your house. The glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. And God has really spoken that into me in my wife’s life over the last few years. And so we have foster twins who we received from the NICU 5 pounds each and they’ve been with us since then. They’re now two years old and I’ll be in court tomorrow on their case. And we’re praying for an adoption this year. So I would just say that there’s all this professional stuff and flying around and conferences and that’s a great joy. But but the conviction and the challenge and the fellowship with Jesus and trying to live this out every day at home and in my wife, who’s a hero, doing that even more intensely than I am day in and day out. That’s been the real area of growth for us lately.

Henry Kaestner: That’s super motivating, very encouraging. John, I’m grateful for our friendship, our partnership in the movement and just the way that you challenge us all, challenged our listeners. So listeners, thank you for having dialed in. Thank you for the support and encouragement we’re getting from emails and suggestions on people we might have on the podcast. Yes, as you might imagine, if you think this might be a podcast that might be an inspiration or encouragement to others, please pass it along. We have a new Faith Driven Investor group study that we’ve rolled out that you might really enjoy. It’s six weeks study. You get together with your peers to talk about how you can process what God is saying about investing. It’s some great lessons from Tim Keller, Andy Crouch, Mark Sheard, Finny Kuruvilla, a whole bunch of others. It’s just really super motivating, encouraging. I think you enjoy that. Thank you for having tuned in and may God bless you as you endeavor to understand how to invest capital for God’s glory. Until next time.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome, Faith driven entrepreneurs. It is an incredible honor to be here with Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel. And when we think his faith driven entrepreneurs about what it looks like to be a faith driven leader. A lot of us think, well, gosh, we can talk about our faith or be informed by our faith if maybe we’re running a small company in maybe the Bible Belt or something like that. But other than that, we just really have to buy into a secular spiritual divide and maybe leave our faith at home and maybe just look at it on weekends in a church. If there is a place in America, at least that people think is not very faith friendly, a lot of people think Silicon Valley or they might think of big, publicly traded company. But we’ve got a guy here who is the CEO of one of the very biggest publicly traded companies in the Bay Area who’s very serious about his faith. So, Pat, what an honor and privilege and a blessing for you to share some time with us. Thank you.

Pat Gelsinger: Hey, thanks, Henry. Appreciate what you do for the entrepreneurs. And a real pleasure to spend some time chatting today.

Henry Kaestner: Thank you. Thank you. So maybe we just start off with that, which is what does it look like to be driven by your faith and be a leader of a really big company?

Pat Gelsinger: Well, you know, it’s been a journey for me since early on. And in fact, maybe a little bit of the story of how I got here is funny, where I was very young in my faith. You know, I was working at Intel a few months and, you know, I felt compelled by God to go into ministry. And I’m a very young Christian and I’m, you know, at Intel, maybe eight months at this point, you know, had just become a Christian, maybe five, four months earlier. And God says, go into full time ministry. And I started arguing with God. I said, I don’t want to be a minister. I don’t want to be one of those pastor folks. I love this technology stuff while I’m doing it. You know, I’m wrestling with God for a while and okay, God, I give up, right? If this happens, I’ll go into full time ministry. And the answer from God was The workplace is your ministry. And Colossians three, 23 and 24 became my life verse work heartily. As for the Lord and not them, not from men. Knowing that you receive the reward of the inheritance, it is the Lord Christ whom you serve. And that’s always been saying, okay, you know, I’m in the workplace, but I’m a full time Christian, full time minister, you visible for my faith in those roles. And boy, that’s been the journey of almost 40 years now as a Christian, as a leader in the workplace. And to me it’s been occasionally challenging but extraordinarily rewarding, knowing that, yeah, I work for Intel no. I work for the Lord Jesus Christ on a daily basis.

Henry Kaestner: So how does that work out? A lot of people talk about Saint Francis of Assisi, and that’s the way to kind of inform what we do. And, you know, just preach the gospel, always use words when necessary. Of course, what’s missing in that is that he is also one of the most famous open air pastors of all time. Right. But you’ve navigated through deed and excellence and also sharing your faith. This is not the first time you’ve talked about your faith in front of a public audience. How do you navigate that tension?

Pat Gelsinger: And, you know, in many ways, I’ll say, you know, there’s a couple of key rules that I’ve learned over time to navigate that. Well, you know, one is I’d say, you know, first the thesis behind how you bring your faith into the workplace. And today there’s a lot of discussion on diversity and inclusion. And it turns out that for humanity, over 70% of all humans on the earth claim that faith is an or the most important thing in their lives. So if we’re going to talk about diversity and inclusion, but we’re not going to allow faith in the workplace, I’m telling 70% of humanity. No, the most important thing that you can’t come into the workplace. So, of course, diversity and inclusion means that faith needs to come into the workplace, it needs to be visible. Otherwise, I’m telling you, keep that at home. But other aspects of inclusion you’re able to bring into the workplace, you know, that doesn’t work, right? You know, diversity and inclusion is all about bringing your whole self into the workplace, your ethnic self, you know, your sexual orientation, your social and your faith. So I say I’m proud of bringing my faith into the workplace. And in fact, if I, as the CEO who’s the chief culture officer of Intel, can’t demonstrate my diversity in the workplace, then how can anybody? So, in fact, I need to be representing my faith, what’s most important to me or other aspects of my personality in the workplace. But then the second piece of it is, is I also then, as a Christian CEO, need to make it okay for everybody else to bring their faith perspectives into the workplace. And, oh, you’re a Sikh. Tell me about being a Sikh. Oh, what’s Ramadan? Yo, let’s go. Hey, you know, I just was talking to my board of directors was celebrating Ramadan. I said, next year, I’m going to celebrate it with you and I’m going to do the fasting with you next year as well. I want to know about your faith and your perspectives and so on. And for that, you know, people might say, well, you’re proselytizing if you talk about your faith. No, I’m bringing my whole self into the workplace. And I must make it okay for all other faith perspectives, including no faith. I hear someone say, you know, I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in any faith. Well, great, that’s your worldview. And I need to make that okay too when they’re part of my team, part of the workplace that we’re together [……].

Henry Kaestner: So presumably when you encourage that and allow someone to bring their whole selves to work, people feel more welcome and they stick around more. They do more excellent work and and probably even flow through to the bottom line.

Pat Gelsinger: Yeah. And in fact, you know, there’s lots of studies now that have shown that a more diverse, inclusive workspace brings better outcomes. You know, people, hey, if I’m able to, you know, bring my whole self into the workplace, I feel honored in my faith traditions or, you know, my cultural and ethnic predecent. Then I’m able to participate more effectively in work discussions as well. And I can bring those perspectives where, you know, I mean, the famous story of the first version of the Apple Watch, right, where it didn’t detect the women’s period because there was nobody on the design team who was a female. Oh, right. It’s sort of like you immediately just saw, hey, not having a gender diversity was a total design flaw in the product. Well, this is every aspect of bringing yourself into the workplace. And how will this product or this decision be seen by different ethnic groups, different social groups, different genders, etc.? And of course, as we said, faith has one of those.

Henry Kaestner: So that’s fascinating to me. I have a friend of mine named Chris Seipel, who is a big proponent for religious freedom, and he has a phrase that I really like, which is truth stands out in the marketplace of ideas, and that as faith driven leaders, we should welcome that and include that and encourage people to bring their whole selves work. So I think that’s really cool. And one of the things that will probably be a surprise to most of our listeners and most of our watchers is that the concept of faith driven employee resource groups really started out here right at Apple and then Facebook and then Google.

Pat Gelsinger: and in Intel.

Henry Kaestner: And of course at Intel. Of course at Intel. But that would be a surprise to a lot of folks to think that maybe they’re in Chicago right now are thinking, well, I don’t really know. I could yeah, maybe if I’m in Nashville, I could but can’t do it in Chicago actually out here that’s now accepted business. Right.

Pat Gelsinger: And we have over 30 different employee resource groups now with the company. And one of the earliest ones was the Intel Christian Bible Network that I helped to start, you know, many, many years ago.

Henry Kaestner: How long ago is that? So that’s a long time.

Pat Gelsinger: Over 30 years ago when we first did that. And in fact, you know, the first outline for the juggling act book was in preparation for my first speaking at the first Intel Christian Bible Network. You were talking about having a lunch time brown bag kind of event where people would show up and people sit Pat, Pat. You know, as a leader inside of the company, we really want you to, you know, be that Christian face as we kick off the Intel Christian Bible Network. And I said, Well, what should I talk about? Right. I don’t know. You know, maybe, you know, how do you make faith work and your family fit together? Oh, okay. And that became the outline for the book. And I’ve given that talk, of course, you know, now probably a thousand plus times or.

Henry Kaestner: 20 years ago, maybe, you.

Pat Gelsinger: Know, the first version of the book was over 20 years ago. The second version of the book was, I think nine years ago now. Right. The juggling act. And it was really born out of okay, I got to come up with some talk for our kickoff of the Intel Christian Bible Network. And now that whole theme of […] is really flourished inside of Intel. And we have, you know, different faith groups, different sexual orientation groups, different ethnic groups. You’re also, you know, different classes, you know, a black leadership group. We have a, you know, a veterans group as well for those coming out of the military into the workforce, you know, and of course, across some of the other regions of the world, you know, different slices that are important for them. And in fact, last year, we were recognized by the United Nations as one of the most faith friendly companies. And I and our head of HR were recognized for that as well. Right. It’s sort of like, wow, that’s came full circle, you know, 30 years ago and now being recognized by the United Nations, it was like, okay, this is pretty special.

Henry Kaestner: It is really special. Okay. So let’s go back to the juggling act a bit and this concept because all faith driven entrepreneurs wrestle with this, what does it look like? You’ve got four kids and they’re all at home when you’re writing the book. Talk to us about how you manage that. What was the juggling act about? Give our listeners a little bit of encouragement on that, please.

