Episode 150 - Building a Community of Investors (Why and How) with Brent Beshore and Marcus Stroud

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Most of us know the verse in Genesis where God says it’s not good for a person to be alone. 

But do we let that affect our view of investing?

We understand the truth but still find ourselves going through our careers in isolation. 

We keep our guard up and our heads down. 

What would it look like to change that narrative? What would happen if we rallied around each other, both personally and professionally? What would that lead to?

Brent Beshore and Marcus Stroud join us today to talk about how they’ve found great joy in building a community of investors and to give practical guidance on how others can do the same.

Check it out wherever you get your podcasts and don’t forget to review, follow, and share the show with others.

Events mentioned in this video:
Main Street Summit: https://www.mainstreetsummit.com/

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.

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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.

John Coleman: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. This is John Coleman and I am very excited about our podcast today, both because of the topic and the men we have with us today. Today on the Faith Driven Investor podcast, we want to talk about community and the role that community plays in investing and in this world that we live in, where we're all working together to be capital partners, trying to serve a cause greater than ourselves by investing together in service of that, we have two of the most interesting investors in the world, I think in very different segments of the market, which I'll let them describe. First off, we have Marcus Stroud. Marcus is a remarkable early stage investor, founder and CEO or managing partner of TXV Partners. We had his partner, Brandon, on the podcast recently. They invest in a variety of technologies, including human performance. And one of the things that Marcus will talk about today is a human performance summit that they're actually putting together along the lines of this community that they're building. Second up, we have Brent Beshore, Brent is a celebrity among middle aged men all over the country. Brent is a Grade A Twitter personality. He's the founder of Permanent Equity, one of the most interesting private equity vehicles in market. That's done a remarkable amount and some of the most interesting businesses in Missouri and elsewhere in the country. He is the informal mayor of Columbia, Missouri, I think, and we could talk about that more and is also the founder of Capital Camp and the forthcoming Mainstreet Summit, which will dig into which are just two of the most premier gatherings of investors and also people building businesses in the country. And these two gentlemen know a lot about faith. I know a lot about investing and know a lot about creating community. Marcus and Brent, thank you so much for coming on today.

Brent Beshore: John Thank you so much for having us. And I just want to say thank you for telling so many very gracious lies about at least about me. They're all true about Marcus, but I'm grateful for you.

Brent Beshore: He's like the guy that runs on that stage before the concerts and, like, swings the towel, you know, he's like.

John Coleman: I am a hype man, I'm a hype man, actually, like the mighty, Mighty Bosstones, who used to just jump up and down. Is that to Yes. Reference at this point?

Marcus Stroud: Yes. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. what you are referring to, my man, oh this is amazing, super fire up to be here.

John Coleman: Well, before we get started, guys, just a little more about you, Marcus, maybe you could start off tell us a little more about TXV and human performance.

Marcus Stroud: Yep. So we are a multi stage investment firm focused on human performance and software, and we just added a new strategy where we're investing in minority stakes within sports teams. And so we're based in Austin, a small team, roughly ten people. And our idea is we believe the next dimension of health care is going to be a consumer oriented approach. And so we've tried to model this thesis out by investing in companies such as oura, which is, you know, one of the top sleep wearables in the country right now, as well as level's health, was continuous glucose monitor. I see my guy John rocking the ring. It's incredible and other technology in that category. And so everything that we invest in as a thematic investor touches that principle. And we believe there's a lot of connectivity between, you know, this new dimension of health care as well as sports, which has led us to our new strategy. But yeah, really, we are really tied to share more, but we're building.

John Coleman: A note for those who are listening. Audio only. Brent Beshore use the opportunity that Marcus supported by mentioning levels, which is a continuous glucose monitor by a friend of ours, Sam caucus that you wear on your arm. Brant used that as an opportunity to actually pull up his sleeve and flex on the podcast, which was a real way of intimidating both.

Brent Beshore: Mark I don't know if you guys can see it. I'm wearing the levels right now. Look at let's.

Marcus Stroud: Go, let's go. I love it. I love it.

John Coleman: Marcus That's awesome. And before we move on and I want to get to Brent and permanent equity, what was your path to investing and why Human performance in software?

Marcus Stroud: It's a great question. And so I had a very unique path, not as unique as Brent. As you guys will hear, Brent has the most interesting story. Like John said, in all private equity, this guy truly is a celebrity. But you know, I was fortunate to have played football at Princeton and at Princeton. I was around so many incredible investors that would come back to campus. And I knew early on that was kind of the career path. I wanted to take that unique background in which my father played the NFL and I was around so many athletes growing up. And so this idea of health and wellness and sports selectivity was always kind of like right in front of me. I think as we started to move into investing, you know, progressing through the career ranks, I started to just get this idea of what is an area of the market that folks were deeply interested in are actually pretty consequential. Software has been arguably the most consequential technology of the last ten, 15 years. The reason we've had such an incredible bull market know software is the world. You know, I was a firm believer and Brent was a firm believer that human performance and this kind of consumer oriented approach to health care would be kind of this next dimension of growth within our economy. And so that's kind of what led us to invest in this area. It's something I'm deeply. I set about, as are a lot of people, because I see you're wearing the warrior ring and what was also obviously you guys both care about your health as well. And so that's what led us to invest in the space.

