Episode 174 - Sacrifice as a Road to Victory with Sam Rhee of Endowus
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In this special edition of the Faith Driven Investor Podcast, we highlight the story of Sam Rhee
Sam was formerly a CEO and co CIO, global head of Asia at Morgan Stanley before starting the fintech platform, Endowus.
Today, Endowus primarily serves Asian markets with $5 billion in assets under management and has recently raised 95 million dollars in outside capital.
In this unique narrative-style podcast, we hear how the biblical story of Abraham and Lot inspired Sam Rhee to step aside from the role of his dreams for the sake of a colleague and how God used that sacrifice to pave a path for victory.
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.
Richard Cunningham: You're listening to Fate Driven Investor, a podcast that highlights voices from a growing movement of Christ following investors who believe that God owns it all and cares deeply about the heart posture behind our stewardship. Thanks for listening.
Rusty Rueff: Hey everyone! 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, and this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization. Thanks for listening.
Richard Cunningham: Welcome to another episode of the Faith Driven Investor podcast. Grateful to have you with us from wherever and whenever you are tuning in to this episode. I'm Richard Cunningham and super excited about today's episode is we're doing something a little bit different. You're actually going to get to hear from our man behind the scenes, our executive producer Joey Honescko, today as he walks you through the powerful narrative story of a wonderful, faith driven investor and faith driven entrepreneur out of Singapore. Sam Rhee, now Sam, was formerly a CEO and co-CEO, global head of Asia at Morgan Stanley. So this is a behemoth asset manager and a gentleman who ran a significant portion of such a large operation and recently has gone on to found Endowus, Endowus is a wealth tech platform serving Asian markets. That is all the way up to $5 billion in assets under management. And recently also as a fintech platform, has gone on to raise $95 million in outside capital and an environment that has been unbelievably difficult to raise outside capital. And as many entrepreneurs can likely attest to. And what you're going to hear today is this powerful story of Sam and his kind of testimony in the I sacrifice, we win type mentality that he truly adopted, that our friends at Praxis embrace and talk about. So thrilled that you're going to get to tune in for this. It is a moving story and let's dive in.
Sam Rhee: I think that act of giving up what is your right is actually what defines us as Christians.
Joseph Honescko: That's Sam, and he's the co-founder, chairman and chief investment officer at Endowus, a tech enabled tool that helps democratize money management for everyone. But before we get into the founding of that company, I want to give us a bit of context. We're going to do a little bit of time traveling, go through Sam's history to see what led him to this company. In the Gospel of John. Jesus tells his disciples that they are in the world, but not of it. And all of God's people can relate to this feeling of being stuck between two worlds. But Sam's experience has given him a unique perspective on this reality.
Sam Rhee: I've been what's called a third culture kid, a multicultural background, and I fit in really well, but I also don't always belong anywhere.
Joseph Honescko: You'll see throughout this episode that the spiritual metaphor isn't lost on Sam, and in fact, his life displays this tension quite well.
Sam Rhee: As a Christian, that really kind of, you know, in a nutshell expresses who we are as in this is my identity and this is not my true home. And, you know, my home is in another place, and I'm here temporarily for a reason. And I'm placed here by God for a reason.
Joseph Honescko: Sam's desire to discover the reason that God put him on earth is something he's going to wrestle with for most of his life. And it started even as a young kid, because he grew up in the home of a pastor. But he's quick to point out that he's not your stereotypical pastor's kid.
Sam Rhee: Yeah, so when I was young, everybody assumes that a pastor's kid should be a pastor or a missionary. But because my father was quite different in the way he lived out his life, when I was a teenager, I approached my dad and I seriously was thinking whether I should go into full time ministry. What does it mean to have that calling to go into full time ministry? And he wisely at the time said that he loves the full time ministry. But what the world needs is not more pastors and not another pastor who's going to build another church, but he wants us as his children to also do what his ministry is, which is raising leaders, lay leaders. So I think from that young age, he had instilled that in me. He kind of like really put that desire in my heart that I should be a good lay leader and not be going into full time ministry. But it's a struggle. I always like, you know, think maybe I should go back into full time ministry, but God always brought me back into the workplace and the marketplace. And so it's been a constant thing that God wanted me to be here.
Joseph Honescko: Did you catch that theme again? The tension between identities. A person living between two worlds. Ministry in the marketplace. His dad did help him see how the marketplace could be a place for ministry. But still it didn't quite click at that young age. It was one of those classic head versus heart situations where he had heard the truth, but still had a hard time actually believing it and living it out. When you start asking around, you find that most faith driven entrepreneurs go through the same thing. We all at various times might know something to be true, but we find ourselves struggling to live in that reality. That was true for Sam, especially as he started out in his career in finance.