Pat Gelsinger: Sure. And it is you know, it’s sort of why the title is very fitting, right because you’re being stretched by work. And, you know, if you’re a good employee, how much do you want to work more? How much time does your family want more? How much time does your spouse want more? More. Right. So you’re just being stretched and, you know, how do you make that all work? And, you know, the juggling act was really my journey and how to make it all work. And, you know, some of the key themes that we developed in the book, one was a mission statement. Yeah, right. Where do you want to go? If you don’t have a plan of where you want to go, any path will get you there. So get very deliberate about your goals, your priorities, your values, and then systematically take things out of your life and consistent with those goals. Yeah, right. And allocate your time to those goals and then build clear your value driven priority and mechanisms to live that way. So set a mission statement. Another is to have mentors. Right? Okay. Henry, you are my mentor. Here’s my mission statement. Help me to live this way. Hold me accountable to what I said would be the case. Another is keeping score. And one of the things that people always get a kick out of is we had the at home chart, right, where, you know, you just sort of keep working a little bit later, a little bit later in the project and soon you’ve squashed the family hours in the evening. So we said, Hey, if I’m home by 6:15, that’s a point. If I’m home by 5:00, that’s 2.0. I like if I’m home after 6:15, that’s zero points. If I’m going weekend days, that’s a negative point. So that was the numerator. The denominator is the number of workdays and my secretary, an independent arbiter, would produce the at home chart on a monthly basis. So Linda would say, hey, you haven’t been home much lately. Yes, I have. No, you haven’t. Yeah, right. Well, now we have data, right? We look at the data and then she might say something like, Well, I felt like you haven’t been home much. Well, that’s different, right? The data says I have been home, but you haven’t felt that way. Oh, that’s totally different. But keeping score, keeping track. Are you living according.

Henry Kaestner: To talk about that though? So because one of the things I wrestle with a bit is kind of switching from my work life to coming home and I know so sometimes can really say like, I don’t know that you’re really kind of here, but I’m here. I mean, my independent arbitrator say you are absolutely home at 6:15, but I’m still thinking about customer acquisition or intellectual property or channels to market or whatever it is. Yeah. How do you have that discipline where you say, okay, now I’m focused on Linda and the kids. Yeah.

Pat Gelsinger: And I think, I think COVID has made this worse because now the day has no beginning and the day has no end. Yeah. So I think these matters in exactly this question have gotten harder in light of COVID work from anywhere, you know, hey, I’m four paces from my study to get started the work right here. So the day has no beginning. The day has no end, I can be, you know, in Europe in the morning and in Asia in the evening. I get you know, it’s pretty easy to have very long days that way. And it’s super important that, you know, you just develop the habits that allow you to disconnect, you know, become digitally naked, right? Turn off the devices, get them out of it so that you’re not in that immediate distraction mode. You know, listen, on purpose, go off and Linda will come back as as you really weren’t listen to me when I said I told you that yesterday. Yeah. Those should prick your soul when your spouse says things like that to you because you’re really not interested in their lives and priorities. Also say that particularly for entrepreneurs that might have kids at home, you know, they don’t care what time you get up in the morning. They don’t care what you do before breakfast. But they care an awful lot what you do between five and 8 p.m.. Yeah, yeah. Those are the Golden Family hours. And I’d say as a parent, you want to just like build fences around those, right? And really give those to your kids. And if you go back and work after 9 p.m., okay, that’s okay. But you know, really build fences around those evening hours, show up to their events, their sporting events, be all there. You know, sometimes I would take red eye flights just so I’d be home for, you know, a soccer game where my kid only got to play 5 minutes. Okay, but I’m going to be there. Yeah, right. That matters. Show up. Yeah.

Henry Kaestner: You mentioned mentorship as one of the things that you mentioned, of course, in the juggling act. And last time I saw you a couple of years ago, right before COVID, you’re talking about the fact that you’re still involved in mentorship. You know, I would imagine that the line of people want to be mentored by Pat Gelsinger, thousands long. But you still practice that. And do you still talk to a mentor?

Pat Gelsinger: I just spoke to Steve this morning. And, you know, last year was a very hard year on this subject for me because I had really five significant male influences that really influenced my life. You know, one was my dad. He passed away September 4th of last year. One was Andy Grove. You know, we just passed the sixth year of his passing. One was Luis Palau. Right. And, you know, he passed away just over a year ago. Another was Bryce Jessup from Texas.

Henry Kaestner: Of course.

Pat Gelsinger: He was another and he passed away a little bit over a year ago. So all of a sudden, you know, except for Steve, all of my yeah, he feels like I’m the old guy all of a sudden. And that was a rather startling experience. So my dad passed away last year and Steve was going through a major heart surgery and at the time, somewhat like yours and yours, all that’s happening, it’s sort of like, Wow, I’ve lost my mentors, but thank God, Steve still healthy and may I have to add one to my mentor list, but it’s really important, you know, and he’ll ask me hard questions regularly, you know, like, how is Linda doing? You know, how are you in her life? And are you continuing to be that person that is working with God to make her all that she was meant to be? And so holding me accountable to that, in addition to being a good advisor on some of my work trade offs. And, you know, that trusted voice, that speaking into your life. So, you know, I would be saying to all of the listeners here, if you don’t have good mentors, then you’re not serious about being everything that God intended you to be.

Henry Kaestner: So if I remember from our past conversation, it’s not just that you have these older people in your life that you occasionally talk to. There’s a discipline, a regimented discipline. Do it to How often do you speak to Steve and what would you recommend to folks that are establishing that relationship either with a mentee or with a mentor?

Pat Gelsinger: Yeah, Steve and I speak every Friday morning, 6 a.m. and obviously schedule and stuff like that. So we probably end up about twice a month, but we’ve been doing that for over 20 years.

Henry Kaestner: Wow. That’s awesome. Okay. You mentioned Bryce Jessop, and I want to switch conversation a little bit to philanthropy and giving and being actively involved in your community. So you’re CEO of Intel, you’ve got four kids, you’ve got eight grandkids. You get a lot of stuff going on. You would be forgiven if you just decided to just kind of write checks and be, you know, they’re going to get somebody else to do that. And yet you’ve gotten really, really involved in the community. So talk to us about TBC. Talk to us about this calling to an area and the leadership you provide not just to Intel, what you do so well, but the vision that you’ve provided to other Christian leaders in the Bay Area. Yeah.

Pat Gelsinger: Your overall backing up just slightly handling know Linda and I made a commitment very early in our marriage that we were going to give an increasing percentage of our gross income to philanthropy every year. Right. So that started with the tithe that 10%. And well, now we’re at about 50%, so about 50% of our gross income. So it started about 10% of nothing know now it’s 50% of a lot. Right, that we’re giving every year to charity. So, you know, first, I would challenge all the entrepreneurs, you know, build a lifestyle of generosity. Right. And hey, I am really excited about the cool things that we’re doing at Intel. But if you really want to hear me get passionate, let me talk to you about what’s going on at my philanthropies. Yeah, because those are really eternally life changing. And like one of them, Linda’s on the board of now. She’s going to Africa, to Kenya to invest in that. We have, you know, now the largest church planting organization that we helped start. So we’re the largest in the world with stadia. You know, we helped to start that, you know, been super involved with the Palau also forever. Yeah. We just had dinner with John Jackson, the president of William Jessup, this week with them. And, you know, these philanthropy investments can be the most fulfilling aspects of your life, and particularly as entrepreneurs, how you want to create success, you want to create wealth, but what do you want to do with that wealth? Right. If you start pouring it into ministries that truly become eternally shaping for humanity, okay. That can really release a lot of enthusiasm, energy, you know, passion. And ultimately, that’s what God would call us to do with our wealth and capabilities. Now with TBC, obviously, when we came back to the Bay area.

Henry Kaestner: Tell us about what TBC is.

Pat Gelsinger: Yeah. TBC transforming the bay with Christ and Melinda and I moved back to the bay. It was funny because she was not excited about coming back to the Bay Area. I say, you know, we’re living in Boston, enjoying ourself there with the […]. And she sort of scratched her claws across the nation. She came back to the Bay Area is like, I want to go back to the bay. Right. You know, there’s sort of crazy there. And then it was we came back, God brought one, two, three of our kids to the Bay Area and all eight of the grandkids, so were like, okay, he bless her decision to come back here. She’s thrilled now with that. But I also felt like when I became CEO of VMware that God was calling me to use this position of leadership in a much more influential way. And out of that came bringing together of business leaders that were Christians with the key faith leaders of the Bay Area to start a movement to truly transform the Bay Area with Christ. TBC And that now has been in operation for eight years now and really is about networking the churches of the Bay Area. It’s about, you know, helping them to be engaged in ministry in the Bay Area and ultimately multiplying the churches of the Bay Area. So we call it Unify, Amplify and multiply, right? The impact of Christ in the Bay Area and the Bay Area know, as I’ve said, it’s the richest area on earth, one of the most influential areas on Earth. It’s also one of the least philanthropic. Areas on earth and one of the least faith areas on Earth. Wow. That’s pretty hard soil. That’s my mission field. Right. You know, I get excited that, hey, you know, Christ shows up in the Bay Area. Yeah. He can show up anywhere physical, show up here in a powerful way, particularly coming off of COVID. I think the role of TBC in the Bay Area is maybe the most unique and impactful that it’s been since we started the effort eight years ago. The church is looking for, Hey, how do I get my footing again on the other side of COVID? So truly thrilling to see the momentum of it. It’s alive and well and the church in the Bay Area is alive and very well.