John Coleman: Brent and I need a little more help on our health than you Marcus. So we're deploying any device that we can at this point. Brent Beshore, you founded I think Permanent Equity in 2007 or eight, and it is such a unique model. Talk to us a little bit about permanent equity in your path.

Brent Beshore: Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, not all of us are equally blessed. And John, you and I did not get the, you know, maybe the looks or the physique of a Marcus Stroud. You know, I just some of us are built more like Greek gods, and some of us are built more like not Greek gods. So, you know, we'll leave it there. Yeah. So I joke that I'm the Forrest Gump of private equity because I've never taken a finance class in my life. I can barely open a pixel. I've never worked at another firm. It was really, truly me falling backwards into the world of private equity. I was an entrepreneur, started a business, started a number of businesses kind of around that. They were okay, they weren't super successful. And then I had a mutual acquaintance, a should meet this guy. He got left at the altar for the second time trying to sell his business. I said, Oh, well, obviously that means that I should try to go buy it, right? He had no idea that's what was going to do but meet with this guy. And I was, let's see, 24 at the time. I looked about 14 and the guy literally said to me, What am I doing here? Like, two grown men have tried to buy my business. Like, what are what in the world? How could you do it? I said, I don't know. We'll figure it out. Anyway, seven months later, bought the business. Lots of trial and error. Did well with that investment started rolling cash flow paid off the SBA loan early. But I took out I asked my newly married wife to sign a personal guarantee. She was like, What's that? I was a guy. Don't worry about it. They'll be fine.

John Coleman: Marriage advice from Brent Beshore.

Brent Beshore: Yeah, yeah, maybe that's a whole separate topic. But anyway, it and it working out quite well Started rolling cash flows, bought a number of other businesses and then in 2017 partnered with the O'Shaughnessy family, the Vlasic family, and raised a $50 million fund and then in 2019 raised a $3 million fund. But in many ways, we're kind of the opposite of traditional private equity. So traditional private equity, a joke that employs the buy lever strip and flip model, we're doing the exact opposite. So we're buying with no intention of selling the business. We're typically using no debt in our transactions and really trying to be long term with all the stakeholders and have it be a win win, a sustainable win win over a long period of time. So we're really trying to be thoughtful towards not only the seller but the executive team, the employees, the suppliers, the customers and the community, maybe even regulators, depending on the industry. So very different form of private equity. And we love it. We think it's a privilege and an honor to be able to help steward family owned businesses that are really the backbone of this country. And so hence I'm wearing my American flag shirt that I don't know if people can see today, partially because I'm just trying to keep up with you and your, you know, your dashing looks and Marcus and his snappy dressings.

John Coleman: That's great, Brent. And you know, it's interesting because this topic of permanent capital, I feel like has become a really hot one. You guys were very early in this space. I know we're starting to experiment with it and as you mentioned, for the right type of company and it's an excellent model because you can carry things out in perpetuity and you know, you don't know how long that will last. It's a Berkshire Hathaway type model you can't hold forever, although you don't necessarily have to. You obviously, things move in and out once in a while, but for some opposite's a great model too, because it reduces the friction of reinvestment. It can reduce tax consequences to individual investors, for example. And so it's interesting that you guys were really a pioneer in the space, you know, starting more than a decade ago now, 15 years ago.

Brent Beshore: Yeah. I mean, I would say it's actually the optimal structure for every investment. It is just providing optionality. So, I mean, that's one of the key things that when we talk about and I would love for everyone to raise functionally permanent capital, I mean, we have an initial 30 year term on our capital, which is functionally permanent, like technically permanent. But that long time horizon doesn't mean you have to hold the assets for that long. It means you can hold the assets for that long. And the dumbest thing you can possibly do is be a forced buyer or forced seller. And unfortunately, short duration funds both cause you to buy stuff that you don't want to buy and sell, stuff that you don't want to sell, which is definitely not good for the investor, but is even worse for the companies. And when you add in a heavy amount of debt onto that, which is what traditional private equity has done, you create this really volatile cocktail that you're taking an already difficult company, right? I mean, you know, small companies don't stay small on purpose, right? These smaller companies are going to be more volatile. And then you add on top of that the fuel of debt. And then on top of that, you add a forced selling. I mean, it is not a good situation. And this is where you see a lot of carnage, unfortunately, with especially amongst the employees, but also with customers and suppliers. I mean, there's a volatility, too. You know, when a private equity firm buys a company, everyone kind of stops and cringes. Right. Everyone's wondering what's going to happen next. And there's a reason for that. Now, there's a lot of great people in private equity not to say that there aren't, but in no ways can you tell me that. The traditional private equity model is better than the model that we have.

