Episode 190 - Marks on the Markets: FDI Conference Deep Dive - From Hollywood Projects to Human Trafficking Solutions
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John Coleman and Richard Cunningham unpack key themes from the 2025 Global Faith Driven Investor conference, exploring how faith-aligned investing is transforming various asset classes. From public markets to entertainment, real estate to venture capital, they examine how Christians are driving excellence and impact across the investment landscape. The episode concludes with timely market commentary on AI innovation, political developments, and technological disruption shaping markets in 2025.
Please note that the views expressed by the hosts and guests are their own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Faith Driven Investor.
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 Faith 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.
Speaker 2 Hey everyone. All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Hosted guests may maintain positions in the companies of 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 back, everyone, to another episode of the Faith Driven Investor podcast. Awesome to have you with us for what is the week after the big Global Faith Driven Investor conference and gathering its marks on the markets as well. So we're going to do something pretty fun today. I've got John Coleman in the podcast studio with me. And John, we're going to do a little bit of kind of a flyby of some of those main conference themes, topics that were unearthed on Friday, and just visit those and kind of more detail, get maybe a little bit of color behind the scenes. You and I's kind of taken vantage point on health and state of FDI market as we look at some of those talks and just the different asset classes and stories that were unearthed during the conference. And now we are all about integrity here on the FDI pod.
So I got to be honest. Today is Wednesday, February 5th, as John and I record this podcast. The conference technically hasn't taken place yet. As you all know, it's happening on February 7th, this coming Friday, and this episode releases the 10th Monday, February 10th. And so there's a little bit of nuance there as we get our past tense and present tense and anything like that. Confused. Just know we've been privy to some of the FDI conference content, but just a disclaimer upfront, John, before we get going and dive in and how are you? Man?
John Coleman I'm doing pretty well. We just had our firm's all team retreat this last weekend, so that was really encouraging and a lot of fun. Got our team in from around the world, so I think we're all riding high on that. Looking forward to the FDI conference. How am I supposed to say that? Past tense, Present tense. Now. I am currently looking forward to it. I know it'll been out by the time we post this, but I think it's going to be great and it's exciting to see how the movement has grown. So I'm feeling very optimistic overall.
Richard Cunningham Yeah, absolutely. Well, John, you are a speaker in the conference and that's where I want to start. If you look at kind of the overall conference theme and what was discussed on Friday, it's the kind of theme of, hey, the riskiest thing you can do is nothing. Thinking about Matthew 25, Parable of Talents the servant who squanders or does not do anything with their talent. You go on to give a talk just on money and how we can be faithful as we think about earning it, spending it, investing it and giving it. And I think that all kind of plays into these themes of the conference of, you know, how is God calling you and your family to join the battle? All investing is impact investing. What impact will you have? You can build, give and invest here as we focus on during the conference to solve some of the world's greatest challenges, whether that's with market rate, return, patient, concessionary capital or just full on giving. So want to kind of give you a moment here to maybe unpack some of the behind the scenes of that talk where you talked about earning, spending, investing in giving money, how it plays into kind of this year's big theme.
John Coleman Yeah, absolutely. So it's been on my mind a lot because I'm actually working on a book at the moment for my publisher, Harvard Business Review on Money and Flourishing. And it's the first personal finance book that HPR has ever done. And the idea is what are the habits, mindsets and values that can make money a good rather than a bad thing in your life. So if I zoom out even from a specifically faith driven lens, almost every major moral tradition in the world, religion, philosophic tradition has a lot to say about money. And a lot of those comments are actually well aligned, and they match up with what we're learning from modern research, which is that more money isn't necessarily good for you. And a lot of money can sometimes be incredibly damaging to people. You know, I always start by reminding people it's harder to be poor than to be rich for sure. But there are so many, countless instances where people achieve financial goals that they always thought they wanted only to be disappointed by those or even have their lives ruined by those. Right. There are studies of lottery winners and just how destructive the lottery can be in people's lives. I mean, suicide rates increase. Bankruptcy rates are incredibly high among lottery winners. There's research showing that, for example, NFL players who often receive big contracts early a go bankrupt, it's something like three times the national average rate. So despite the fact that you'd think these folks are making out really well at a young age, that influx of money at a young age without any philosophic framework for how to handle it can often be destructive in their lives. And we all know people whose lives have been upended by money. Right? We know wealthy people sometimes who've done a great job with that. At the f d iPod, we've heard from people like Allen Barnhart and others who've been extraordinarily thoughtful about the way in which they've managed wealth that's come out of their businesses. But each of us probably also knows people whose friendships have been hurt. His marriage has been hurt. His kids have ended up on the wrong track because of that. And so what I wanted to do