Henry Kaestner: Indeed it is. I can attest to that. So and encouragement that we’d have to all of you that are listening to this is what does it look like for you to be thoughtful and how God might have you love on folks where you’re planning, wherever the town, the village, the city, the region is, as it would, I think, encourage and challenge you as that. If you can do something like that in a kind of a bigger area like this with 54 different towns, you can think about doing it in your backyard as well as you bring together people in this network and say it again. It’s unify, amplify and multiply in your town. I’m so grateful for a time I can’t let you go before I just kind of throw out this kind of a grab bag one for you and you can answer any way you want to an audience of Faith driven entrepreneurs they’re trying to understand How do I know God more fully through my work? How do I do my work with excellence, how to lead my family? But gosh, how do I just make sure that I don’t lose my faith in the midst of this? All the things that are going on, anything that you have as an encouragement or a warning admonition, anything.

Pat Gelsinger: And you’re clearly your work can become so consuming. You’re, you know, in particularly you’re a couple of years into this entrepreneurial journey, you know, maybe you’re succeeding, maybe not, you know, you’re just pouring yourself into it because you’ve given so much of your life and passion to it. And I ask you all the question, are you still putting God on the throne every day? And, you know, if the answer to that is no, then what are you going to do to put God on the throne every single day? Every single morning? You know, where you in devotion, right? You know, are you really honoring him with the day? And, you know, some days, hey, he might stay on the throne till about 8:02. Okay, well, tomorrow we’re working on keeping God in the throne till 8:03, right? Yeah. I mean, stuff happens here, but are you putting him on the throne daily? Are you in fellowship with him or are you in regular worship in church? Do you have mentors who are keeping you accountable to the relationship and position that you would want God to have in your life? You know that iron sharpening iron. Okay, how is your devotion time going? However, you know people who are really to challenge, do each one of you have those kind of people that are challenging you and you’re going to screw up, you’re going to fail and so on. But then also seeing that the most important thing you do as a leader is to be a great leader, right? You know, make your company successful. You know, that is the most God honoring thing that you can do, right? You’re not doing work instead of faith. You’re doing faith through your work, right. In the workplace. And the most God honoring thing you can do is do that with excellence. And every day that you show up into the workplace, do it with absolute excellence. And then finally, it would be that as a leader and particularly now as a public company leader as well, I mean, I am thrilled that I get to speak through today 121,000 people at Intel. Right. You know, I get to make their lives better every day. You know, I get to help them create wealth for their families, improve the communities that they’re in, you know, demonstrate through, you know, our benefits, through our foundation and philanthropies that we do as a company, that I want to unleash their passions into their communities and to what’s most important to them. I want to create a workplace that they truly are thrilled with so I can be my full self when I show up at Intel and as a leader, as a CEO, that’s what you get to do each day. You know what could be more thrilling than to say I’m positively impacting 121,000 lives on a daily basis? Wow. You know, but then I also get to say through what we do at Intel, you know that we are here improving the lives of every human on the planet through the power of technology.

Henry Kaestner: I was going to suggest that if you didn’t. Yes.

Pat Gelsinger: You know, it’s just so cool. It’s just you know, and I you know, I helped to create USB, I helped to create wi fi. I helped to create the personal computer. I helped to create the cloud. Okay. You know, we’re now at 60% of humans are connected to the Internet. By 2030, that’ll be 90%. Wow. Yeah. I’m going to touch the lives of every human on the planet and make their lives better. Right. You know, we’re going to educate, right? And education, the best way to lift people out of extreme poverty is. Yeah, that’s the stuff we got to do because technology. And you’re impacting the world. And what can be more thrilling than a Christian to say, that’s right, I’m improving the lives of every human on the planet.

Henry Kaestner: It’s really awesome. It’s really awesome. Pat, I’m so grateful for your time, for your leadership, for your friendship, for your encouragement in the Bay Area and beyond. On behalf of our audience. Thank you very much.

Pat Gelsinger: Thank you, Henry.

John Coleman: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. This is John Coleman and today I am privileged to be joined by two men who are legends in the investing industry in their own right. So Britt and Matt, thanks so much for joining us today and welcome.

Matt Harris: That’s great to be here. Good to see you.

Speaker 3: We’re excited.

John Coleman: Well. We’re excited, too. And I’m looking. I know that Britt and Matt are big Texas A&M advocates, and Matt managed to wear his Texas A&M’s shirt. They both got their rings on. So I suspect we’ll have some advocacy for A&M today.

Speaker 3: But we’re going to want to talk about this year’s recruiting. But that’s probably after The Good Stuff.

John Coleman: Yeah, the recruiting class was pretty strong this year, I think, after you saw Florida State’s coach. So not bad.

Speaker 3: I think that was the that was free. He did that of his own volition.

John Coleman: Well, as we get started here, Britt and Matt, maybe Britt will start with you. Just give us a little bit of background in brief bio. You’ve been in the investing industry for many years now, Britt, and have had such an interesting journey through investing. Talk us through that a bit and let us know how you came to that and what your journey has been like.

Britt Harris: Well, you know, I was looking up what the S&P was the day I came out. Take a guess. What was the S&P in 1980?

John Coleman: Oh, gosh. 500. Am I going to sound ridiculous?

Britt Harris: 100.

John Coleman: Oh, my gosh.

Britt Harris: Yes, it was 100. You know, so at least for this cycle, you know, I’ve seen it all. But, you know, to help, I think everybody understands it really, for me to have understood my own journey. You know, I want to take you back for just a second. And I want to talk about two things that I learned growing up. One of them is it’s very important that you are 100% on God’s plan, not 90% on God’s plan, 100% on God’s plan. And that the second one is you have no idea what God can do with you. You know, you have no idea what God can do with you. None of the things that have happened to me, what I have ever imagined, you know, that’s not false humility. It is just the way it is. So on the first point, you know, my father was the youngest executive that mogul had ever had. This is the sixties we’re talking about. And at that time, Mobil Oil was in New York, and so we lived in Connecticut. And at the same time, you know, he was traveling all the time, but I don’t remember he’s absentee father at all. You know, he was a very involved father, a good dad. You know, he and my mom helped bring churches up and they brought missionaries into Ankara, Turkey where we lived for a while. And so he was an amazing man. But he’s out there at a Little League baseball game. I’m pitching, you know, nine. And so they don’t have an umpire. So you have to know my dad. So I’ll do the umpire. Okay, fine. No mask like dad. You put a guy like dad, put a mask on. No, don’t need a mask. That fastball hits him in the head, sent him in the hospital. In the hospital, he says to the doctor, You know what? There’s my back. You know while I’m here. Can you take a look at it? And two days later, my dad was in the terminal condition where he didn’t want to live for another. The doctor said, I don’t know if you can live for another five days. And I’m nine at this point. And as I learned his story, he had told his dad, my grandfather, when he was in 17 or 18, he felt like God was calling into the ministry. And, you know, his dad said something is very logical. It doesn’t make sense to me, like you’re loaded up with math skills and all these business skills. Now, what? Preacher needs to know how to do math, and it made sense as logical. And so dad went on and he got a degree in petroleum engineering and he got in the business and he was really good. I mean, he really did a lot. He and my mom did a lot of great things, but he was only 90% on God’s plan. So when he got this terminal diagnosis, you know, when the doctor left, he called up Southwestern Baptist Seminary and enrolled for the next semester. So all of a sudden, you know, I’m nine. You know, I left Fairfield, kind of Connecticut, a mansion, and went to Fort Worth, Texas, in a track house. And my dad went from being head of global sales to selling insurance door to door. My brother and I would actually go and tie the brochure on the door and he would come by the next day. And what that did is just I didn’t have to learn that money was not the most important thing. You know, I’m nine years old at that time. I was on a baseball team in Connecticut. I’m on a baseball team down here. I have my family there. I have my docs in here, you know, whatever it is. And so early on, I think God showed me that money is not something that should control your life and it’s not something you should obsess over. It’s better to have enough, but, you know, it’s a means to an end. It’s a resource that’s used. It’s not something that’s meant to control you.

John Coleman: And your dad ended up surviving that cancer.

Britt Harris: Yes, he did survive for another 20 years and ended up dying at 53, there was a miraculous recovery there, which is a whole another story. But so I have this background where I had a dad who was a preacher and a business guy and somebody say, I’m kind of half of both. And then so the stories I get out of them, this is very early. I mean, you guys cannot imagine how early this was and there wasn’t even a computer. I remember when they brought the first computer out and they showed us like, here’s a Suzy and here’s the numbers. That first cell, you put a one in there you could punch. And I was like, black magic. This wouldn’t go at 1985. And I was at Texas Utilities, which is not where you go. Normally, it’s become a you know what I’ve had a chance to become. But I did work with some great guys, and all of a sudden they decided to merge five subsidiaries into one. And each one of those little subsidiaries had a little pension fund. And all of a sudden I remember $330 million. And you got to understand, this is big enough that somebody needs to look at it, but not big enough. Is somebody important needs to look at. So I’m like 26 or 27. The boss says, you take a look at and people ask me like, How did you learn this? And the truth is, I learned it on the bus. Everybody who’s in any business, you know, it’s kind of like how much you learn in a day. So all of a sudden, I don’t know anything about venture capital, but I have a venture capital guy. Come in and talk to me. I ride the bus and I’m studying venture. Oh, that’s what venture capital is. He tells me how it works. You know, you’re faking till you make it right. And then I review it all the way home for three years, and I walk into the office one day. And. friend says congratulations. Britt. And I said, thank you very much. I have no idea what we’re talking about. And I have been given the award, being on the top 25 investors in America, and I was only 28. Wow. Yes. It’s a wow until you realize there’s absolutely no competition. I only 29, you know, involved. You know, you get something like that on your resume. Well, actually, what the company did was they said, no, this is out of control. You know, we want you to be executive in this company, not an investor. I went to a service centers. The first person that they ever going to use in that kind of is senior management track. And I got seven offers, which I didn’t surprise me and I didn’t have this and this I was in with meter readers telephone. I didn’t have any typewriter. I didn’t have any. So how do I respond to these letters? I had a pencil and a piece of paper. I wrote out my resume and pencil.

