Episode 107 - Creating From A Place Of Pain with Neil Holzapfel
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Neil Holzapfel started investing in public companies in Africa and the Middle East. And yet, his heart was for more. He co-founded Raise the Children, a non-profit unlocking the potential of South African orphans to become servant leaders by investing in high quality secondary education and mentorship. Neil joins us today to talk about investing and creating from a place of pain, his journey as an investor and why he and his wife are so passionate about education and mentorship.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. I'm here with my co-host, John Coleman. John, good morning, Henry.
John Coleman: Good morning to you.
Henry Kaestner: Indeed, although as I look at it is afternoon for you and as evening at night for our guests. Today, we've got a real special podcast and as we're getting ready and we're talking kind of quote on quote backstage, I was talking about this guy that I love like a brother and I really do, and he's the real deal. He's been encouragement to me. He's challenged me appropriately in the past, so I've known him for maybe a dozen years and just really helped strengthen my commitment and resolve to knowing Jesus. And he's been living this incredible life that he's going to tell us a bit about. And my hope today, John, is that we might give our audience a different perspective and a different viewpoint that helps them understand what it looks like to invest in Africa. Our time, our experience, and yes, of course, the capital that God has entrust us with. So I'm fired up.
John Coleman: Yeah, it's such a such a remarkable topic. I mean, the ability to impact a billion people. I know this is something you've gotten really fired up about recently too, right? Henry Yeah, it is.
Henry Kaestner: It is. We had gas. I guess we've gone now to Africa four times over the last two years. I mean, even with COVID and we had our Faith Driven Investor Conference Mini conference in Nairobi, we're going to go back in September for the Faith Driven Entrepreneur and Investor Conference in Africa. God is doing incredible things there. I'm personally compelled. We've done so much. Of course, John, you and I know Southeast Asia so well and we'll continue to love Indonesia and Singapore. And yet there is something about the continent of Africa and just the demographics and how young the population is. The joyfulness that comes from meeting, maybe that's the selfish thing for me. I just and we're going to get to the media podcast in a second, but there's some amount of selfishness that I have. I want to know God, I want to know your own experiences, joy. And when I spend time on the ground in Africa with my African brothers and sisters, I see the joy of knowing God. And for them, the Holy Spirit is a very real active thing. Jesus is somebody who can be known and celebrated and loved and be loved by. And I just get really excited and every time I'm there, so we want to do more of that. No better person to help us on a tour of Africa than somebody who's given his life to the continent. Neil, welcome to the program.
Neil Holzapfel: Thanks, Henry. And you're far too kind, but it's great. Great to be here. Thank you. Henry and John,
Henry Kaestner: excited to have you.
Neil Holzapfel: I think about Africa. And yeah,
Henry Kaestner: I think back to the time when I first met you, you know, we don't do this on video, but I remember. And I think there's a metaphor in here somewhere. But I remember when I met you is at the UK. Prayer breakfast is probably 12 years ago, so it was at the House of Lords and it was just a really kind of a buttoned up affair and it's a little bit stuffy. And Byron Laughlin, our mutual friend, took us out for lunch afterwards. Maybe I met you before I came here, but I remember this time. I remember that you're like, You know what? This is just too stuffy and you, you know, because we'd been at this really nice thing, kind of a suit and tie type of thing. You stripped down to a t shirt right there at lunch, and I'm like, I like this guy. This guy's is like, all pretenses aside, let's be real with one another. And that started our friendship, and I'm grateful for it. So one of the things we like to do, or the thing we like to do with all of our guests on the podcast is understand who they are and get an autobiographical flyover. How did you come to know Jesus? How did you come to the vocation you found yourself? And how did you come to investments? You've got a great story, and I'm hoping you're going to just share with us. Bring it.
Neil Holzapfel: So I'll start with some of the high level, right? Neil's my name. I'm from New Hampshire. Born in the Boston area, St. Thomas grew up in New Hampshire and then went to school in Boston, in the UK.
Henry Kaestner: And oh, I need more than that. We need more than that.