John Coleman: So interesting, you know, it probably warrants a whole podcast on fund structures at some point because there are so many innovations today and I would love to spend time on it for the purposes of today. I want to pivot a little bit to community, if we could. And Marcus, I might start with you. You know, community is obviously important to us. I think faith driven, entrepreneur and faith driven investor were set up with this idea that living a life of faith in the context of building a business or building an investment firm or trying to invest in opportunities is actually better in community that by coming together, the weight of the community can be better than any of us can be in isolation. It can be an encouragement to us in our faith and certainly in sovereigns. We have seen that as well. Why is community important to you in the context of the work that you do at TXV and how does that manifest?

Marcus Stroud: That's an excellent question. I think I didn't really understand the significance of community until I was probably 20 years old. You know, growing up, my mom would always say, You guys have to go to church four days a week. So we'd be in church on Sunday, We'd be in church on Monday. It would be in church on Wednesday, It would be in church on Saturday. And she was so serious about the groups we'd be around within the church and she was like, Your friend group from the age of 10 to 17 has to be the kids in the church. And I was just like, Why are you doing this to me? And then I realized she was trying to instill the significance of community, how, you know, to your point, you can spread the good, you could spread the bad. It's so good to have folks who truly do life with a real meaningful and vulnerable way. And so community became super important for me, I would say, at that age. And then as I got to business, I began business as a pretty isolated guy. I would take a lot of stress that I had by myself. I wouldn't go to anybody. I would just help on my own. I'd go to my business partner. But after a while, you know, it starts to just continue to manifest the stuff, just the two of you, you know, because then it affects your friendship, affects your relationship with your personal relationships outside the business relationship. And I think it wasn't until this is actually crazy how this was all kind of full circle. It wasn't until I was on a plane with Brent and he was sharing his story with me, and Brent was so kind. We were at a men's retreat in Texas, and he was so kind to fly me back to Kansas City with him and just sharing his story. And after Brent and I had spent a lot of time together on that plane. I just started doing a lot of research on capital Camp, started doing my research on Brent. I started reflecting on the time we had spent together in Texas at that men's retreat. And I thought to myself, Why did I feel so hurt and love and seeing at that time? It's because it truly was a meaningful time where we could really use this to really open up. And so I think as that relates to me as an investor now, as we run a firm, as we invest in performance space, it's just a unique opportunity to just truly grow together. I started off in venture capital as very competitive, like we all want to work with that firm over there. We don't do any of that with these people. Screw those people. We want to win. I don't want to share deals with them. I want to be isolated. But we realized that there was so much more to be gained working together, building together, sharing wins together, sharing loss together, sharing together, sharing together, then apart. And it's insane. The relationships, the places in the opportunities that have come as a result of us really starting to put emphasis on community. You know, we've had chances to go to Africa, we've had a chance to go to Madrid, just go to Brazil. It's truly incredible the things that this community has brought us in with the faith driven investor community has been an absolute game changer for me. Say, okay, I'm not going to be too busy to do this. I'm going to actually lead a group and I'm actually going to really make sure that I have the set aside time. Every Tuesday morning might have been one of the most consequential this is in my life, because now the newest partner we hired was from that group of people. And.

John Coleman: Wow, Is that right?

Marcus Stroud: Yeah, literally. So we got a testimonial whenever y'all want it. And, you know, we had that time together. And I'm going through life with one of the persons in that community right now who's going through a really heavy season with health. But it's just so cool that this group of ambassadors could come together over this zoom every week from all over the world Singapore, Africa, Alabama, Missouri, Texas, and truly do really meaningful life together and really makes me understand that God had put me on this earth just to be on this campus. There was so much more behind that, and community really helped me understand that concept in a real and deep way. And so, yeah, I give a lot of this credits. I think I'm serious. I think if you ask any person, Brent's a pioneer in the space of truly creating meaningful community and sovereign capital as well. The chance to go to the some in Colorado that you guys had and I was like, Wow, this is different. This is insane. To see the portfolio companies right beside the investors and the limited partners together. I'd never seen anything like that. So really do life together. It's really, you know, share ups and downs together. And I was like, this is just so different. And so those things have led me and Brandon and the rest of our team to really try to create meaningful ways. Incorporate true community experiences.

John Coleman: What an awesome story. Marcus and Brent, I want to ask you about that conversation, if you remember it with Marcus and where that came from. I will note Marcus was so kind to mention faith driven investor does host these weekly small groups. Basically, the next cohort is starting in June, which is what he was talking about it last nine weeks for one hour a week. And it's basically almost kind of like a church small group. But around the topic of investing, you meet weekly, you get to talk about things that are great leaders like Marcus. And I know FDI has now had more than 1500 people go through their small groups. I think faith driven entrepreneur has had 30,000 people go through the small groups at this point. And full credit to that team, to Henry and Justin and others for creating those experiences. And awesome to hear your testimony about that. Marcus. Brent, I mean, you obviously made an impact on this guy. Do you remember that plain conversation and kind of has that always been the way you've been wired, or how did you come to this community orientation?