John Coleman: So that’s not great advice for students entering the field today. I would imagine.

Britt Harris: It was unique, I guess using that at.

Matt Harris: Least.

Britt Harris: You know, and that was, you know, you can’t lose bank because you got to race things, you know, and the next thing I know, Jerry and I are up in Connecticut Mass one and then I just ran the gantlet up there where first comes chemical combustion engineering and I got there and combustion engine was gone bankrupt. I looked into. A little more. They got acquired by coming out of stay around Bloomberg and I started first of all I was getting I had I think six different plans overseas. And they were very purchased combustion engineering, and they only kept two people. They kept me and they kept the head of HR. And there was a day that time when I was going to a party for all the people who were going to be let go because the company hadn’t been running well enough to keep it going. And as I was walking out the office, they said, just before you go sign a check, and I signed a very big check for the CEO of the company who had not managed the company well enough to keep it out of this position as I was going to have a party for the people. And so along the way and there’s other stories I learned that management is a sacred relationship with the people that you’re overseeing. It’s a sacred relationship for the people you’re overseeing. It’s about them. It’s not about you. Then a guy named John Carroll came. He was one of the really programs of this business. And at that time, they were the most respected pension fund in America. And he was asking me to come and run their equity division. And we had lunch and Rob Nice and he said, sent me your resume. And I just took it as perfunctory. I thought he had no idea how young I am and I didn’t send it to him did not because I didn’t want to. Just didn’t take it seriously. Third time around, you know, I sent it to him and ended up offered me the job and I called three people who knew him and knew me. And I said, John Carroll just offered me this position as the head of equity for DG, which is now for everybody split but Verizon and should I take it? And they said, no, wait a minute, guys, this is a rhetorical question. This is a big one and why not? And I said, because we know John and we know you, and he’s a bull and verbal and you can’t have the proverbial two bulls in the same place. And oh, by the way, you’ll be the little bull. And so I went back to John. I said, John, it’s a great offer, but our mutual friends have told me that we’re just going to make each other miserable. So I don’t think I should take it. And he said, Look, everything says correct. And when he didn’t say, Is my dad, I’m 61, he was 56, that I am ready to stop running the company. So you can’t you run a company and I run the board, step out on faith. And the minute I have the elevator. I ran that company and John ran the board. So I’m in my early thirties, so I got to watch a master at board level and I ran the company. So I was able also to bar his credibility for some crazy ideas I had. I once had the CFO of our company take my proposal, stand up and throw it in the trash. In the trash. And I don’t know how I did it, but I got up and I got out the trash and I took it back and I said, Mr. Tristano, this is what we need to do, sir. And he looked over John Jack, it knows what he’s done and wow. So that’s credibility. And then John retired and I became the number one guy that was right in right into the heart of the tech and telecom crisis. And I was there. And then all of a sudden General Motors was asking me to come and run their fund and this was their public. And I was using Bridgewater as my reference. And Bob Prince and Ray Dalio are really good friends. But the Princess and the Harrises vacationed together.

John Coleman: For reference for listeners who might not know, Bridgewater is now the largest hedge fund in the world, I believe still and has been successful for many years now.

Britt Harris: It’s the most successful private investment public investment operation. I mean, central banks rely on Bridgewater. And so I get this phone call. I’m in California, said they need to talk to you urgently. I call them. And I thought, oh, my gosh, what has gone wrong? Said, if you’re going to actually go now we want you to come and be our CEO. So I did that and it was fantastic. I was literally on top of the world as far as the industry goes. And then I was struck with depression just out of the blue, on top of everything. And when it first happened, you look at what in the world happened here and you just just start going down and writing about who loved me and I love them. Don’t quit. Don’t we know you’re. And that was loving advice, that terrible. So I did. And I went into a year of recovery. And I’ll tell you.

John Coleman: What’s this new for you? Or had you ever had a bout with depression before? They had a brand new.

Britt Harris: Brand new. And I found out later that my father had had a change, that maybe it’s earlier, but I’ll tell you that when I came out of it, I was more spiritually aware. Than I have ever been in my life. I mean, just. Everything was just alive. You actually knew? Kind of broke both sides. And that loss really a deeper faith. And there are certain things, you know, everything that God does or everything happens to you. God is going to use it to make you the person He wants you to be. And I don’t think there’s ways that I could have gone from who I was to who I became without that suffering. You know, towards the end of it, I walk on the balcony. We’re baseball guys. And we knew that we would lose in the Little League world and a little process the third week of July, we always get knocked out. So we had a vacation the final week long, the whole this year we don’t get knocked out. So all the family know leaves and Brother Will and I stay 6:00 in the morning. I want everybody to listen to this. 6:00 in the morning. I had been able to read the Bible, hadn’t been able to pray. Really was kind of hard to focus on anything. And I’m there in Connecticut and my wife my wife has every translation of the Bible it’s ever been created in her kitchen. What is it? And so I just grabbed one and I went out on the balcony by myself. Remember, this is Ridgefield, Connecticut. I’m looking over this beautiful forest early in the morning. And I just opened the Bible. And, you know, God does just amazing things at the end of Matthew Chapter nine. And help everybody understand what that was. That’s the one that ends with the fields are waiting to harvest but the workers are few. Pray for the workers to come to the harvest. But right above that, it says Jesus saw all the people and he has compassion on them, for they were helpless and harassed like sheep without a shepherd. You saw all the people. You had compassion on them because they were helpless and harassed, like sheep without a shepherd. And look, I can honestly say it’s ridiculous. Like, I had never thought that I myself needed compassion. I thought, maybe I’ll give you compassion. It’s 50/50. But now I’ve been through this situation. I can’t deny I’m desperate, need compassion. And it says all everybody is. And because we’re all helpless and harassed and the only difference in people’s whether they have a shepherd or don’t have a shepherd. And so that lost a whole new spiritual wave in my life and I’ll just finished quickly. So I left Bridgewater. I came out. If there’s a concept called suggested significance, we should mind that layer. But I was able to come to Texas teachers where I could serve 1.4 million teachers. And then I had a group with me and they got mature. And now I’ve moved over to Tameka, which manages my four University of Texas, Texas A&M and then V.A. Hospital, which is the second largest university in the country, the sixth largest university in the country, and the top cancer research facility in the world. And this is all happened over four years. We’ll get to the markets in a little while because they’re very different. And along the way, everybody’s listening. Thank you know, I’m a nobody. Well, yes, that’s correct. Does it matter? Does it matter? God’s going to do what he what he wants to do. So I’m from Arlington, Texas, 25,000. You know, we sell citrus. My job in high school was to sweep up the cotton grain. Jen, how in the world does that guy become one of the top 25 investors in America? Become an adviser to the president himself. Become an adviser to the New York Stock Exchange. Adviser to the New York Federal Reserve and the Dallas Fed. And have been named one of the top five people in my field. It just doesn’t make sense. It does not make sense to me. But you know what? That first lesson. I want to be exactly in God’s plan. I do not want to be 90% off. God has used that, and I’ve been places that nobody ever gets to go and God puts his men and women where he is.

John Coleman: Well, one of the things you see consistently in the Bible and even in the modern world is that people do have to go through periods of experiencing failure in humility, often before God will put them in positions of authority so that they do know they need compassion. I was talking with a friend the other day about one of the things that’s lost when you’re extraordinarily young often, and it’s the almost the temperance that comes with age, the understanding that you yourself are fallible, that you do need compassion, and the understanding that everyone else does too, that everyone you might have sat in judgment over is trying and sometimes failing, just like you have. And there’s a real transition of wisdom there that has to happen, I think, before you’re equipped to take real positions of responsibility and before often you can be trusted with those. Right. And I think that’s partially what you’re describing.

Britt Harris: It is. And what happens when you realize that you need compassion and so does everybody else. Fear goes away.

John Coleman: That’s right.

Britt Harris: Fear goes away. No, there’s a United States. Oh, my gosh. The guy needs compassion. You know, there’s the schoolteacher. Oh, my goodness. She needs compassion just like me. And you give up the pretense that you don’t, which takes a huge, you know, everything about developing a competitive advantage to align yourself with what’s true and not being adverse. It kind of ran counter to what’s true. And so for me to sit there and say, well, you know, I’ve got this, I got that, I don’t need compassion, which is a false narrative. And to give that up in the language truth, you know, freed me up to be a better decision maker.

John Coleman: That’s fantastic. Matt, I want to spend a little bit of time with you, if you don’t mind. So you moved to Connecticut, 21 years old, and obviously you’re growing up around this. Your dad’s making a lot of interesting transitions. Tell me a little bit about your childhood, and particularly when it clicked for you that investment might be in your future.

Matt Harris: Yeah, I mean, I had a great childhood, really couldn’t have been better. And I honestly think that’s what made investing interesting to me. Right. Like I was fortunate to get to grow up with a lot of really successful people in the industry because we lived in Connecticut for I think when I was three months old, actually know 30 something. And then they surprised me and moved to Texas after I went to college in Texas, which is a different.

Britt Harris: House of rent still.

Matt Harris: I love Connecticut and Texas. I honestly was I was thinking about it like what really drove me in this direction. And it was really that childhood experience with those people, you know, just getting to be around people like the princes and like a son of Beschloss, as is were very close and several others. Flip flip is not in the investment business, but it just these people that I never would have had a chance to know that I got to be really close with because of who my dad was. And you get close to them and they’re just fantastic, hardworking, honest people. So it’s really my experience with the people growing up that maybe they’d be like, Yeah, I want what they have.

John Coleman: You know, in all of this. When did you actually start investing? Like, one of the things we think about with our kids, for example, is when to kind of expose them to the concepts of investing, even just in their personal life. Do you recall kind of when you actually got into it and did you ever consider seriously another career or was this very clear from the outset?