Neil Holzapfel: No, no, no. I'm a bring it. OK. Right now, I'm married to a woman who's just completely shaped and changed my life so dramatically. Less so. We live in Cape Town. We have three sons Bonilla, Joel and Pascal, and we've been based here in South Africa for a decade this year, actually, and just celebrated our 12 year anniversary. We spent a couple of years in New York and then a bit of time in London, but been based here since then. And you know, my story, Henry is, you know, really starts with my father because my father was abandoned by his alcoholic dad when he was a child and grew up in an abusive single-parent home in a housing project in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. And, you know, the 70s were a bit dazed and confused for my parents. Well, they had me and my sister smoke. A lot of pot, drank a lot of beer and used, you know? Recreational drugs, but it was in the brokenness of their own marriage and their divorce and splitting up that, remarkably, my dad, someone gave him a Bible at work and told them that Jesus offers hope, forgiveness and new life. And he grabbed a hold of that for two years, wrote my mom in to the church. She had a Pauline conversion experience. And, you know, very much road to Damascus type ended up in church for the first time, and who knows how long they had both spent time around a Catholic church when they were young, but they were at a Pentecostal church and at that service. My mom didn't remember anything that the pastor said. Except if you think you've done things you'll never be forgiven for. I'm here to tell you, Jesus will forgive you for it. And she couldn't help thinking about the first child that she aborted against my dad's well before they got married. And so that was about 1983, so I went from having a pretty traumatic first six years with deep trauma. Then I'm still working through now in some ways to seeing my parents come to faith. And yet never really kind of breakthrough into for healing. So my dad is now and as you know, Henry said, I stripped down to my T-shirt, I'm stripping down here about my dad, who's 73 this year, will start drinking today at probably noon beer go to hard alcohol in the evening. And he smokes pot all day and he's on to prescription opioids. That's today. Wow. So he had about a 10 year run of trying to follow Jesus and stay in community, but could never really break free of his past and the trauma of his past, his orphan spirit. And then my mom has stuck with Jesus. She's really clung to Jesus and been the emotional and spiritual center of my family. And after my sister and I and they came to faith, they had three more children with his five kids. And now, I think, 17 nieces and nephews. But I think in my own journey as a young man, one of the big questions for me has been What if a man, a godly man, had stood in the gap for my dad when he was a boy who had no man in his life? No uncles did it, no coaches did it. You know, he went to Catholic school with nuns who beat him up. So how would his life have changed if someone had stood in the gap for him? And I think that's been one of my big questions. So a lot of the drive. And part of my own journey is this passion for boys mainly and girls and young men and young women that don't have fathers. And that comes through in. I work with raised the children and elsewhere. And as you know, where some people might know, South Africa in particular has been in the middle of an orphan crisis for the better part of the last 15 years, given what's happened with HIV and AIDS. But the other thread to jump into a bit now is just what my experience of my dad and my mom and my birth family has meant for my own family and my own journey. Because I think for much of my adult life, I have been energized by the trauma and the suffering in my family, but also the joy and the strength and the loyalty and commitment that we share as a birth family. But also, you know, having to as a married Lazaro when we started our own family, really having to own some stuff and grow and understanding who I really am and who my real father really is, how Jesus brings me into a family with a perfect father who loves me and says, I'm worth it because he says so. Period. So that that's that's one way to kick off. Get right into it, I hope.
Henry Kaestner: No, that's beautiful. And that's what I was looking for. And that's a perfect descriptor and the encouragement that we all need to hear the beauty out of brokenness and hope. And Heavenly Father right now, just all of our hearts are broken for Neil's dad, and we just asked that you'd hear him. You were the god of healing and the God of miracles. And so we ask that you bring him back in and just be the father for him, as you are for all of us, the wonderful and infinite love. And he'd feel that today and pray for that Jesus, his name. There's nothing better about the background of your story than that message. And yet there's also some interesting aspects to when you get somebody comes out of that type of a background. You ended up a capital group with one of the most premier money managers of all time. How you got that, the opportunities that presented themselves along the way are very, very interesting story that go back to extra in New Hampshire. Can you give us a flyover just of your educational experience? The way you ended up at an Ivy League school is a little different than most, and I find it fascinating.