Brent Beshore: Yeah, I mean, I very much remember the conversations that that one of my favorite conversations I've had in the last, gosh, by five years, I don't know. You know, we are blessed to have community at the highest level. If you think about, you know, Yahweh, the God we worship is three in one has been an everlasting community. And so the grain of the universe is to be in community. I mean, just what we're doing now with the three of us just coming together to have a conversation like you can feel it. This is a beautiful thing. This is a highlight of my day. I feel like.

Marcus Stroud: You're better preach, brother. You better preach.

John Coleman: Amen.

Brent Beshore: No, I mean, it's just, you know, when I met Marcus at that men's retreat that we were at, you know, I felt my heart pulled towards his, and I had no idea where he was trying to go. And when I heard he was trying to come into my neighborhood, I said, Hey, what if we traveled there together? Let's get to spend some more time together. And the conversation on the plane was just a beautiful thing. It was about life and really deep, meaningful things, hard things. And I think that is the key is to be real. I feel like that, especially in the investing world. But, you know, amongst men and we're all trying to build, right? We're all in a build phase right now and there's so many masks we put on like, right. That is the temptation to be whoever we should be to the people were around. And the bad part about that is that what we think of and this is the way that the devil works is the lie that we're told, right, is if we're really who we are, we won't be loved. We won't be successful if people knew us for who we really were. So what should we do? We should hide. And so I feel like that most of my life was me hiding in plain sight. And I just. I'm tired of it. You know, the consequences are dire. It creates isolation. You know, when you're wearing a mask and somebody says something good about you, it hits the mask, it doesn't get through. The only thing that gets through is the negativity. And so I live my life in a way, really, until I was rescued by Jesus, where I was terrified I'd wake up every day. I had sweaty armpits, sweaty palms. It felt like I was in a knife fight every day and, you know, unbelievable anxiety. And I was just desperate to prove myself, to try to build myself into something worthy. And I know I wasn't worthy. And it's just been beautiful what's happened ever since. I mean, I feel like God's grabbed my heart. And the more that I lean into him and try to empty myself and just be filled with whatever he wants to fill me with, including wonderful people like you who put into my life. The better life goes for me and everyone around me, and I get to see these amazing things happen. Which I mean, again, I joke that I'm the Forrest Gump of private equity. Like, there's no way to explain how we're doing, what we're doing other than God's got a plan and we're just along for the ride.

Marcus Stroud: You see why that plane ride is 3 hours of fireman. You see the gift this guy has? It's unbelievable, man.

John Coleman: This is why he has 100,000 Twitter followers, too. I mean, this is unreal. So good. Brent No, I mean, legitimately, what an amazing testimony and so heartfelt. And I'll tell you, I mean, just briefly on my story, you know, I came to sovereign's a little over two years ago out of the kind of mainstream investment world. And I think one of the biggest changes is exactly what you described, Brent and Marcus, where everybody is super open handed. You know, we're as much collaborators as No one, I think, feels like a competitor, really. Marcus To your point, we have no problem putting our LPs and portfolio companies and our investment team together because we're all in the same mission, right? Sometimes getting to that mission is a little bit bumpy. Sometimes you have to deal with tough stuff, but at the end of the day, you're all striving to do the same thing. You're doing it for the same entity, you're doing it for the same God, and your values are the same, right? So it's really just working out how you get there together and encouraging each other along the way and being there for one another along the way. And, you know, just such a radically different approach to investing. I think on every side, if I could get a bit tactical with the way that you. Do it. Marcus, I want to come to the summits that you guys are hosting in a moment, which are these very concentrated community events. But in the more informal way that you deal with portfolio companies, limited partners, your team. Marcus outside of these very formal structures, how do you seek to build community amongst those different groups and what does it look like for you to encourage them?