Matt Harris: I mean, I think just to riff off the story my dad just told in terms of like when I started investing and caring about it, like all this stuff was rising up really fast and being CEO of Bridgewater and all this stuff, like we had no idea that any of this was happening. Right? Like, I think my little brother story about the ice cream truck really drives that home. And so, like, I remember he tried to take me out to dinner one time in high school, explained markets to me, and I just was not interested at all.

Britt Harris: Really?

Matt Harris: Yeah. And so this stuff wasn’t on my radar at all until really like second half of college when you start getting a job. And even then for me it was at that time it was more just about the people that I knew I would be exposed to. And, and, you know, so like 12 years in in the industry, it’s been totally true.

John Coleman: Well, one of the things I’ve noted over the course of my life is that beside maybe every successful man is also a successful woman in relationships like this. Matt and I were texting earlier and he mentioned just how influential his mom had been. And so, you know, we’re talking about father son. But maybe I mean, Matt if you don’t mind telling me just a bit about your mom and the influence that she had and then Britt, perhaps your wife and the influence that she’s had on you.

Matt Harris: I mean, I think a lot of things come to mind. You know, I think growing up, my dad was very strict and we did. And we still fight pretty much all the time. I mean, it doesn’t really affect our relationship very much because we’re both fine with conflict. But he was the strict one. He was the one grounding me, you know, all that stuff and being more the disciplinarian. And then my mom was kind of the softer side, and so they were a very good team in that sense.

Britt Harris: So when you look at couples, there’s power couples and balance couples. And my gifts are administration teaching, giving. I’m very extroverted. You know, my other ones are compassion, you know, service, all that kind of stuff. And I married almost the exact opposite of me. So you can come to the Harrises for whatever you need and you’re going to get help. But it’s one of us is going to help you, not both of us, but we also merged into when you marry, you create a third thing. It’s, you know, each person is individual person that you create a third thing, you know, what is your couple gift? And our couple gift happens to be giving because it’s her third and my third. And so it rises to be our first together. So I think Matt got to see a lot of hospitality. But, you know, Jerry was the person making everything happened in the back and I was the person making everything happen in the front.

Matt Harris: And I think my mom, I think she saw early on that my dad had surprisingly developed this amazing platform to help a lot of people. And so she made, you know, and still makes the decision every day to have her life be about that.

Britt Harris: And so let’s just talk about ladies for a second. Joy, it was called to stay at home. In fact, we never made a decision. She just she worked up to the day she had our first son and she just stayed home. Other women are called to go back to work. And so what I think is important is that the woman has the choice to do it. And so what I mean by that is you have your financial house in order because. Most people are not going to know what they really want to do until that child’s their. And some are called a stay home and some are called to go back to work. But do not put your wife in a situation where she doesn’t have a choice because you’ve set up your financial circumstances where if she doesn’t go back to work, you have to sell your house or, you know, two cars and something like that. Give her the financial freedom to make that decision so she can make the money that God’s dying her to. I’ve got lots of amazing ladies up here, and I’m so thankful that they’re called to work. But in this case, she was calling home. Where is your cockles? Is that question.

John Coleman: One that will pivot in a moment, if you guys don’t mind, to the markets. But I will say there are about three things that make me choke up in life. And one would be talking about my mom. One is probably my kids and one might be a really good steak. So I guess you are in good stead. I want to circle back to some of these deeper kind of theological topics related to investing a bit later in part two of the podcast. Before we do that, though, you two are incredible craftspeople in the investing industry. You know a lot about what you do. Matt Your expertize these days is in venture, although I know you have deep expertize part from that. And Britt, you have more of a macro perspective on the industry. We’re obviously living through a very unique period of time right now on the economy and in markets, and I was hoping we could spend just a few minutes with you all commenting on what you’re seeing and particularly where do you think we are right now in markets and help us place this particular period of volatility in historical context?

Britt Harris: I think the first thing that people need to understand is that there are these short term business cycles, you know, and then there’s a very long, long term cycle. And so we have just finished 40 years of the same cycle actually, I think was last week or earlier this week. Right around now, you know, we’re getting to the 40 year mark. Remember, the S&P was 100, now is at 4200. You know, I hope when we actually play this is the same level in interest rates. When I came into the market discount rate was at 20% know went down to zero. The inflation rate was 13%. You know, it got under one, you know, Treasury bonds were 14%, you know, got under one. What had happened was the prior era, you know, ended in the latter part of the 1970s as inflation started to stoke and stoke and stoke. And I want you to just imagine a train this climb up a mountain and all of a sudden people act. We can’t stop this thing and people start to jump off the train. And that’s when you see gold start to outperform commodities, just by the way, because people are getting out of the system, that this is going over the top, this is the end of the world. And then Paul Volcker came in and all of a sudden stop the train. I think it was the ski slope. We were at a 14,000 foot high ski slope. The multiple in the market was like eight times. We’re talking about the treasury markets are 14%. Just think about how much as interest rates go down, how much discount rate factor you’re going to get from a 14% reduction. And so in 1980, also, we were talking about energy finally enough. And our big problem then was we are not energy independent. We have got to get ourselves and we’re dependent on foreigners for our energy source, which means they can cut us off at any time. And our debt to GDP was 30% of GDP. And so here comes the interest rate down. Inflation is going down. You know, the bonds are going down. By the way, bonds are playing a really terrific part in diversification because, yeah, if you have a longer term bond, your stock market goes down in 2020, 36%. You’re bottom up 21. Yeah, it’s great diversification and this is a 40 year period. So in the ski slope analogy, we skate around, we’re now at the bottom of the ski slope and so we’re going to have to go sideways for a while or this is a better outcome. We’re going to have to replace multiple expansion for everybody who’s out there. You know, the price of the stock going up relative to its earnings because the interest rates changing, we’ve got to replace that with actual earnings, not just our interest rates. I think we can do that. But so people are very confused right now because a 40 year period in the past is overlapping with the four year period going forward. And so we’re getting statistics every day. They’re baffling people. Yes, my father followed 12 economists religiously and these guys are pretty good. Every one of these guys in the first quarter and the second quarter, not just got the degree wrong, they got the direction wrong. People criticize the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has been given some very bad numbers and they’ve acted on those numbers. And you know, so and then on top of it, of course, we have the Russian situation comes out of the blue. We have China who has moved into their third phase, first phase with industrialization. Second phase is becoming an industrial country. The third phase is taking over the world. And so now we have this monstrous competitor over there, and that’s a completely new factor. We’ve got this whole climate change, which I know you want to talk about. And so if this overlapping, you know, these these circumstances, we just can’t get the day right now and everybody thought the market was don’t go down right now. It’s gone up. Our models just say, you know, we have a very slow trigger for a bear market and our models did not signal a bear market. And when it pierced the bear market, that, oh, no, you know, our models are wrong. Well, that lasts about five days and came right back down again. So, you know, we can play anything else that you want. But the main thing is, you know, we have two years overlapping plus these extraneous factors of the war, plus these long term factors are going to be for a while with the energy transition and so on.

John Coleman: Yeah, I think that’s one of the most confounding things. I was speaking with our team just yesterday and it’s so difficult to predict what the next 6 to 12 months will look like, right? You’ve got incredibly tight labor markets. There’s a question about whether the economy is in recession or will go in recession, although that has seemed less likely recently, financial markets took a steep dove over the last 8 to 12 months before kind of recovering, at least in public markets. And there are just all these conflicting variables. And you mentioned some of them supply chain tightness, military activity overseas that make it quite challenging, I think, to really predict with any certainty what the next six or 12 months will look like and are proving to be quite different than the late 1970s, which I think was an analogy that some folks were turning to for the period that we’re in now.

Britt Harris: Yeah. So what we do is we have a series of pre described economic regimes. And we know exactly how many times we’ve been in that regime over 50 years. We know what happens in that regime. We know where it’s historically gone when it changes regimes. None of this. There’s no physics in here. There’s no sanctions of gravity. Like the apple must fall from the tree so that we can go up and go sideways. But at least we know what’s happened in the past. And so we’ve had this model for 15 years, and it’s never once pierced into the inflation region, never once over 15 years. And last, I think it was October or November. All of a sudden it pierced into the inflation area, but it was high inflation and high growth. So inflation doesn’t have a huge effect if you have enough growth to offset the higher inflation. It does lower your real return, but it’s not a big hit to your pocketbook. And we stayed in there and then we flipped over to high inflation but low growth. And in that scenario, just to your point, we bump back like when did this happen before? Was 1975. 1979 and 1981. Now just the exact same times we’re having a problem with oil. And of course, 1991 was the Gulf War. So I was actually pretty comforted by the fact that the markets are operating normally. This is the same scenario we had then. The markets are doing the same thing. What we have to have is we’ve got to get inflation lowered and have a super low, just got to be lower and we got to have enough growth. If we get into this period where there’s relatively high inflation and not enough growth and the Fed felt focus on stopping inflation instead of stimulating the growth, then, you know, we can have problem for a while. I mean, these are all things are all for a period of time.

John Coleman: Matt, let’s let’s turn to you for sure, because probably the area that’s been hit the hardest is growth equity in public markets. Growth oriented securities. And then late stage venture growth. Equity on the private side, I think was the earliest area to get hit and one of the hardest hit. You’re spending every day in venture markets. What are you seeing right now and how are you thinking about the next six or 12 months in venture?