Neil Holzapfel: Yeah, it's a great story in one rooted in what we just talked about. So that's a good Segway. Just because when I kind of started, you know, going through puberty and noticing women around me, young women, I realized most young women I knew were interested in athletes small town, New Hampshire. And obviously my dad, who didn't have a father, really benchmarked a lot of his view of masculinity around physical strength. You know, so I started freshman year had just started, you know, puberty probably 10 months before or five £850 pretty slow on the feet decided to go out for the freshman football team and got beat up so badly with that combination of, you know, lanky, skinny and slow. I got beat up so badly I went to the starting tailback. His name was Brett Rossmann, a little Jewish kid, but he was stacked and I'm like, Dude, what are you doing? He's like, I lift weights. I'm like, Can I come? He said, Sure. Little did I know that his stepfather was teaching Driver's Ed at the summer school of an elite East Coast boarding school called Phillips Exeter Academy. And Brett had a gym pass a week, six days a week for two years, we pumped iron in there and I packed down about 50 pounds of muscle and got kicked out by the security guards a few times and kept on going back. And I was pretty friendly, so befriended people and smiled and said, Hi, and I just like none of the prep school kids use the weight room, so I just blew it up in there and eventually an admissions officer was like, You were like one of the strongest kids in the school. How come you don't play any sports? And I'm like, I go to the public school in town. She's like, You're a townee. Like, Yeah, she's like, You do well in school. I'm like, Yeah, it's like, Do you want to come here? I'm like, I don't know. I never thought about it. So she she sent the application. I mean, this is when you come from my kind of bad. No one in my family had been university educated. You know, I went home, told my parents, I'm like, Should I go? And then something something the application. They gave me a scholarship. They're like, I don't, we don't know, do what you want. So I went to Phillips Exeter in Grade 11, and it was a life changing experience, as you can imagine. And for whatever reason, it was a really smooth transition for me. You know, I didn't feel and I think this is where I see God's favor. I've always been a bit of a grinder. So, you know, I took to it like a duck and water, both the academic work and the sports work and my like junior year, they've got 10 college counselors. They're like, Yeah, you're not going to cut it at the Ivy League. It's too competitive from here. But senior year, as captain of the football team and we won nationals in rowing and my test scores came back great and ended up being able to go to Harvard for undergrad where I spent, you know, a big chunk of my time rowing. I rode for Harvard. I was captain of the men's heavyweight rowing team and then on the servant leadership team of Christian Impact as well. And that's coming from a small town in New Hampshire. That's really where I found just some brothers that we actually experienced a mini revival there. And I think I have a theory. We've spoken about it recently, but Christian Impact, which is the campus crusade at Harvard, I think it had four people a year. My cohort got there and the year we left at a weekly meeting just for athletes in action, there were like 70 to 75 people. Wow. Which is a big number for a campus of six hundred undergrads, right? Like, that's a that's a sizable it's a of the population. And I think part of my theory and you know, how God moves, the Holy Spirit moves in certain times, but I think the core of what happened was real, raw, just intimate sharing confession of sin and a real passion for worship. In that cohort, that Bible study I was in my freshman year, that was pretty awesome. And then I went for Cambridge, for graduate school. I thought I was going to be an Olympic rower at Cambridge, where kind of the truth came out that I just wasn't that good. So, you know, I was fine, but I wasn't Olympic material, and I had about thirty five thousand dollars of debt from all my education, and I had a Ph.D. place at Cambridge in international studies and thought I was going to do development, work in the international, you know, whether working for the U.N. or as a missionary, but as God's providence would have it, I figured, let me pay off some debt before I do the Ph.D. send out my CV to a bunch of investment banks and financial companies because I figured they had the money to pay off my debt and capital was the only place that gave me an interview.
John Coleman: Wow. You know, Neal, it's a great story about finding Phillips, Exeter and Harvard. I will say the only other similar interesting story I heard was the commencement speaker. The year that I was there, the student commencement speaker had found Harvard because he used to steal bikes on campus. So at least you found a more reputable way to get introduced to the school. Now I know you went to Campus Group and you talk about that because they gave you an interview and you had this debt to pay off. But at that time you discovered an interest in Africa as well, you know, studying international relations? Or would that come later?