Marcus Stroud: Yeah. So one thing we did last year and one thing we're doing more of this year is just truly bringing people together. And so by that we brought four of our portfolio companies together early last year. We all went to the Rams football game and fortunately we have a few friends that play for the Rams. It was an incredible game. Those Baker Mayfield first game actually as the Rams quarterback and he had a heck of a game. He had brought them back. They're playing the Raiders beautiful stadium. It was amazing. But, you know, these portfolio companies, these guys and gals, they were massive football fans. But football is just such a unique place to gather together because you're sharing a experience where you're champion somebody and the outcome is just easy to become invested in. And so it was really cool to see them just jump up and down and have that excitement together, but then also start to kind of share some of the things that they're experiencing with each other, their portfolio companies, their ups and downs they've been dealing with in business. And then you were able to remove this kind of veil of like, you're the investor and we're the portfolio company. Like they need to be the super on edge the whole time. It's like, no, no, no, no. We're all trying to figure this out together. Your success. My success rate was my failure, but let's really just get to know each other. A personal and real level and the vulnerability that came from that, that small investment wasn't a great investment at all. One of the large investment, but that small investment. It's insane how, you know, the multiple that has returned. We have such great relationships, those for portfolio companies in general, because it was an experience they never had before and it was just so much more ability displayed. I think within our team internally, we've tried to do that as well. Brent and I, we have our on site summit this week and with each person when we hired them, we really invited them into who we are. We are a firm that has a lot of different views and belief systems across the team. But we were like, This is me and Brent's belief. We believe in the Lord. You know, we are followers of Jesus. We came together as friends over a shared testimony. This guy helped me through one of the darkest places in my life. And it's really cool because that vulnerability has caused other folks, our team, to be more vulnerables as well. And so now we do quarterly dinners, we do monthly dinners for the folks within Texas. We make sure we see the people that aren't around. And the thing that's at the center of all of this is just true vulnerability in removing that lens of just like on this buttoned up investor. And, you know, we need to be a certain way at a certain firm. And I'll be honest, that's how I want to be. Early on, I would study for hours this equity, I would say 4 hours. Blackstone I would say 4 hours KKR. And I was like, How could I be Steve Schwarzman? How can I be Robert Smith How can I be, you know? Don Valentine And I'm like, Is that really who you want to be? Marcus And nothing against those people. And they listen to this podcast, you guys all great in your own ways, but that's not who I want to be. I don't want my colleagues or employees ever look at me as just the investor or the boss or whatever. I want them to like somebody that actually had a meaningful and future life and saw them and heard them for who they are. And I think that's the beauty of community is really getting a chance to really see and hear somebody for who they are, whom God made them to be. So yeah, that's kind of like technical how we've tried to do it a little in our bigger ways.

John Coleman: Well, you know, being an entrepreneur, as you guys both see every day, is one of the hardest things in the entire world, right? I mean, the risk is high all the time. The stress is high all the time. You've got all these competing demands that are impossible to reconcile in it, yet it can tear marriages apart. It can send people down bad paths with substance abuse or with their mental health, with their friendships, with their teams. And, you know, to have capital partners who are just capital partners who are just putting money in, rather than trying to invest in those folks and be a counselor to them through those difficult times, it feels like you're only really doing part of the job and maybe not even the most important parts of the job, like you said, Marcus I mean, to be able to come alongside folks during those periods.

Marcus Stroud: I mean, you're a great example of that. I want to shout John out. You know, we both you guys know we had a very tough season last year that was really heavy. And, you know, for John to set aside his time, which is incredibly valuable and there's a lot of folks running on this calendar for Brent to pull me aside and pray over me. I mean, those things are so important. And I think, you know, that is the beauty of community and that speed of having partners and people like you, John and Brent, to truly walk alongside really, really tough and difficult season because it's easy for all of us to celebrate. Columbia, Missouri. Things are going really good. And Brent has all these incredible chefs making this great foodie capital. Kip You know, it's hard when things are really tough and you don't know if you're going be able to see the next day. So I just want to applaud you both for being men who truly exemplify that.

John Coleman: That's awesome. Marcus Thank you for that. And maybe.

Brent Beshore: John, can we talk for a second about like that's the norm? The norm is what Marcus just said, right? That we feel burdened, right? Entrepreneurs, investors. I mean, I would say that the norm. In our industries of entrepreneurship. Investing is people who feel deeply burdened and are trying to medicate their way out of it in any way they can. And sometimes medication looks like going to church. Sometimes medication looks like alcohol and drugs and sex. Sometimes it just looks like that drive towards achievement or even going to the gym. Right. But we're all trying to cover that thing up that we feel insecure and fearful about. And I think that's the norm. And I feel like it doesn't get enough airtime of like acknowledging that and saying, hey, there's something in us that is broken. Like, we are lost and we are broken. And until we acknowledge that that's the case, there's no healing, right? In fact, there's only hiding. And so, you know, I would just encourage anybody who's listening to this, if that resonates with you, if you feel burdened, if you feel heavy, like that is a clear sign that there's something that you need to give up and that you need to get the Lord involved. I mean, that's the thing is for me, I didn't know where to take my burdens. And, you know, when Jesus rescued me, and the more that I can lean into that, the more it can be less of me and just be filled more with him, the more that I mean, Jesus said, my my yoke is easy. My burden is light. So I've just realized in my life if anything feels heavy laden, if anything feels burdensome, it's me trying to carry it and me not giving it up and let Jesus carry it. And so, you know, I feel like that is the norm, though, and it's completely normal to feel that way. We just got to figure out what to do with it.