Matt Harris: Yeah, it’s been interesting. One of the interesting things is because I spent the first ten years of my career in oil and gas between 2010 and 2020. I’ve actually been through several of these cycles and I would say so far this doesn’t even count as one, to be honest. Like it’s not even close. I think my, my, my experience in those ten years is that these things get way worse than you could ever imagine. And we’re not even close to that. It’s a good time to ask the question, because normally my role on the team is sourcing and doing diligence in negotiating the investments that are making. And I don’t necessarily zoom out every day, but I do write our quarterly letter to our investors, which I actually just finished this morning, which has a market update. And it is really interesting. You know, on the one hand, as of a week and a half ago, when I when I wrote this part of the letter, the Nasdaq was down, I think was the mid-twenties. And we looked at the Goldman Sachs non-profitable technology index also as a proxy in that that had gone peak to trough 54% down, and it was 40% at the time. And so that was a little bit of the dissonance that makes for some, you know, you wouldn’t expect early stage entrepreneurs to be dialed into the markets, but like they were looking at, you know, S&P and the Dow Jones and just living their life and thinking like things don’t seem like they’ve changed very much. But when you look at specifically at the companies that you mentioned, you know, the small high growth public technology companies, they just gotten destroyed. So that’s like one part of the equation. But then, you know, in Ventures, our firm is Pre-Seed Seed and Series A, so we’re pretty much as early as you go for an institution. And so far the data mostly from Pitchbook shows no change. I mean, the trend is down off of 2021, but 2021 was kind of a wild year. And so I don’t think people count that as a trend yet because it’s still way, way higher than historically. But in terms of, you know, funds raised and the number of deals done and valuation, you know, at everything except the very latest stages of venture, you basically haven’t seen a change. So there’s this weird tension between I think we’re on track to do like 15% of the IPOs we had and 2021, which you would think at some point that’s going to feed back into the system and slow everything down. But also we have three years of dry powder. It’s done the last 12 months investment pace. And so it is a really interesting time. I mean, from like a blocking and tackling perspective, you know, what am I seeing in the market? Like, things have definitely cooled off a lot. Like I’ve had two companies call me in the last week. We make a lot of investments in our funds doing really well. But I’ve had two companies call me in the last couple of weeks saying, you know, we can’t raise money and we’re out, and so we’re going to try to sell it and salvage what we can. That was not happening six months ago. And you’re starting to see just a lot of stuff like that happen, a lot more investor friendly environment for the moment. But then at the same time, you’ve got I we were just talking on the way here. The main indices like the Dow and S&P are down like 8% now, peak to trough, which is like a bad day. And so it’s a really interesting time and absorption to see how it plays out in the next the back half of the year.

John Coleman: Go ahead. I was just going to say, my colleagues and I, you know, we think a lot about early stage venture as well, Matt there is this tension where you would think the challenges that have taken place in public markets, particularly the lack of an IPO market, would begin to filter down. But there’s been so much capital raised by these mega funds that deal in late stage venture. There’s a real question about whether early stage venture companies won’t find a source of capital because of all that dry powder. And I think that’s one of the things that’s more opaque about the industry. It’s harder to see then public markets that might support earlier stage ventures. You’re describing where that money has to be put to work somewhere, and an early stage venture doesn’t seem to have taken quite the hit that later stage venture growth equity has taken.

Britt Harris: So our portfolio, I think we’re the fifth largest venture capital portfolio in America. So in 2021, we and everybody who had a really good venture capital strategy that we’re all up 100%, and that just in that one year now, you know, venture capital kind of laid fallow for quite a while. But venture capital has changed because at this point, companies are staying private longer. You know, companies that would have gone IPO maybe two or three years earlier staying private. Longer for a whole bunch of reasons. And so there are more mature companies. You know, when they actually do come out for an IPO, I’ll just give you kind of a fun and terrible story. Now, we had bought Coinbase and we had $1.9 million in Coinbase. Which we sold for 740 million. Yes, but one other thing is changes. You don’t really get your stock distributed. You know, it’s just terrible because these leaks out forever. Coinbase attributed all their shares before they took it public. And so we had the opportunity to sell everything, which you did on the first day, which a lot of people do when they’re you know, we’ve been here for 12 years to get to this point. And so we you know, our guys sold it things like 374 or something like that. And, you know, the stock today is what.

Matt Harris: Is it, 90 now. It came back after the blackout.

Britt Harris: Got down to below 50. But this industry which I’m at, this is a digitization of America. It’s also a, you know, an alternative form of doing business. You know, it’s not going to go away. And I guess the last thing is it’s interesting, small cap stocks in the public market. I struggle in part on what people are using as an explanation has these seed companies. Now you get public is not all right. My main product is already obsolete because there’s a seed company out here chasing my market and so they go public and kind of, I don’t care about you anymore. I’m going back down to the guy who’s got the next new thing. Is innovation getting faster and faster for listeners?

John Coleman: I didn’t do the math here formally, but I think a 30,000% return on investment is pretty solid for a venture investment Matt could check my understanding, get the industry.

Britt Harris: Okay, it’s okay.

John Coleman: It’s not bad. Yeah, just fascinating, guys. But I do want to check in on one other topic that I know our listeners are quite interested in, which is ESG and values investing. You know, one of the things that we focus on a lot is faith driven investing, obviously, like the name of the podcast. And Christian’s thinking about whether and how they should try and express their values through their investment portfolios, something obviously the mainstream world has been very aggressive about over the last 30 years with the development of ESG in various types of impact investing. Just a brief question for you all is how do you think about ESG and values investing broadly right now and how do you think Christians should be thinking about it?

Matt Harris: Oh, I’m going first on this one. Okay. I mean, I guess I’ll just say, like the obvious thing that I’m not the right person to go first on this one. But I think what I found is where I work at Draper Associates, I found really strong alignment with faith and with ESG. And what I mean by that is I think the venture model creates the best alignment with customers. I’m only going to do really, really well if our customers do really, really well. There’s not sort of the really big base, really big bonus every year structure. It’s all in the area. But I think that creates really good alignment and really good opportunity to just serve customers as well as you can. You know, our organization in particular is is actually very mission focused alongside generating those returns for our customers, that mission being proliferating freedom all over the world. You know, I think our view and what my boss, Tim Draper, has been big on his whole career is that, you know, entrepreneurship is the engine for protecting and promoting freedom all over the world. And I find great alignment with that in my faith just because I think it says right out of the gate, you know, we’re meant to be free, we’re meant to have a choice. But there are consequences to the choice that we make both on Earth and eternally. So I think those two things, you know, the the freedom orientation is very aligned with faith and the compensation structure. I found it to be really good for things like social and governance, right? Like if I see color in my job, I’m not going to make money because I’m very incentivized just to pick the best entrepreneurs, regardless of who they are or what they are, where they are. And to do otherwise would be to work against myself because of the way the compensation structure is set up in early stage venture where the funds are smaller. I mean, on the energy stuff, I personally think that any conversation on energy first needs to start with the thank you to the hydrocarbon industry. You know, the population of the world has grown, I think, between three and four times since I think 1960. You know, the poverty has gone way down and wealth has gone way up. And it’s I would say that’s because of democracy and capitalism and hydrocarbons. And I don’t know how you could argue otherwise. And so before we get into like where the industry is going, we should thank these brilliant engineers for what they’ve done. And, you know, I’m excited about being a millennial. I’m excited about how we’re going to be the generation to make this sustainable and make this into something that can last forever and not force us to have to move to Mars or whatever it might be. And I work on quite often in my job, actually, but I think it’s, you know, it’s important to be realistic, right? Like I forget the number, but it’s something like I worked in energy for ten years and I’m still being educated on all this stuff. It’s very difficult to be fully educated on energy. But for example, you know, I think something like 80 to 90% of primary energy demand is still from hydrocarbons and there’s really no replacing 80%. Yeah, there’s really no replacement for it in things like ammonia, which is like basically the reason that we’ve been able to feed this population growth from the fertilizer, you know, plastics, cement and steel. There’s really not a replacement for hydrocarbons in these things. And so I think it’s important to be realistic about what we can do with energy. I’m all for making it sustainable. I do think we have a problem, but we need to go about it in a way that makes sense. And I think there’s an education side, like some basic stuff to overlay. It seems like the general public may not be aware of is that, you know, oil and gas wells, the climate, right? Then I’ll just come online and stay at the same production rate for the rest of their life, especially in the U.S., where it’s mostly shale wells. Like these wells are coming off 50 to 80% of their first year in the US. I don’t know the latest numbers, but, you know, 10% of global production. And so if we shut off oil and gas production from the US, then this is a very inelastic market and you’re seeing that now out in the real world. And so anyway, that’s a lot like I’m excited to be part of the generation that’s going to make this work and make it be sustainable. But I think we need to be a little more thoughtful about it and I think. Most people would agree now that we’re seeing it come through at the pump, basically.

Britt Harris: That’s good. So now from the other generation, first of all, you talked about this values on investing. It is true that, you know, millennials, you know, they want their money to do more than just make money. Now, they’re not willing and they shouldn’t be willing to make less money, you know, to express their values. Now, that’s not something, unfortunately, the human condition is ever going to support in general. So initially, a lot of them said, you know, we can make more money, you know, with the same risk. And there’s really not any real evidence for that. But what they found out is like we can make the same money and take out the oil or take out the whatever cigarets or no kind of whatever’s that you want. This idea is new and it started in Europe. About 70% of the funding of all the climate change money is coming from out of Europe. The annual flows. Europe is, number one believing that China is number two. We’re number three. But with even with that said, one third of all capital flows for the last three or four or five years have gone into some kind of renewable structure. And people are on the one hand, millennials want to express their values. On the other hand, this is becoming law all over the world. You know, it’s not like just suggesting that you lower hydrocarbons is now a law and it’s kind of out of the gate. And the UN plan, I mean, they’re doing the best they can, but they haven’t. Unsolvable problem. How would you like to negotiate with 178 countries all at the same time and it’s just impossible problem. But if you sort of boil it down, the U.N. plan is marketed by politicians, you know, supported by European scientists and created by activists. And so what that comes down to is the plan is a utopian plan. It’s not a plan you can actually implement. You know, not people have ever had to create energy in any way. For the most part. They said, well, we can just do this. And it’s a utopian plan. And what’s happened is even for them, you know, the Russia situation, California, Germany, the U.K., they were so far over their skis because they were trying to lead this too fast into the future and they’re all using coal. Yeah. So the second thing is. The word existential risks. I want everybody to hear what the reports actually say. And you know, when you do a report, you know, it’s a scientist or a researcher and they’re trying to decide something and they come up with a best case scenario, a worse than base case, a better than base case. Or they come up with this distribution, you know, 1 to 100, the population can happen. So when people say scientists say it’s actually centuries, that is actually true. But what it implies is, is the base case and it’s not the base case. If we have a worst case scenario, it could be existential risk in some places. So there’s this kind of deception that’s going on because I’m going to get the money. How much do you think McKinsey has said this energy transition is going to cost the world having any idea?