was start digging into this question of like, if money itself is just a tool, right? Money itself has no moral value. It's what we do with money that has a moral value. What can we do with money that makes it a good rather than a bad thing in our lives and in our communities? And so, as you note in the. Video that folks will have seen by now, hopefully says, you know, I break that framework into a few areas. It is about how you earn money, about how you invest it, about how you give it and about how you spend it. Those are the four big ways in which we each encounter money and what habits we can have around those. And what's funny to me again, is that the modern research on money, the things that we're learning through the social sciences, match really well with Christian tradition, right? They really do. If you think about spending money, for example, all the research now says that if you're going to spend money, it should be on experiences, not stuff and experiences. Help us build relationships which tightly links to kind of depth and breadth of positive relationships and of love in our lives. Spending money on that stuff, getting people together, going on great trips with folks, doing outings as a group of friends or family, those can often be really good. Whereas the stuff that we buy rarely gives us any sort of lasting satisfaction, right? Which I think even heard Solomon talk about in the Bible, right? Where he talks about the meaninglessness of some of the things that he's acquired. I think giving, for example, which is so common not only in the Christian tradition, but in a couple of other religious traditions, service to others is regularly one of the top 2 or 3 ways in which we experience great purpose and meaning in our lives, in which we experience great flourishing. And that applies to our financial lives. People are always shocked at how liberating it is to begin to give financially to others, to serve others through our finances. And yet the U.S. is the most generous country in the world, and only about 2% of GDP goes to giving right the average person, thereby giving kind of 2% of what they have. And so I think there's a bunch of stuff that we can embrace from a habits, mindsets and values point of view that's deeply aligned with both the research on the topic as well as Christian tradition, among other moral traditions that can make our lives better in the way that we deal with money. And I think FDI really intersects with that. I've got a whole section in the book on investing, and it's investing for impact, right? And the idea is that of those four places you touch, money consuming it, giving it, earning it, investing is often the place that we think the least about what values our money is embracing. And yet for many people, it's the biggest pool of money, right? A lot of people have more in invested capital than they have in annual earnings. A lot of people invest more every year than they spend. A lot of people invest more than they give every year. And yet, for some reason, this biggest pocket is the one we pay the least attention to. And I think that's a huge opportunity for purpose and meaning in people's lives. I think if we were learning to activate the values of our invested dollars in the way we do our giving dollars, for example, that that can unlock a great deal of flourishing purpose and meaning in our lives and in the lives of others. So those are a few of the topics that I visited. We do it at greater length in the videos, but I think it's a really fun and interesting topic.
Richard Cunningham Now it's perfect because it's the perfect segue into where we're going next as we kind of visit some of the asset classes and the stories that were talked about in the conference. And it plays into that big theme that Faith Driven Investor is kind of been socializing a lot in the last year and a half, which I really appreciate. It's a helpful framework, but it's kind of saying, hey, if the if the goal is to attack some of the world's greatest challenges and problems, solving the world's greatest problems is what faith through and talks about. It's really three things you can do. You're founder oriented, you're just a builder, a catalyze. Or you could build something there. You could build a for profit venture that goes to that extent or maybe a nonprofit. They go to that extent. If you've got philanthropic capital, you can give and deploy capital charitably to those instances. And then, John, what you're talking about here is the investing piece. And what you're so beautifully articulating is forever. That's just kind of been the set it and forget it. Leave it, don't worry about it. We've just kind of feel so, you know, disenchanted by what's possible with our investment capital yet Christian Shepherd trillions of dollars in investable wealth You know there's a significant opportunity at hand. That's why this whole movement exists to drive meaningful change. But unfortunately, oftentimes Luke says this in the conferences, there's kind of this view of like, hey, anything that has the Christian version to it is often viewed as second rate. And you and I know that just doesn't align with scripture. We believe you can have success not in spite of your biblical values, but because of them. And so that's kind of where we get so activated and passionate about this. Faith Driven Investor movement is bringing excellence to the movement. So let's go kind of big asset class first public markets where most of our capital is tied up. And there is a couple of stories here that we're touched on. First, Susanne Daniel talking about how her granting felt like it was almost getting canceled out by her investing, like there was things that she was profiting off of as she invested capital that felt almost counter and contrary to her giving. So I want you to talk about that. And then also and this is not a commercial by any means and never is on the FDA. I pod saw if the ETF that you helped launch at Sovereign's Capital was featured in Matt Monson was talked about and just the opportunity at play in the public markets as an institutional investor structuring an ETF. The everyday investor can access to drive change within the Russell 3000 with publicly traded companies. So kind of let you speak about the public markets a little bit and kind of what's going on in the space.