John Coleman: Man. What a good word. What a good word, Brent. And, you know, one of my favorite commencement speeches was by a guy who was kind of nominally Catholic, potentially, maybe not even religious guy named David Foster Wallace, who gave a speech at KENYON College called This Is Water, which is one of my favorite speeches. And there's this wonderful passage in there where he talks about what we can worship. Right. And it's kind of what you're talking about, Brent, where you can worship money, you can worship good looks, you can worship all those, you know, the material things. But at the end of the day, those things are going to eat you alive, right? That by turning to those, by letting those be your crutch, the thing that you depend on, the thing that you get value out of all of those things are superficial material, temporary, and they're just going to increase the burden that you feel. And it's really only by finding God some connection to something greater than yourself, which we three think is Jesus and think is the God of the Bible. And you know that you can really relieve that and that you can find your place in the universe and you can worship something you can rely on, something that won't fall away, that won't eat you alive. And I think that, you know, gosh, I'll say in my own personal journey, like you, Brent and Marcus, like without that, you know, some of these stresses that we face every single day where, you know, your banks are collapsing, you know, or here, you know, the stock market's falling, something goes incredibly wrong. A regulator suddenly comes through your door and you're nervous about that. Like there are just things that go wrong every day. And I don't know what life would look like if I didn't have a faith. Allow me to submit that all to God and to kind of trust in his will for my life. And Brent, I think that's exactly right. You know, we all deal with it in some way. And the question is, are we gonna deal with that in a way that actually relieves that burden and helps us with it? Or are we going to deal with it in a way that potentially makes it worse?

Brent Beshore: And I mean, in that Ken College speech, it's a beautiful book that was turned into called This Is Water, which is what he said. You know, he has this amazing quote that I remember when I was an atheist and I read this. He said, In the day to day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheist. We worship something. And that was a major shift for me. I mean, you talk about water in the desert. That was me saying, wait a minute here. I thought I was secure in my atheist. Maybe I was an atheist in my twenties, hard core militant atheist in my twenties. And I remember that was a major shattering because when I read it, I was like, That is truth. That is truth and I'm living a lie now. I didn't know Jesus at that point. I didn't know who Jesus was, but I knew that I was worshiping something. And it was a realization for me that I wasn't worshiping nothing. I was worshiping something. I was just worshiping the wrong things and things that were fragile and were going to break and die.

John Coleman: Amen. Hallelujah. Brent. Man, we could continue on this thread all day, and maybe we will, in the context of this next question, I do want to get to this contribution you're both making to the world. I think with these summits that you're hosting and the kind of very formal, explicit ways in which you all are building community amongst diverse people, but hopefully anchored in the values that you guys are talking about now, hopefully, you know, offering up people the right way to think about investing, the right way to think about entrepreneurship. Brent, I might start with you and then turn to you, Marcus. I mean, you are very well known as one of the greatest hosts in the investment world. I think I'm not, you know, I'm dead serious when I say that, right? I mean, Capital Camp is this legendary forum right now, which I'd love for you to describe. You're launching something called the Main Street Summit this year, which is basically the democratization of capital camp to some extent. Would you talk to us about those two forums briefly and just why they were so important for you to start?

Brent Beshore: Yeah, I mean, the joke is for capital camp that I'm running a food and wine festival and my partner, Patrick O'Shaughnessy, is running an investing conference.

John Coleman: So it's not really a joke, by the way. That's.

Brent Beshore: Yeah. Well, my hope is that every time he comes to capital camp that even if you don't have a single good conversation, it was still worth it just based on the food and drinks. So know, that's the standard I'm trying to hold. Yeah. Look like I think that capital camp. I mean, everything's born out of a need. And I had a felt need for community and in a way that I didn't see it happening. So I go to invest in conferences and everyone's buttoned up and there's bad coffee and rubber chicken lunches and everyone's slinging business cards and all, you know, blue blazer top. And it's like it felt almost like there was this like really boring bad play and everyone had a role in it and everyone's like, Well, that's just life. I mean, that's what, you know, is part of our jobs is what we got to do. And I remember I called Patrick and I got back from one of these, and it was just awful. It was in a ballroom in Manhattan, and I just had the worst time. Everyone was stiff and masked up. And it was just it was not fun. I got back from that. I was like, there's got to be a better way. So I called up my buddy Patrick. I was like, Hey, I'm just going to launch this thing. I've no idea if it's going to work or not, but I kind of just want to be the Willy Wonka of finance events and just see what we can put together, right? And he said, I'm in just like, Tell me. He's like, I'll fund half of it. You know, tell me what we should do. And that's how Capital Camp came about. So, yeah, so we have 400 ish investors coming from, I think this year, 15 or 16 countries. I think there are a total of four people coming from the state of Missouri. So it's almost nobody locally. And everyone from the coast comes to Columbia and we try to put on three days of at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is just have fun. It's supposed to be unbelievably fun, dress down shorts and flip flops. We have a ton of just interesting people. So, you know, you the option is you can participate in an in-depth discussion on investing in South America. And then next, you can go to butcher a hog, and then the next thing you can do is go break down doors with the Navy SEALs and learn tactical shooting. Right. So it's like this like smorgasbord of fun activities. And the whole idea is everything is an excuse for relationship. And in general, like, what if we looked at investing and really just business in general as the excuse and not the purpose, but what if people were the purpose and what if business was the excuse? How much different would our days be and how much lighter would we feel? And so I think that's what we're trying to bring, whether it's Capital Camp or Main Street Summit, which, as you said, is a very much a democratization capital camp is expensive, We have to have big budgets to be able to provide all these incredible experiences. Main Street Summit is going to be 500 bucks. It's in November and we are hoping to get over 1000 people there the first year to really celebrate, learn, encourage one another in operating and investing in small and medium sized businesses. So that's the goal. But the really the goal is just to be with people and be for people. And I think that if we aim for that, we can't miss.