John Coleman: It’s tens of trillions. I know, but I don’t know exactly how many.

Britt Harris: 275 three.

John Coleman: 275 trillion. Holy smokes.

Britt Harris: Yeah. The Earth’s entire economic value today is about 100 trillion. We’re almost three times the value of the earth that’s going to be going to this situation. And so it’s going to be about $10 trillion a year. And people are trying to make it sound like a small number. So it’s only three victory knowledge incremental where, you know, what, three or $4 trillion is to create a new Japan or Germany every year, every year for 30 years, you create a new Japan or new Germany. You know, it’s just it’s so big that people have no idea how difficult this is. Now, what San Jacinto is going to talk about is, you know, we don’t need a utopian plan. We need a practical plan that we can actually implement and be successful in that plan rather than starting out with the rich people. Now, you start with the poor people. You know, when they’re talking about doing something immediately, you know, if they don’t get a huge carbon tax, then anyone who’s poor or living anywhere near the poverty line, 70% of the world is is going to be sunk. And so we think we should start with compassion and we should say no. What can we do to make sure that these folks who there’s a billion people in the world who have no energy access whatsoever. It’s things we can’t even conceive.

John Coleman: Yep.

Britt Harris: And so we want to start with compassion. We want to be pragmatic, and we want to be affordable. And here’s the other thing. This is super important. Everybody, when you’re talking about the planet we’re on right now, there’s nothing about human flourishing in that plan. Absolutely nothing about human flourishing. And the match point, if you look at your history, how long you think the world’s been? Around 5 minutes or 50 billion years. Whatever time you think it was around, there was absolutely no growth. Absolutely no growth for all that time. The way you grew is you captured something, read the castle and took their castle. There was no growth when hydrocarbons was discovered. You know, of course, they just thought it was going to be a lamp. But hydrocarbons are critical to our food supply. They’re critical to our medical industry. They’re critical to our ability to transact business. They’re just critical to the whole operation. Now, one down here. So there is a limit. You know, a good thing can come a bad thing, you know? So there’s a limit to how many hydrocarbons we can get in our atmosphere without having some effects. And so, you know, when you’re talking about 1900, we’re so far from the limit. But you know, what happens is Europe goes out first. Europe’s emissions have been going down since 1985. U.S. goes out. Second, U.S. two nations have been going down since 1995. Hmm. Down now. They’re still too high. They need to go down more. But they’ve been going down. If you ask a typical person on a street what direction our nations are going. They think you’re all going out. They’re not even going to do that. Now, that’s why you listen to this podcast. And, you know, this is a global thing, like this has to work. Everybody has to be in here, because if any major country doesn’t do it, it undermines everything else everybody else did.

John Coleman: So Britt and Matt, I now want to talk a little bit more about some theological topics or some integration of faith and work topics. The first I know that you both have is this idea of work as worship, and that work itself can be a mode of worship. Would you talk to us about what you mean by that and what work is worship looks like in the investment industry?

Matt Harris: For me, I think it means I think everyone on Earth is not only made in the image of God, but also has any gifts and talents. I think one of our key sort of tasks is to figure out what those are and then put them to at least one of the best use cases that’s out there. And so for me, I mean, I think there’s a couple of places in scripture where it talks about, you know, spiritual gifts and giftedness and it gives you a good list. So going off that, I mean, I think my gifts are business administration, which is fairly common in our industry. Maybe the less common one for me is a gift of encouragement. What I like doing it. I’ve always been that kind of person. And I think venture capital is a great place to encourage people when you consider, you know, what these businesses end up being and how hard it is and how many kind of lows there are for these entrepreneurs. And so for me, you know, other than kind of stuff I talked about earlier where I was, you know, being aligned with our customer, but it’s also, you know, figure out what your [….] is, which is the story my dad can tell you what you’re meant to do, what you’re built for, how God made you, and then try to find the cleanest expression of that as you can. And for me, that’s a lot of why I pivoted over to venture capital, to start to realize, you know, not only do I love encouraging people, I love startups. I’m also like a wildly optimistic person. Just just I mean, I’ve learned to be very inquisitive, but I see the upside. I see the vision. I believe you. I think you can change. You know, I do all of the things that maybe other asset classes shouldn’t do, but at the preceding seed stage of what we should do. And so that’s what it means to me.

Britt Harris: Every time I go into a new company and this is my seventh one, the first thing I say is what kind of culture deal don I want to have? Because every great company has to define culture that’s extreme. Every great company has to define culture. That’s extreme. I’d say that’s about 10% of companies maximum. And so I say, you know, what kind of company, what kind of culture do you guys want to have? And every single time, as you can imagine, the top vote is work life balance every single time. You know, and so, I mean, I want work life balance, too. I’ve got lots of interests […] with my son, my granddaughters know I’ve got teaching. I got lots of things that I’d like to do, but I have to go and say to them, look, there are people in century, they’re working 24 seven and. If we think we’re in front and working 8 to 5 then, we’re either very naive or very arrogant. So we got to come up with a floor here that we can take advantage of in their plan. And I you know, I’ve run some of those teams. And it’s not actually 24 seven, but it’s close enough to them. It feels like 24 seven. And I also know these are the least efficient operations known to mankind. And it’s not that the work is super hard. It’s just super inefficient and it’s super slow. And, you know, Matt talked about if you know about what Scripture says, it says every one of us has got some set of spiritual gifts. I call it personal genius. And there like Goldman Sachs was a fine company. This is a typical example. You know, they’re doing everything by brute force. And like, you’re smart. We pay you a lot. You go over there and make it happen. And they’re not really you know, they’re getting better with not too concerned about what your stage of life is and what you really understand. They don’t do a lot of time optimizing like, what are you really good at? And so the way that we try to compete is we find out what everybody’s that. And you know, we don’t call them spiritual gifts, but through personal Jesus example, it all from God. By the way, I’m not sure everybody knows that Myers-Briggs, one of the two of them, was a Christian. And that whole yeah, the whole thing. There’s probably an enrollment which says gifts offering and it lifts all the gifts which one ever was read that scripture and thought, I wonder how we can make this, you know, more mechanical. And so let’s just say that work 10 hours a day, 10 hours a day, but they are in the area of personal genius and it feels like 5 to 10. But they get 20 into productivity. Because they’re in the flow with what God designed to do.

John Coleman: I’ve heard you touch on this before, this idea of giftedness. And in a related idea, I think about the narrow path. And you’ve talked about how Joseph demonstrates that so well.

Britt Harris: So there’s a scripture, the end of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is closing down and he says, Enter by the narrow gate. For wide the way and broad the path that leads to destruction, and most take it, but narrows the way and narrows the path that leads to life. And few find it. And so in both these college classes and with the people I’ve yet to develop, I just say, we’re trying to make you narrow path here. We are trying to make you narrow pathway. We need leaders who lead or led to life, lead their families to life, lead their communities to life, lead their companies to life and in some case their country to life. And if you say, well, no, there’s more people doing that than they’re doing this. Yeah, that’s exactly what Bob says. Yeah. Most leading to destruction, because they’re operating in the way the world works. There’s also a companion verse in Matthew Chapter nine, which is the battle chapter, Jesus say, not ready now. And there’s a verse where Jesus says, His disciples. You are sheep among wolves be as shrewd a serpent and as innocent as dove. This sounds what you are. A sheep. A sheep among wolves. Is Jesus telling us like you’re just going to go to slaughter here. No, he’s given a battle plan. He said, look how we’re going to defeat the wolves. Be as shrewd as serpent. And as innocent as dove. So. If go back to the fall, think about Truman’s nurses. They weren’t together, were they? There were shrewdness in the snake that were innocent to people, the shrewdness of the world defeat the innocence of people. Mm hmm. Is that the. Hey? Huh? You guys need to be shrewd as well. Not shrewd in the way the world, shrewd in God’s ways. That’s the story of Joseph. So the shrewdness of God [….] the shrewdness of the world. That doesn’t mean you totally ignore it. Like, if your football team is playing the national championship, you don’t just say, I don’t want to know anything about that other team. And then you get failed that linebackers all-American of they’re super aggressive but they got a really quick defensive back. But the guys are only five seven. And you say, all right, we’re going to run a lot of counter plays to offset their aggressiveness. I’m going to put three people on that linebacker and we’ve got a six foot seven guy to put on that five foot seven guy. And you’re using this as the example, of course, you know, using God’s wisdom, which will overcome the world’s wisdom and you conduct yourself blamelessly and you conduct yourself blamelessly. So shrewdness of God plus blameless dialog equals victory in a secular world. So the reason I want to talk about Joseph is there are several examples in the Bible of a CEO. Several Daniel, on your address but for me, Joseph is the best one. That was a great do, but I just want to see how God works. If you go read the scripture we meet, Joseph, when he’s 17 years old and here is Scripture, he is entitled, is lazy, is arrogant, is rude. His brothers hate him. His brothers hate him. And, you know, he even tells his parents to a dream like I’m better than you. Makes everybody furious. But his dad, at the end of that work says that knew about his dream. He kept that in mind. And I want you to listen to Joseph’s life, because we know that Joseph is going to be the second most important person in Egypt in 13 years time. We know that’s what could happen because we know the end of the story. And so just stand back and just let’s watch what happens. Joseph has three problems. His character is really low, he’s not in the right spot. And he has no experience whatsoever. So the first thing that happens to Joseph in the pit. In the pit. Guys and gals. I’m sure Joseph wasn’t completely transforming in that pit, but he was in process. There was no more arrogance. There was no more entitlement. There was no more laziness. God was changing his character, because he need to be changed for what God wanted him to do. And when he is being sold into slavery as a good option. You know when you’re going to get killed with other option. So it’s elements of slavery. Just I want to think about Joseph. And your essence is point just for rise up, Joe. Love, are you in God’s plan? Joseph. Joseph, are you on God’s plan? I gotcha. I I’m trying to be a man of faith, but I can’t.