Neil Holzapfel: Well, I can tell you, John, it's a good question exactly what happened. I was in the history library at Cambridge University, working on my master's dissertation, and because I was in the UK, I would, you know, I had the internet back then. I'd flip up the BBC before I dig into my masters because I was focused on international studies and a headline came up on the BBC. This would have been May of 2001, and it said the headline was very simple three to four million people had died in the Congo since 1996. Wow. And I kind of had this moment just I'll tell it like it is, and this is probably anger. It's kind of my issue in life. Right. It's my super strength. And it's like, think about rowing and rowing. It's the only sport that was once a form of slavery. You sit on your butt pulling in or going the opposite direction, right? It's basically a hurt contest. This is going to take it to the wall and hurt the most. And I think I just had so much rage inside of me. It was a good way to air it out. But when I read that, I was like, I just went to Phillips, Exeter, Harvard University and Cambridge. And I haven't even heard about this. And I'm sure maybe some people in the podcast might have the same experience. But after the Rwandan genocide, which most of you have heard about, there was an internet saying conflict. At one point, seven African countries were involved in the northeastern eastern part of the Congo because the Hutus and others perpetrated the genocide against the Tutsi and sympathizers. They fled into that part of the Congo, so Kagami has been going after that area and the people there for the last year until now. And Zimbabwe and Uganda and a bunch of other countries sending troops, and basically there was a civil war that it killed three to four million people. And I had never heard about it after just finishing, you know, what is it, seven years of complete elite education. And I'm like, There's a problem with that.
John Coleman: Why do you think that is? Neal, you know, because it is glossed over, I think, and it's treated differently. I mean, what's behind that? How can people so educated be so ignorant of what's happening to such a huge group of people in the world?
Neil Holzapfel: Well, John, there's been a civil war in Ethiopia in the last 17 months that's probably killed many multiples of the number of people that have died in Ukraine in the last month. How come no one knows about that? Yeah. So to answer your question, I don't have an answer. But what I do know is say is the father of lies. So there are lies and there's untruth that subtle. There's some that's more obvious. You know, one of my favorite examples, I don't want to get distracted, but I really believe that the evangelical and when I say evangelical, I mean, people who believe the Bible is God's word, they believe in a conversion experience, a choice to follow Jesus, and they believe that God is active in our lives. Right. That's theologically a broad based definition of evangelical. But the Evangelical Church in America should be the most powerful force for kingdom change and salvation and redemption and renewal in the history of the world. But I don't think we're doing it. And I think because people have bought into and I've done this on my own things that aren't true. You know, for example, I'm not sure if anyone out here is down with the Bible project, but man, am I just having a blast with the Bible project this year? So shout out to the creators of the Bible project. I mean, we've got three boys 10, nine and three, and every night bar tonight, I'm like, All right, we're doing a Bible project. VIDEO And they are so down with it. Even my three year old is like, Let's watch the Bible, and it's just so good. But it's been so refreshing to really get stuck in the Old Testament again and in the Old Testament. And with the reading program like God's Passion for the fatherless, for the foreigner and for the widowed, it's just all over the place. Yet in America, there's like over a hundred thousand children who are in foster care, right? And foster care means no one wants you in their family, right? Like, if you're in foster care, you haven't been adopted. So for me, the concept of having orphans in America, where there's tens of millions of evangelical families who know who Jesus is, it's just unconscionable that there would be any orphans in America that places the lonely and families.
Henry Kaestner: That's a great challenge, and I think our audience now can see how when we started this off, I said that Neal has done a great job of challenging me. Neil, I want to get back to the work that you and let's say, ho do with orphans. But before we go there, because that'll be a little bit more in terms of real time, although you're doing a bunch of things now you're doing the raise, the children, you're doing investing. Walk us through your time at Capital Group and what you learned about. So you came to understand, of course, that there are all these people that have been dying in the Congo. You want to get involved and then you do and you get involved in the investment side. Walk us through that time about what it was like to invest in Africa and what God taught you through that.