John Coleman If I get really practical, I think for a Faith Driven Investor and public markets, they're really three things that you can think about doing today, right? One of which, Suzanne is starting to highlight. The first of those is negative screening. It's how do we not invest in businesses or support things that seem in contradiction to our values. Right. There's an apocryphal story outside of the faith driven world where a big cancer foundation out of New York City that was dealing with a lot of lung cancer, for example, found that it was investing more every year in tobacco companies through its investment portfolio than it was actually giving to remediate some of the outcomes those tobacco companies. And I think Suzanne touches on that. And this idea that you don't want to find that the things you're investing in or devoting, which we'll come to second in those companies is really running counter to the work that you do, right? Henry Kaser, our friend, was talking recently about the example of one of the publicly traded dating apps, effectively where the features are almost designed to exacerbate the insecurity and superficiality of the dating market and to harm people psychologically and how he just didn't want exposure to that. There's not like a shareholder engagement way of making that better, right? And so there's a certain number of things that you would just want to screen out that may look different for some Faith Driven Investor is because people have different lines that they won't cross, you know? It could be adult entertainment. It could be certain types of social media that you just don't believe have any redemptive purpose. It could be gambling, it could be pure play alcohol, etc.. And I do think there are some moral judgments to make there. But that's one thing. And I think it's one of the easiest things to do now is to just find out ways to just not have exposure either through Christian fund managers or faith aligned fund strategies, whether passive or active or even through direct indexing. Now, where you can select certain types of securities that you don't want in there. The second thing that I think we've seen people migrate to in public equities, which is a positive thing, is shareholder engagement and proxy voting. You know, this has become such a hot topic over the last 3 or 4 years. When I started speaking about the rise of ESG and shareholder engagement and proxy voting four years ago when I joined sovereigns, often people in the audience had never heard of it. People didn't know what ESG was or they vaguely had heard of it. They didn't understand proxy voting or corporate engagement at all. And now this is a huge national conversation, right, where even big asset managers are retreating on the topic. I think that it remains one of the best ways in which Christians can take control of their portfolio. There are a number of opportunities now for things like direct indexing and SMS, which give you ownership of the shares that you have so that you can engage directly. You can work with either passive or active strategies run by faith driven managers who are more likely to vote and engage in a way that's deeply aligned with your personal beliefs. But this is the idea that you may not want to screen out a company like Apple, for example, even though you don't love everything that Apple does. But you do want a voice. You want your voice to be reflected in Apple's board recommendations and the votes that they have. And you want to make sure that you're engaging in a way that tries to improve those companies from a values perspective. And I think taking control of your shareholder engagement and proxy voting, either through direct indexing, voting yourself, which is quite hard unless you're an institution or through an aligned fund manager, is also a no brainer these days where there are options. And then the third, which is where we focus a bit more with the Flourish fund, that sovereign's is positive engagement, you know, So we are doing the first two of those things and that we don't hold anything that doesn't have a redemptive product or service attached to it. We're certainly doing all of our own proxy voting and corporate engagement, but the idea is to define a strategy that's more about what you're for than what you're against, and to try and encourage leaders and companies who are doing the right things by investing in those both out of the belief that it's the value supplying thing to do. And also, at least in the case of the Flourish fund, out of the belief that if you build a company based on faith aligned values, you will build a culture that's capable of outperformance. There is a lot of mainstream research on this topic. So the London Business School, for example, and even Alex Edmonds there, has shown that the outperformance of companies in the 100 best companies to work for in public markets is substantially greater than other peer companies, something like 40 to 50% greater. McKinsey and Company did some research on companies as well that showed that top quartile versus medium or bottom quartile culture companies also performed in that spectrum as well, that they performed top quartile or they performed bottom quartile. And so we believe that if you're building companies that help people to flourish through chaplaincy employee benevolence funds, through great family friendly policies, through great mission vision and values, through community service, through mentorship groups and small groups that you're going to build a culture that can help you outperform. And so the thesis there is not passive. It's how can we invest in cultures that we think are going to lead to great financial returns that also have extraordinary impact on people. And then how can we engage deeply with the CEOs of those companies in order to continuously improve those cultures aligned with what we believe about human flourishing from the context of our Christian faith? And so that's the thesis of the Sovereign's Flourish Fund, as well as some of the other public equity funds out there. And we view that as kind of the culmination of the way in which you can engage in public equities, because it's not just the negative screening that that may be important. It's not just the engagement that may be important. It's both of those things, plus this kind of positive screening for the types of cultures and values that you're looking for, which hopefully really do have positive impacts on performance as well.