Sam Rhee: Well, going into finance was a fluke. I was a social science guy more interested in like international relationships and, you know, economics and stuff like that. So I wasn't really looking to go into finance, but a family friend recommended me an internship in Korea and I thought, hey, summer break. You know, I can go there earn some pocket money, practice my Korean and brush it up and I'll come back. But at the end of the internship, they said, why don't you stay? And that was it. That was my career in finance. That's how it began.
Joseph Honescko: As Sam's career progressed, he found himself at the investment bank Morgan Stanley with a desire to move up in the world. And through that, he started to see his faith become less and less of a priority at work.
Sam Rhee: There was a part of me when I was younger where I think I was kind of enamored with the worldly things like, you know, chasing after the same things bigger bonus and promotions and the work faith integration wasn't really happening.
Joseph Honescko: Sam again found himself stuck between two worlds the world of finance and the world of faith. And to be clear, it wasn't like he was out there rejecting God. It was just faith became a lower priority.
Sam Rhee: You know, yes, I was doing the things in the work place, meaning I would lay my hands on the chest of my colleagues and pray for them. I'd like, you know, do Bible study in the workplace, but it wasn't like fully integrated into the day to day investment space, I think, and you get caught up by a lot of this, you know, game that people play.
Joseph Honescko: Anyone who works in professional settings has experienced the same thing Sam has at different levels. We start to be taught that these are the certain things you're supposed to go after, and whatever it is, we're shaped by these stories that say, this is what your desire ought to be. So I don't think it will shock anyone listening to hear that. For Sam, the thing he was told to desire was his own success above anyone else's. To look out for himself and to do what it took to get to the top.
Steve Son: Finance has been one of those industries where it's always had a bit of a challenge.
Joseph Honescko: That's Steve Son, a former colleague of Sam's from back in the day at Morgan Stanley.
Steve Son: How do you think would you.
Steve Son: Lead personally into your day to day work? Because you have whether you are investing as are businesses or trading, whatever else it is? You know, part of my goal is just to make money.
Joseph Honescko: Perhaps the biggest issue for anyone who's trying to integrate their faith into the work is that our work can easily become who we are. For Sam, a lot of his identity became tied to a specific role in Morgan Stanley. Everything he worked towards revolved around getting a specific title.
Sam Rhee: One of the most important things that you need to get if you're in an investment bank or a large company like Morgan Stanley is, you need to get to managing director, the MD. That's the partner level. That's the ultimate goal in life, basically.
Joseph Honescko: Act two finding a better identity. The first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, recited by Christians for generations, is what is the chief end of man? The Catechism proposes the answer to love God and enjoy him forever. And I think it's fair to say that most Christians would generally agree with this statement. But how often do we really live this out? It's so easy to get caught up in the ways of the world. We, like Sam in the story, might even find ourselves thinking a certain position, or an acquisition or a funding amount, or whatever it is is the ultimate goal in life. Those kinds of things can quickly become our chief ends. And for Sam, he actually had a chance to arrive at his chief end. All that effort he had put in. All the drive was about to pay off until something unexpected happened.
Sam Rhee: So I was out for promotion together with another colleague. So we were going to step up as the Co-heads of Asia. And you know, the promotion was almost guaranteed in our minds.
Joseph Honescko: You can put yourself in their shoes and feel the weight of this meeting. They're going into this conversation they've been waiting their whole careers for. There's excitement, probably a healthy sense of accomplishment. And there's also that sense of contained professionalism. Like you don't want to show all your eagerness too much. So they all sit down together and hear the boss say something neither of them ever saw coming.
Sam Rhee: Sat us down and said, hey, I only have space for one for most of this year.
Joseph Honescko: Even now, you can practically feel the energy drained from the room. Like when it's so silent, you can hear your own heartbeat. And then something even more unpredictable happened.
Sam Rhee: What was really weird was that he said he can't decide. So why don't you guys talk it over and you guys decide?
Joseph Honescko: Keep in mind, too, that these aren't longtime rivals in the company. They were friends and colleagues and partners in many ways.
Sam Rhee: We built the career of, you know, 15, 20 years to get to this level. And we're the same age we are, you know, managing good books. We're going to be the co-head of Asia. So we wanted to build this team together. And one of us becoming promoted first as an MD was going to potentially wreck this kind of relationship of trust.
Joseph Honescko: The decision they had to make didn't just affect their position in the company. It affected their relationship too. So you can imagine the weight they felt when they were given a bit of time to think it over. Sam was entered back into that situation where he was stuck between two worlds. On one hand, he didn't want to overstep his colleague, but at the same time, he had worked hard his whole life for this moment. He did deserve the promotion, so it would have been easy to do what most people would do in this situation and come up with the big plan on why he deserved it and why he should go first. It wouldn't be personal, right? Just business. But that's what makes Sam's eventual choice so remarkable.