Neil Holzapfel: Yeah. So I read this article and just became just totally intrigued by what was happening in Africa and reading about it. But there was no runway to get here or do anything here or anything like that. So I go to capital kick off and the Associates program, a training program. And I was based in L.A. for almost three years. And just really, I love numbers and I loved the culture of capital and the people. And it is. It's a phenomenal place to work and a great place to be. It's gotten really big. I think that brings its own challenges, but. Halfway through that training program, I read another article that said South Africa will have five to 10 million orphans in the next decade. This would have been 2002, and my younger brother, who followed me to Harvard and was also captain of the rowing team at Harvard, he's a real rower. I was like the prep squad. But he he said, Let's do something for those orphans in South Africa, let's do something and I'm like, Let's do it. But there was no runway. And then the next year, providentially capital came to me and said, Hey, we've got an opening for someone to cover South Africa and invest in the public markets. Do you want to do it? And I was like, Absolutely. So I came to South Africa. The capital gave me a few and a million bucks was like, Go invest it, you know, hang yourself a couple of times. I'm like, Where do I start to like, that's up to you? And I came here for the first time in two thousand and three and started coming down once a quarter or three times a year and meeting public companies in Africa and the Middle East and investing in them, which I did between 2003 and 2012 before we relocated down here. So it's just I mean, there was no plan. God had the plan. I mean, I I am so grateful. Looking back at his providence. Amazing, he's so good, and she's so not that stuff goes right, right, because the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous, and I feel deeply humbled saying that, but I can see that there was a plan that I just couldn't have seen or understood.
John Coleman: Neil know what's striking to me is just how much of a passion you have for people and for the people of the African continent. Specifically, you got handed a big pool of cash to invest at a relatively young age. It sounds like a capital group, and I know what that's like in big organizations. You know, three or four hundred million dollars is quite a lot of capital to manage. For a big organization, it doesn't feel like that much. And so they can give young people a lot of responsibility early. Talk to us about what you learned investing in Africa and for someone with your passions, you know, a lot of people pursue ministry or a service rather than something like investing. Why was investing fulfilling to you in the context of your passion for the people of Africa? And just tell us some stories of what investing there was like and and what you learned about being successful and investing across the African continent?
Neil Holzapfel: Oh man, that is. I could talk all day about you. Just ask like five questions. But what I will say is capital. One of the wonderful things about that culture is it's high responsibility, high accountability framework. So because you were in the multiple portfolio manager system where everyone's managing money, you got basically assessed on your results, which are mainly quantitative and somewhat qualitative. So no one could kibosh your career. You could say, I want to buy this stock if people are like, you're dumb, you go and buy it and it goes up well, everyone thinks you're a genius and you get paid. And that collegial environment really was powerful to witness and be a part of. And you're making decisions because investing is making informed decisions based on people and businesses with limited information. And the beauty of the public markets is if the story changes, you can exit, you can sell. Right. Private businesses, we know that's not so easy, especially in a place like Africa, which has very undeveloped capital markets and significant risk. So, yeah, I learned a lot about thinking about economies from the macro economic picture and what makes them systematically competitive. So for instance, let's take a snapshot right now. Up until Ukraine happened, the war in Ukraine kicked off a month ago. My favorite macro country on the continent would have been Egypt, right? They free flow to their currency. They just devalued it by a bunch last week or a few weeks ago because they're a big wheat importer and all that wheat comes from Ukraine. So they knew they were going to have problems on their accounts, but they free floated their currency. They cut their deficits dramatically. Their fiscal deficits are running a primary surplus. They investing in household formation massively at the moment because they need to. Cairo has a shortage of housing, and they're just doing all the right things right now, and they're growing four or five percent a year. I mean, kind of hectic that it's a nominally Muslim dictatorship, whereas South Africa has just gone through a terrible decade with such a corrupted top leadership structure. Well beyond my expectations, they've set us back here 10 to 15 years from a macroeconomic point of view. Now that being said, both places still offer investment opportunities, but they're in different places because one of the great things about being here, it's kind of like. It's a bit of open canvas, there's still so much room to build. In core industries, whether it's agriculture, whether it's energy, renewable energy, whether it's, you know, food production, there's financial inclusion, there are pretty big blue sky opportunities where if you back the right people in the right sector and continue to back them, you can really grow things to scale. And so I think macro has to be part of the analysis, and I think Egypt, the next five, 10 years are probably going to be great there. And anyone investing in the public markets, especially after this devaluation, should feel good about it. Once you leave Egypt, it gets a bit trickier because when you're in the bigger economies like Nigeria and South Africa, you have to be much more selective on what you're doing, who you're backing and what the opportunity is.