John Coleman: I'll just say little promotion here. I've been to Capital Camp in the past. It is pretty remarkable. The food is almost too classy for me Brent and I don't know what to do with myself. As someone who kind of grew up on Taco Bell Mexican pizzas, it's overwhelming how classy it is. And Main Street Summit just looks fantastic this November. I know we're going to send members of our team Sovereign's Capital. We're going to refer it out to some portfolio companies, because that community that you're building there is just phenomenal and unique. Marcus, I know you are in the midst of planning your first kind of formal event like this, you know, building on the type of form that Brent and others have put together. Can you talk to us a little bit about what you're putting together and what that might look like?

Marcus Stroud: Yeah, for sure. And to echo what you said, John, I mean, Brent it's just a phenomenal job. And he is a celebrity in our world of doing these things. And like I said, he's been an encouragement for me to do something like this. And so, you know, we were in Brazil and, you know, so many people kept wanting to talk to us about where we were investing it. And we were like, this is crazy. You barely can speak English, but you understand our thesis to a tee. And it made me realize there is this deep desire for people to have more control and understanding of their health and their wellness because they recognize that this contributed to their happiness in a sense. And so fast forward, we went to this incredible conference in Hawaii called the Lobby conference put on by David Hornick from August Capital, great ambassador, great guy, and it's really cool conference. But there was a couple breakout sessions and the largest breakout session was a health water session. And you're looking at all these incredible investors from Redpoint, from Google Ventures, from first round Capital. I mean, all these folks that are premium investors insight partners in software companies, but wanting to learn more about health and wellness for their own personal selves. And so as I started describing our thesis, because I was one of the folks leading this breakout, so many people like Marcus, you guys have to do something. We need to bring all these people together. And so we reached out to an agency that we were very close with, had done some really good events for us that does investment in some of the large firms. And we start calling some of our friends in the podcast space. Some of the professional athletes have had long careers hit a certain quarterback who, you know, we are almost kind of lined up to be one of the keynote speakers and we're like, Can you come do this? And everybody was like, Yes, this is so important. I would love to be a part of this. And so that's kind of what led us to do this. Which is just a desire to to really create awareness around this technology, around this information, around this industry that affects all of us each and every single day, and just really create ownership over our own health care. That was kind of the purpose of this. And so this is new for us. This is interesting. You know, at first we were still guarded from doing these things because we're investors. We've only been around for a couple of years. We haven't been in the game for 15 years, like permanent equity or sovereign's capital. We're just getting started and we want to be known as really good investors before anything else. But we realized there was so much value in bringing together people with these interests. So yeah, that's kind of our first swing at it. We're really excited. We've sent some promotional things out to some of our portfolio companies, people around those portfolio companies, and the interest has been way too overwhelming. We've had to kind of scale up. And so it's going to be the better we open up to a lot more people than we initially anticipated and we're really excited to get it going.

John Coleman: That's awesome. Marcus And, you know, I think one of the neat things about these experiences to build on what you said is that, you know, you want to be good investors first, but the point of being a good investor is you actually care about the industry. You're investing in, the people you're investing in like you are. A great investor is on a mission about what they're doing, and forwarding that mission can look like building a community that helps forward it, right? Like you think about human performance, you guys are investing in it because it will make money for sure, right? For a limited partners, you have to do that. That's the bare bones. But also because you believe in this sector and you want people's lives to be improved by these tools and technologies for human performance and this convening power to get people together to create more momentum there is ultimately good for the world, at least the way that I know you guys invest, where the things you're investing in are good for the world. That may not always be true at every firm, but I know, at least for y'all, it is. Sadly, we are coming up on the end of our time together. We try and end each podcast by just asking each person for kind of 60 seconds on something that God is teaching you through Scripture now that you'd want to share with others. So just anything in your study life, anything that you're looking through in the Bible right now, where God's teaching you something that you'd want to share with others as we wrap up here and Brent, I'll put you on the spot first.

Brent Beshore: Well, I just want to encourage Marcus. I couldn't be more excited about his event. And when you're thinking about designing the event, you might want to consider John Coleman as the peak of human performance. Man if you want to.