Richard Cunningham Yeah. And just a couple of maybe statistical things that come behind that with that stuck out to me from the conference is Matt Monson, who manages the flash funded sovereigns. He talks about the kind of investable universe and stock market within the U.S. as the Russell 3000 sets, 3000 companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq. And inside of that, something I was encouraged by is that they've identified 350 publicly traded companies with a faith driven CEO at the helm. And so that kind of creates the universe for surveys of which they can go engage with, understand, evaluate those companies, and then ultimately discover and figure out who will be inside of the portfolio. And then, as John was talking about, going even another step forward and bringing together those CEOs to talk about best practices, I was deeply encouraged by that. You guys even got to go ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, which is something Matt highlights this past year. And so I think it's just the scope is enormous. The opportunity for engagement is enormous. And a couple of other things I want to just kind of call to mind that were flashed in the conference that are powerful is that 73% of advisors are not asking their faith driven clients about investing in aligns with value. So getting back to John, just that idea of like we just kind of set investing in default and our advisors are just not caring to engage. But I think they're waking up to that in the future in space, even though over the last five years there's been $182 billion channeled towards impact investing in the US alone and 63% of millennials say they want an advisor who aligns with their religious beliefs. So I think we're still in the early innings. And to back that up a little bit further, our good pal Tim McCreadie, who we had on the pod probably just under a year ago, he releases at Bright Light, their kind of state of play of faith driven investing. And his research kind of says within the public markets that we're at about 130 billion in assets they can identify and faith driven mutual funds and ETFs in the US. He really thinks that's a conservative estimate, probably over 200 billion and then another 100 billion and things like SMEs and direct indexing those other products you were talking about, John. So while we can kind of see the growth of the opportunity, man, we're just still so early. It's such a small drop in the bucket compared to the trillions of dollars that are out there that could be activated. So any final comments on public markets before we kind of pivot to the next thing?
John Coleman Yeah. And the thing I would note about Tim statistics, Richard, because those those matched pretty closely with what we've estimated as well, is even within that bucket of so-called faith driven assets, there's room to move up the chain to even greater positive engagement, etc.. You know, that would include a lot of stuff that's pure, just passive negative screening, for example, again, which I'm not criticizing at all. But I think that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg in what you can do. If we could activate those assets to do more engagement, to do that in a concerted way where there's a huge pool of assets encouraging companies to lean into appropriate values and in creating active management screens or even indexes that then encourage positive behaviors. I mean, we've got not only an opportunity to activate more of the trillions of dollars of faith driven capital out there for public equities, but within those that are already activated to move them up, the spectrum of engagement, up the spectrum of faith integration, so that we're constantly pushing the needle on what faith integrated public equities can look like.
Richard Cunningham You know, showing what we're for in the world, as Henry talks about in the conference, as opposed to just saying what we're against. All right. Hey, pivoting into a subject that I know is near and dear to your heart. So this is kind of a big jump from public markets to maybe what is more of a fringe or kind of exciting investment space as the movies and entertainment realm. So we heard Raymond and Mary Del Harris speaking about in their portfolio how they've backed things like I can only imagine in October, Baby in American Underdog, some of these John Irwin films. And then we heard Kelly Merriman, the CEO of The Wonder Project, speak about just the opportunity at hand and what can be expected to be seen in this year ahead, 2025, with just kind of the faith driven content. And John, I've heard you talk about this before. And we were just talking about how Christian things can be viewed as second rate, but forever. It was faith driven folks who've had such a touch of excellence. Think of something like the Sistine Chapel and how the arts are so important upstream from culture. And so I know this is deeply personal to you, something you've invested a lot of your time towards. But the movies and entertainment realm and how Faith Driven Investor is going to get activated there. Talk about that.