Henry Kaestner: By the way, I love that you mentioned Egypt. We had a Faith Driven Entrepreneur meetup in conference just meant to be reasonably small in Cairo, I guess, just two weeks ago. And the community got so behind it, it was way oversubscribed. The national news came and reporting on it, and it got distribution all throughout the country. God is doing something there in the entrepreneurial climate in Cairo, and that's super encouraging. I didn't know about it against this macro economic backdrop that you just talked about, but that's a no.
Neil Holzapfel: It's about six weeks ago again after this wheat issue. I mean, literally, Egypt, like I said, is the largest importer of wheat in the world, and they subsidize it. So they've tried to reduce subsidies for petrol and for bread, but they're just going to get crunch right now. But previous to that, it's that place has got so much going for it at a macroeconomic level right now.
Henry Kaestner: OK, we're going to go through a time of the podcast. We're going to do kind of rapid questions and think about this. Just real, real quick answers kind of like pardon the interruption, which is near spin program and ask you a couple, Joe, ask you a couple and then I'll close. And we always close with with my favorite question, which is what are you hearing God through his word recently? OK, so number one question answer is 30 seconds or less. OK, give us three things that an investor needs to know before they consider putting money into Africa.
Neil Holzapfel: Who am I backing? Who am I co-investing with? And. What do we do together when things go well or go to plan or things don't go to plan?
Henry Kaestner: Good. Next. Give us a 30 second pitch on why Africa makes sense for a crisis. Fowler listening to this podcast that's been entrusted with Sterling Capital. Why should they? Why should they look at Africa and what's a good way to get started?
Neil Holzapfel: I think that 30 seconds on investing in Africa, I would say backing the right people, you have the right experience and the right industry segment with the right capital, the right kind of capital and the right support you can you can build wonderfully redemptive businesses at scale and make a lot of money as well.
Henry Kaestner: So you talked about AG being one of those,
Neil Holzapfel: I think agriculture, agriculture is not a place to make a lot of money. I think it's a place to make. You can make a bit of money because it's the wrong end of the food chain. Right? But the impact you can have when you get it right can be fantastic. I think energy is very interesting. I think financial inclusion is very interesting. I think education is very interesting and I think those are all areas where LEAP Africa is kind of behind or in some cases in renewables has moved quite far, quite quickly. But you can build big businesses at scale when you get things right.
Henry Kaestner: OK, my third one and this kind of lightning around is I want to spend 30 seconds unpacking financial inclusion. And if you channel your inner John Staley on this, I won't be disappointed.
Neil Holzapfel: Yeah, well, that's all I'm going to channel because he's one of the guys I'd back any day, but he effectively we don't have financial inclusion, right? It's still very much a very poor place. It's still very cash full of physical cash, which is a disaster and a lot of people on our bank accounts. So if you can get every African, a digital identity and you can create ubiquitous and easy way to pay or be paid electronically and you combine that with data connectivity, you can dramatically reduce the cost of any financial service.
Henry Kaestner: Digital identity, micropayments, connectivity When John rolled that out and it's just like cash I love a simple framework makes all the sense in the world.
Neil Holzapfel: It's a very simple framework, and John's the guy who can pull the pieces together. So that's something we're working on actively now, and we're really excited about it.
Henry Kaestner: You say working on. Does that mean working on get him on the podcast? I'm just kidding. Now I know you're working on a new venture,
Neil Holzapfel: so he would he'd be great. Well, John, John might. He might be harder. He's not as good of a storyteller as I am, so
Henry Kaestner: nor is good looking.
Neil Holzapfel: Well, he's a little bit older than me. The African sun's been hard on them.
Henry Kaestner: They like Geoff Johns listening to this. John, you look awesome.
John Coleman: Maybe so I'm going to jump in. Henry with a couple of lightning round questions in mind, Neal, you talked about the importance of backing people on the African continent. Maybe talk about one company and one fund that you think are really exciting right now.
Neil Holzapfel: Well, I mean, the fund, the guy that you got you, this team knows who I really we've talked a journey with and I really love working with him and trust him. Is Richard Tim Keller and Sango. So I love what he's done. He's he's been a very long thinker with his approach and done things the right way, and he's fantastic. And I'd say that being the one saying, go,
Henry Kaestner: he is amazing and I should just throw in there. You get a guy who is partners with Ray Dalio of Bridgewater, goes back to Africa, brings what he's learned in the United States. He's he's the real deal. Let's get to his. One of his partners is a pastor. The guys, he's outstanding.