John Coleman: He seems pretty off plan when you’re in the pit or when you’re being sold into slavery. Yeah.

Britt Harris: Yeah. But that’s where they go in. They’re going to Egypt, God has put him in position. And so the last thing is he needs to have managerial experience, not just he needs to have it, but needs to experience it. And that’s where we find out that this guy is a CEO. He’s loaded up with business. And this is a good thing for people like how can, you know, Christian can’t be successful in business because business is secular thing. That is the biggest myth and probably the single most terrible thing that gets Christians on the sidelines. There’s a think out to become a saint. You become of your true self. We can come back to that if you want to, but you become your false self because you think that’s going to make you successful and you’re going to crash and burn. You got to stay with your true self, which is God. And so we read the scripture, number one says, and God was with him, talk about Joseph, he’s in captivity. God was with him. And listen to this, he says, and he bless Potiphar’s house because of Joseph. God was with Joseph the whole time and he bless Potiphar’s house because of Joseph, and he goes to jail again. In Pharaoh’s Palace. Got his file. You’ve got your character, right? You’re in Egypt. You’ve got to manage your train. I’m going to put you right into position. And again, says, God is with him, this is what we got to remember. God is with you and God blesses other people because you’re there. And he interprets somebody’s dream. And the guy gets the job back under Pharaoh. And he says remember me. And he doesn’t. And there comes a day. When Pharaoh has a dream. It is a great time back in and I want everybody to realize he has the smartest guys in the world available to him. Who apparently had been able to interpret dreams before. And he turned to them Oxford, Stanford, Yale, Harvard. Guys what is this move? And they’re kind of like, we don’t get this when we don’t know. The world’s wisdom is incredible. It’s not super high, but it’s limited. And all of a sudden, this guy said, Oh, I remember there’s a guy back in the jail who interpreted my dream, and I want everybody to put themselves mentally into this spot. Joseph has been in captivity for 13 years. He did two things. This is what my message is for myself. Joseph did only two things. He continued to worship the Lord and he brought all of his gifts every day out into the world. He didn’t withhold his gifts and he didn’t capitulates to the world. He worship God and he brought his gifts. That is all he did that we know about. And he’s sitting over there, has no idea what’s happening. And I would imagine that Pharaoh dispatches a group of soldiers to go get him. And all of a sudden, you know, they ram down the doors and they like, who is Joseph? Everybody’s going. Because they think they’re all in trouble. Probably. Joseph looks at he is stunned. Come with us. Describe a very scary moment. And we don’t know the time. But let’s say 60 minutes later, he’s going to be standing in front of Pharaoh. Like you, 60 minutes from now. Wherever you are, you’re going to be standing in front of presiden Biden. You don’t know about. Didn’t know about till just now he’s filthy. They gotta clean him up, get him a new robe. He gets there. And Pharaoh says, I heard you interpret dreams. And what he says next blows my mind. Pharaoh says, I heard you interpret dreams. You know, he says, No, I can’t interpret dreams. And he must’ve been stunned. But then he says, But God can and he will interpert through me, that’s all this happening. God does things, you know, if we’re lucky, God does it through us and the nations in hell. And so Pharaoh gave him the whole dream. And I think what happened was. He knows the answer. I’m sure he looked over at these guys like. Really? No, I don’t want to. No answer. That’s not the answer. Here’s a little sidelight. Go ahead. You guys don’t get this one because Joseph is operating on a totally different level. He’s operating on God level. They’re up and out in the world. And it’s very easy to interpret the dream. Now, when that happens. What’s he supposed to do? Go stand by the wall. Stop talking. Salesmen may stop talking. Go stand by the wall. But he is loaded up with the gift of ministration. He is a business guy. He is a CEO, and I can almost see him there and will say anything until he can’t stand it. So this is what he got to do. You got to bring things into the barn. You got to have a security system. He lays out a strategic plan right there. Remember, he’s the only godly man maybe in the country, certainly anywhere in that room. And he’s just professed God and he’s just told them what to do. You are like, Oh, did not know, he’s a godly man, so they’re going to want him. Get rid of him. Christians who are operating with God’s plan are super viable, super viable. And Pharaoh says this is why he’s managing them. Okay, I get that part. What happens is what’s supposed to happen with these squirrely guys over here, the Harvard and Yale? There’s one thing. Just a second. Joseph. Pharaoh, could we talk to you for a minute? This guy just got here.

John Coleman: Yeah.

Britt Harris: Maybe we’re going a little too fast. Let’s make him an analyst. No. You know, even they say yes. This guy’s the wisest guy in the country. And they know he’s a man of God, right? They know it and they don’t care. They just know he’s fantastic and they want him on the team. And then Pharaoh says, you know, the most amazing thing, you know, it gives all ring, all that kind of stuff. And everybody saying, like, how can I influence my company? How can I change the culture in my department? Well, there’s no what Pharaoh says, owing to the only godly person. That we know about in the entire country, other than my word. From this day forward, this man’s word is law. This man’s word is law. The only guy persevering after he’d given up his true self. If he decided, you know, God’s treat me poorly. And I’m sure he had no idea what God was doing. But whatever is happening to us, God is not necessarily causing it. But he will use it for something that’s going to make you a totally different person and be ready for something in your future. And the world needs narrow path people. Christians, we’re never going to be in the majority. We’re not going to be a majority. We are the defense. You know, we’re the defense. We’re holding back with God, the evil that’s in the world. And so I kind of like this role of defender. Especially if I know Jesus is in front.

John Coleman: What a great word, Britt. And also reflects the lesson we talked about earlier where, you know, sometimes you have to have a humbling experience to know that you need compassion, that you need help to bring it to what we talked about earlier. You know, we are coming to the end of our time today. One of the things we like to ask folks as we close is just what they’re learning from God through scripture right now. And we just had a great example of some of that from Britt. Although after deep reflection, Matt, I was wondering if we could turn to you to close us out. What are you learning from God through His Scripture right now that you’d want to share with our audience?

Matt Harris: I mean, I think James is probably my favorite book in the Bible. And so, like, I’ve got three kids and one’s three months old. So the trials come to mind not only for that, but also, you know, we are in a tough time in the venture cycle and I’m having to have a lot of hard conversations with really good friends. And so these are trials that, you know, we’ll get through together and we’ll all be better off for. And another thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about is, you know, I’ve always thought there was kind of a controversy around what James says very bluntly, which is faith without works, is dead what I’ve been more focused on recently is that that’s actually a very prevalent theme in pretty much every book in the New Testament. And it’s not saying that you can earn your way into heaven. You know, he’s very clear that there’s an order to things. But I’ve just been thinking a lot about how, you know, I feel like I’m bursting at the seams faith wise, and I’m just kind of praying and looking for where else that’s going to come out and works. I’m focused on that.

Britt Harris: Just one thing I want to pass along I’ll be very short it’s that it’s been in my life and it’s just had a huge positive effect. And we have a deep culture here. And about a year ago, I was convicted to write in a new phrase, and the phrase I wrote in was, Speak the truth with love, to speak the truth with love. And I thought, you know, we got some great people here. And I don’t know how people to feel about this. This right out of the Bible. Well, it’s been the best thing we put in there because it really resonates with people because it’s three things. Do you speak? A lot of us don’t speak. So we may be able to tell the truth and we could do with love, but it doesn’t matter because we never speak. And we have to learn how to speak. And we have to allow them to speak. Now, the people, you know, like most of us, we speak all the time, but we don’t necessarily hold ourselves accountable for truth. That’s our problem. Or, you know, we speak the horrors of a camp where truth, but we do it in such an unloving way that nobody wants to hear. So every one of us has a problem. And one of these three areas. And like my company, we’re the second biggest endowment in country. So this is not a little bitty place. Everybody here is not a Christian. They’re all great people. This is God’s word, and it resonates. And believe it or not, I gave this instruction to the 100 scientists for this conference on climate change. So we’re going to operate on these principles. We’re going to speak the truth with love in whatever you believe. We’re going to get a chance to speak. But when you get up, don’t tell us it’s a fact if it’s not a fact. You tell us your story or it’s a fact. In almost all this story is. SMITH It’s kind of like this. They’ve done a lot of work, not home. And we’re going to speak with love. And at the end of this conference, we put in God’s word, five words, speak the truth with love into a totally secular, high IQ, high intelligence audience. I didn’t see this coming when I closed the conference and just started to walk off. There was a standing ovation from the entire crowd.

John Coleman: Wow.

Britt Harris: Innovation from the entire crowd. And you know why? It was because we had a conference where they spoke the truth with love.

John Coleman: That’s powerful. Matt Britt This has been wonderful. It’s been great to get to know you all, to hear your perspective on markets and certainly to hear your perspective about the integration of faith and work and how faith can manifest in investing. We are grateful for your time and hope we can have you back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast sometime. Thank you very much.

Britt Harris: We’d love it. Thank you.