Marcus Stroud: Yes sir.

Brent Beshore: A mascot for the event, I think that, you know, mentally, physically, spiritually, I mean, the man is just we're in awe of peak performance.

John Coleman: I'll check my modeling calendar and see all that week if there are no cover sheets anywhere. Thank you, friend. Yeah.

Brent Beshore: Yeah. What is God teaching me? I feel like God is teaching me so much right now. You know, one of the things recently that has has been healed is so for those of you who aren't familiar with Enneagram, it's a way of kind of categorizing people into general tendencies. What we would say is how God's built you and maybe where your flesh is still present. And as an Enneagram three, my worst fear has been a sort of deep emptiness that I don't really know who I am. And I think this is again goes with mask wearing. So I put on a lot of masks to try to put layers between the world and what I fear might not be something underneath everything. And it was just really in prayer and deep reflection recently that God revealed to me that that is actually the emptiness that He wants, that is the surrender that he wants, and that he will fill that emptiness. And so it's actually if I can remove all the masks, if I can strip away all the fleshy parts of me, that I shouldn't be worried that there's an emptiness there, because there actually is an emptiness there. And that's okay. That's actually what God wants is for us to lay it down. You know, we always in church, we go, you know, palms up to receive. But before we go palms up, we've got to go palms down. We got to drop a whole lot of the stuff that is junking up our souls and occupying our minds and causing us to focus on ourselves. And I don't know, there's just a comfort that I've received recently from the Lord in that He will fill the emptiness with something way more beautiful than I could ever dream, and that I shouldn't be fearful of that emptiness. So I don't know if that resonates with anybody out there. I would just encourage you to go to the Lord and do the deep work of laying things down, going palms down before you go palms up, because you can only hold things if your hands are empty.

John Coleman: That is beautiful. Truly beautiful. Brent, geez Marcus there's no pressure, man. That's. Oh.

Marcus Stroud: Yeah, Yeah. Well, I take layers off the bird, and then the fire got my ears hot and then. Goodness gracious. Wow. How do you follow it up? You know, I just finished his nine month intensive course at my church, a pre seminary course, which is truly, truly so deeply revealing, especially as I've been navigating this process of seminary myself. And one of the concepts within that we learned that just has really stuck with me was just the doctrine of Providence and just God's complete sovereignty and control over everything. And, you know, as an investor, it's so easy to have this idea of control at the root of everything. Oh, my gosh, I got to do this or this company can perform, I got to do this or these outcomes can take place and manifest. And I think with these bank failures, with these reduction in valuations across these companies and with just the ups and downs, I mean, like I'm 29, this was my first swing at a down market. Know it's super easy to find yourself measuring your worth in your abilities on what's happening around you. And just really trusting and believing that God's providence is real and it is true. And he is in control of everything, and my identity is not bound in our investments. My identity is not found in these reduction evaluations. My identity is not found in these bank failures and having to kind of scramble and figure out how do we support these companies, how to support ourselves as an emerging venture capitalist firm has been really, really, truly revealing. And just like, you know, it's just been a great way to truly see who God really is and truly see this image that, you know, that is God. Because I feel like for so long in my walk with Christ, it has been sometimes a little too rosy. You know, I haven't really sat at the meat of my theology because, you know, a lot of Pentecostal folks growing up, I'm not really identified for the culture any more. But, you know, our theology is very much kind of pie in the sky, like worship based theology. I think really how to dive into the meat of what we actually believe, which scripture actually says is true and real about who God is and who God made us to be has been so revealing for me. And this season in particular, it has provided me a piece unparalleled anything. And so I would say that's been the biggest. There is a little bit longer 60 seconds, but the Lord put some of my heart, so I had to figure it out. But that's what's been at my heart these last few months.

John Coleman: Guys. That was phenomenal. Phenomenal words for everybody. You know, you guys are both such a reflection of faith driven investing. You're such a reflection of people who are motivated by this deep and authentic faith in Jesus that I know you both follow to do the right thing in the world, to treat people well, to invest well. And we're just so grateful for your witness in the marketplace and for the fact that you are partnering with these companies that can help change the world and change the lives of individual human beings. And and that's such a service. This is Brent Beshore from Permanent Equity today with us, Marcus Stroud from TXV Partners. We would encourage everyone to go check out the Main Street Summit and Capital Camp. I know capital camp's in a waitlist right now, but Main Street summit is open to all I think at the moment. Have Google those things and Brent Beshore & Marcus has his Human Performance Summit coming up at the beginning of next year. And gentlemen, I know will pay attention to that. And then just a shameless plug here. If you are interested in faith driven investor groups, they'll kick off again in June. You can go to the website and find those. It's nine weeks, an hour a week where you can build community with other investors. But Marcus and Brent, thank you so much for being with us today. Thanks for sharing your story.

Marcus Stroud: Thanks, John. You're that man. Man, you're gifted. And thank you so much.