John Coleman: And where is he investing? What are the themes?
Neil Holzapfel: He's a mid-market and mid-market private equity initially fund of funds, but now making direct investments and set up a permanent capital vehicle.
John Coleman: Awesome. And what's a company? So if there's any top of mind you?
Neil Holzapfel: Yeah, I mean, I know, I know on the private or the public side either one. Yeah, I I'm pretty I don't want to talk my own book, so I'm going to try to talk about something that I'm not involved with. There's there's one of we have owned one business for years that's really growing rapidly at the moment. It's pretty exciting because it's it's it's got the potential to drive decarbonization at scale and help help supply energy here in South Africa. I'm excited about that.
Henry Kaestner: But can you say the name? Can you see anything we can say to them on this podcast?
Neil Holzapfel: Sure, sure. It's called Power X. We've owned it for a long time. It's the only well, it was until last month the only independent power trading license in South Africa. It's actually fascinating, right? Because we talked about macro, but as disastrous as macro has been in South Africa, they have basically completely liberalized and deregulated the energy industry. So there was a state owned monopoly which owned the distribution of generation and the transmission lines here and in the last two years, they've broken it up into three entities and they just issued another trading license and they're, you know, really changing own generation kind of limits so anyone can build up to 100 megawatts without having to go through the brain damage of getting a generation license. And we just happened to be positioned right in the middle of that. So that's a good one. I'm very, you know, fired up about what we're doing with John Henry in buying this payments company. I think that could be fantastic. I, you know, when when COVID kicked off, there were a bunch of public companies. I was fired up about MTN was my biggest and the one I was excited about the most. But that puppy just been ripping it up like. Probably like two hundred and fifty percent now it's a lie, it's up five hundred percent, it like bottomed in March of 2020 at like 40 or 50 rand, and I think it's over 200 now. But then there was a logistics company I really liked called Imperial Logistics that just got taken private by DP World a few months ago. So they got a buyout offer from an Emirati, an Emirates listed company called DP World. But there were a basket of public companies I like back then. Right now, I'm just trying to think I like. I'm nosing around in some small caps here, but I'm not particularly fired up about them. I'm more excited about what I'm working on.
John Coleman: That's awesome, Neal. And then to close us out, you know, Henry mentioned, we'd like to ask people what God's teaching them and especially anything that you're encountering in God's word that's been an inspiration to you recently or helped you learn something. Does anything come to mind just a lesson from God's word that that you think has really struck you recently?
Neil Holzapfel: Well, I think like I referenced the Bible project earlier and going back, you know, through the Pentateuch and then Samuel and now in Kings and just realizing, I mean, John, you got it all in there, right? You know, you've got murder and you've got adultery and incest and all this kind of you're like, What a disaster. And on one level, you look at the world today, look at Ukraine. What a disaster feels like. We haven't moved that far, right? Yeah. And yet, what a disaster I am. You know, for instance, we didn't dig into this too much, but when my three year old disobeys me and I get angry and I speak to him with an appropriate tone, John, what am I actually angry about? He's three years old. Yeah. Right. There's a part of me that's angry because I think there's there's right and there's wrong. But most of my emotion is tied up in me, in my story and my past and my wounds from my dad. So learning and thinking. Daily minute by minute, moment by moment and letting the Holy Spirit and the truth of the gospel. The good news about what my real dad did for me. Bring me home to a family. Say that I'm a son. I'm a treasured son because he says, so send my brother in in that family. Jesus, the god of the universe to die on the cross, to bring me home, and then to send the spirit to be with us. Like, That's that's life. That's love. And I want more of it. I want my family to have it, and I want people. I'm around to have it. And if I can share that with them, I need to. I realized I've lost, so I used to be a really friendly person. I'm not friendly anymore. I want to be friendly and I want to smile at people minute by minute, moment by moment. How can I love the next person around me or is my friend? Tim Keller says. Wash the next pair of feet.
John Coleman: Wow, Neil, that's a great word, great word and a great place to end. We're so excited for the work that you're doing in Africa and with vulnerable kids, and we're just really grateful that you spend time with us on the FDE podcast today.
Neil Holzapfel: A pleasure and I love the work you are doing and John and the team, and thank you so much for having me.