Sam Rhee: I went home and I spoke to my wife. We decided to pray together and when we prayed, God kind of impressed upon us that this was a Genesis 13 moment.
Joseph Honescko: All right, so now let's take our time machine and go even further back in history. Because if it's been a bit since you've read Genesis 13, that's okay. For a lot of folks, it's one of those small, strange stories that we may not fully grasp right away, but it's also essentially the story we're told at the beginning of this episode. Abraham and Lot have just left Egypt, where Abraham was given an extraordinary amount of wealth, and now he's settling into the land that God has given him. He and Lot decide to split up the land, and when they look out, half of it is all green and beautiful. It's [....], it's perfect for agriculture and development. And the other side is, we'll just say, not as promising. So even though Abraham has every right to make the first choice, he instead lets Lot choose. As you might imagine, Lot chooses the good land. It's nothing personal, right? Just business. So Abraham made the choice to lay down the best option for the sake of someone else. He sacrificed so another person might win. And at this point, you might start to see where this is connected to Sam's story.
Sam Rhee: That Abraham and Lot story really resonated with us, and God convicted us on that verse. And so next day I went back to the office. I sat down with my colleague and I told him that, hey, these are the reasons, you know, we have to build this company together. We have to trust each other. And if you really want it, I'm willing to let you go first.
Joseph Honescko: Everything Sam ever wanted in his career. He was willing to give up. Now what prompts someone to do something like this? Because if you're sharing the story and you feel like it's a little crazy or even over the top, that would make sense. It is a bit of a crazy thing to do, but Sam saw that the Christian faith called him not to a life of taking, but a life of giving.
Sam Rhee: The language of the world is to take, is to take what's rightfully mine and take more, whereas Christ is. And Christians are about giving and giving more. And if you go back to like Philippians and Jesus and how he was in the form of God, but did not think equality with God, something that he should be grasping that defines what Jesus did, he came to this world as human being even though he was. God gave up his right, gave up everything, his claim, and he lived a life to set an example to us all. And that life of giving is what Christ wanted us to live. As Christians.
Joseph Honescko: You're probably catching on that Sam sacrifice wasn't just financial or professional, it was also a sacrifice of his own identity. Dave Gibbons, who's an advisor and author and activist, has known Sam for years, and this is what he says about the identity shift that he saw happen when Sam turned down this promotion.
Dave Gibbons: Well in Asia. A lot of times you may not be referred to by your name. You're referred to by your title. And so your titles, everything. You know, it shows where you are in the pecking order. And so a person who's offered like a top position, of course you take it, you may offer some type of humble resignation like, oh, I really don't want it. But yeah, you'd go after it. So for someone like Sam to turn it down, I know how hard it must have been for him.
Sam Rhee: I was still struggling. You know, I say God convicted me and gave us a verse. But that, like, giving that up was probably the most painful thing that I've done.
Joseph Honescko: Sam didn't have some super power or some extra special line to God. He just had the same tools that are available to all of us. Prayer, Scripture, community, the spiritual disciplines that allow us to seek the wisdom of God Almighty. And it might be tempting to hear Sam's story, or even the story of Abraham and Lot and say, yep, that's what it's like to follow God. Give up everything you've ever wanted, and then you just wait around. But Christians aren't just called to die to ourselves, even though that is a big part of our faith. We're also promised resurrection life. We do see victory. Sometimes it just looks different than we might expect. Here's how Dave describes it.
Dave Gibbons: I think a lot of times the moves of God in today's world is really countercultural, like with Sam. It's like in an upside down way of thinking. But if you look at really who Jesus is, that's what he was about. He said he came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. He chose not to take the royal, pathway to be the king of the land, but he chose to be the suffering servant who would choose that path. I think many times that's the path of following Jesus is a path of death, you know, that has the promise of resurrection.
Joseph Honescko: We can see that resurrection promise in the chapters that follow Genesis 13. God honors Abraham's choice, while Lot drifts towards the ways of the world and further away from God. But Abraham's faithfulness ends up being a beacon of hope for Lot. His radical, upside down way of living made a difference to the person he sacrificed for. And that same thing happened with Sam.
Sam Rhee: I went back to his office and told him that, hey, I told the boss. You go first. You deserve it. So congratulations. And I thought he was going to be, like, really happy. But he was really serious. And I said, are you okay? What's wrong? And he said, you know, throughout my life, I thought that I could do anything that others can do because, you know, he's tall, is athletic, he's intelligent. You probably could do most things that other people can do. And so he said that and he was like, but today I realized that there's something that you're doing that I just cannot get myself to do. And I was wondering why. And I realized that it was because you have your God and I don't.
Joseph Honescko: Sam's decision to sacrifice became a testimony to a nonbeliever, but it also affected his own way of looking at work for the rest of his career. From that moment on, everything was different.
Sam Rhee: It just hit me right there and then that, you know, I'd been a pastor's kid. A good kid had lived what most people would say, a good Christian life. And I always talked about glorifying God, doing things for his glory or for his kingdom, or pretty much everything that I done was for my own glory. And when I finally gave up, something gave up my right. Then God was glorified. I mean, this title is not important to me anymore because I had done something finally for God and that encouraged me a lot.
Joseph Honescko: Act three. Building out of sacrifice. So here we've got a guy who grows up between worlds. His multinational upbringing. He's never sure where he fits in. He goes into investment banking and begins to find his identity in his successes, while trying to balance that with his life of faith. But then he finally realizes that his significance is found not in his successes, but in his sacrifice. So for a while, he continues working at Morgan Stanley. He does eventually become the managing director, but it doesn't carry that same weight anymore. He's proud of his work, but he also knows it's not his identity. And that's when he feels God calling him to something brand new.
Sam Rhee: So God place that desire in my heart to solve some of the bigger problems in finance with technology. And the one that I'm most passionate about is the problem of global pension and the retirement adequacy retirement preparedness.
Joseph Honescko: If you're not familiar with this problem, it essentially comes down to the fact that people who retire are unable to sustain themselves.
Sam Rhee: Imagine people working all their lives, retiring and not having enough saved up.
Joseph Honescko: Some have to drastically cut back their quality of life, and others even end up in poverty. But the bigger issue is that this problem is growing in the world.
Sam Rhee: People are living longer so that, you know, horrible reality is going to be a reality for much longer than people think. And people have not been taught, whether it's at the school or at home or even in the workplace, how to manage their personal finances well, how to prepare for their retirement. Well.
Joseph Honescko: While this is a global problem, Sam says there are particular concerns within the Asian population.
Sam Rhee: Unlike the developed markets, I think that Asia has aged much more rapidly without becoming rich. So China India doesn't even have a proper social safety net. And it's a massive, massive problem for the biggest population in the world. And so I felt that there was something that we could do.
Joseph Honescko: That last line is the kicker there. The core conviction, the magic phrase. I felt like there was something I could do about it. This is the call of every faith driven entrepreneur who has completely trusted God with their life, with their talent and their resources. Here is where God uniquely placed Sam to make a difference in the world through his company Endowus.
Sam Rhee: Endowus is a digital world platform that allows you to invest your private wealth and public pension. Basically, we're trying to empower individuals and educate them and advise them and guide them towards a better future.
Gregory Van: So there is a wrong that we are trying to solve in the way financial services delivered.
Joseph Honescko: That's the voice of Gregory Van, the co-founder and CEO of Endowus.
Gregory Van: My real hope is that we leave our mark, our longer term mark on the entire industry so that they all need to work to serve the client best, not just squeeze as much margin as they can along the way, which is what we see a lot of the time today. And if Endowus is successful. The world will be a better place because people will invest better. They'll manage their money better, therefore be able to live easier today knowing that they prepared for their future and therefore live better.
Sam Rhee: I think that's been a passion for me to seek justice and righteousness in the space of finance, because that's the space where I think the rubber meets the road, where this God and mammon fight is most intense, and God has placed me here for that reason, I think.
Joseph Honescko: So that's the full circle moment of this story. Sam, like so many of us, spent the early parts of his life trying to figure out his reason, his purpose, his calling. Along the way, he drifted in the ways of the world, believing a promotion was the ultimate goal in life. But once he laid all that down, once he gave away what he thought he earned and what he deserved, he began to experience the freedom of life in Christ. But first, he had to stop chasing Mammon.
Sam Rhee: The Bible says you cannot serve God and mammon. It's because money has power. It's more than just an inanimate object. And so we have to submit it to God. And the only way to really deep mammon is through radical giving. Because the world is all about taking more, having more. Hoarding more of this money. And so radical giving. Giving up your right to own more. Giving up your right to having more money. Giving up your right. That is the only way we can defeat Mammon and submit money and finance to God. I think that act of giving up what is your right is actually fundamentally what defines us as Christians.
Richard Cunningham: That act of giving up. What is, you're right, is actually fundamentally what defines us as Christians. Wow, what a good word from Sam Rhee. What a powerful story and testimony and friends. That's the calling all of us as faith driven investors to dethrone Mammon in our lives, not to be caught up in the worries of the world and the deceitfulness of riches. Thanks for listening today. Know that if you are ever processing through working through some of these exact threads that Sam talks about, the faith driven investor community wants to serve you. There are groups to process and journey alongside. Love having you here and we will catch you in a couple of weeks. Thanks, friends.