John Coleman Yeah, absolutely. And Richard, I'll just start where you ended, which is there is no reason Christians should be second rate in culture, right? Christians should be in touch with something really beautiful about human nature and about the universe that allows them to unlock the best in in culture, right? Whether that be art or sculpture or music. And if you think of so much of the history of this stuff, I mean, the Sistine Chapel for sure is such explicitly faith driven material. The statue of David, which you may have seen in Florence before, is one of the most beautiful creations in the world. A lot of the old music was really predicated on honoring God. Right. A lot of the great composers were Christians who dedicated their music to God. The old churches were some of the most beautiful architecture in the world. On and on and on. I mean, The Inferno was kind of a very religious piece. For example, there's been great religious writing over the course of history. And even if you look at kind of old Hollywood, you know, two of the top performing movies of all time were Ben-Hur and the Ten Commandments. Right. Which were so infused with faith. And then other shows where it was just kind of a part of the fabric of the show itself. Like It's a Wonderful Life, where there are spiritual themes that are so deeply aligned with the context of our faith. And yet, for some reason in recent years, I feel like Christians have lost the mantle of cultural excellence, you know, over the last few decades. And that's sad. And I think it's a combination of, you know, people just not putting the appropriate amount of money into this space such that things can be done at a high quality and people not really digging into their faith in a way that unleashes it. Right. And it's still very possible. I mean, you look at the music of U2, right, which is one of the most popular rock bands in the world. They've talked about how faith motivated their. It doesn't mean every single song they have is like praise song. Right. But they end every concert with a song. Right. I mean, it's remarkable. And obviously they're at the top of their field. And so what excites me about this is I do feel there's now a movement among a lot of creators and leaders in the space to restore excellence to art that comes from a Christian perspective. And again, I say it that way because not every piece of art they produce has to be quote unquote, Christian art. Right. It doesn't have to be genre. It doesn't have to have a salvation moment at the end. It could just be that faith is a part of the fabric of what they're producing, that when they create something, it's from the perspective of someone who shares those values. And I think, you know, some of the folks that you highlight, Jon Erwin and Kelly Merriman, who we've been privileged to partner with, are right at the forefront of that with people like Dallas Jenkins, John Gunn, Jeremy Latcham, you know, some of the other creators out there. I think they're doing remarkable work. And what it's taken is this meeting of people thoroughly committed to excellence who are also committed to their faith, coming together with sources of capital who can give them the weight of financial help in order to bring those pieces to life. Right. Kelly And John's latest project right now that will be coming out in just a couple of weeks, for example, is called House of David. And kind of following in the footsteps of the Chosen, It's a retelling of the story of the biblical David done by a set of Christian creators who are as dedicated to both the quality of the cinema they're producing, as well as the fidelity of the story, as Dallas has been with The Chosen. I've gotten to see the first episode already and I've gotten to see clips of some of the rest because we were an investor in Wonder. And it's phenomenal, right? They partnered with Amazon. They put a ton of money into it. They filmed on location in Greece. They have extraordinary actors, extraordinary scriptwriters. And it's honestly one of the best TV shows I've had the privilege of watching in a very long time. And it's shocking because it's it's our stuff, right? It's the biblical cinematic universe. It's this idea that some of the most interesting characters in history were outlined in the Bible. And we haven't told those stories appropriately. Like there hasn't been a big movie or TV show on David, which is crazy. And then they're going to mix that with other creations that they touch on, like things from American history. There's a movie coming out about the Wright brothers, for example, on the Wonder Project platform. And then there are sitcoms that they're producing that will be infused with themes related to faith, but will be done in the Hollywood level of excellence you might expect from a mainstream network show. And I think that's what's exciting now is we really rely on the creators and the capital coming together at the same time. The more capital that flows in, the more creators will take a risk and step out in faith. The more excellent creators who take a risk and step out in faith, the more capital will come in. And I hope we're at the very beginning of a virtuous cycle where both the capital and the creators are lining up to paint a vision of hope and beauty and truth and goodness in the world that's so deeply aligned with what we believe about human nature and about the world around us.
Richard Cunningham Man, that's awesome. It's exciting in the House of David. I mean, I'll say this, there's some not G or PG rated scenes in the Old Testament, and I know David's story and as the great warrior and battler. But it's exciting and a little bit riveting. And yeah, maybe there's some a more intense content, if you will, to come in that. So looking forward to that. And then the other thing I'll say, John, that you just remind me of is, you know, I look at the I come from the sports background. I have zero artistic talents whatsoever. And just like that, you know, since 323 and that idea of like competing and doing things unto the Lord not on demand, I have just been refreshed lately by just the sense of revival across major sports platforms, college athletics, NFL football. It seems like every post-game interview right now, there's just something going on and a movement of the spirit that I just want to see continue to flourish. And what an awesome time for now, Content on the backs of the things like The Chosen have done so well.
John Coleman Yeah, thank goodness for all those courageous athletes speaking about faith. Right? Like I think, you know, this has always been a topic because I think athletes so often realize their own physical limitations and really their reliance on something greater than themselves. But so many outspoken voices. You know, Tim Tebow is at the forefront of this for such a long time. Colt McCoy was obviously right there with him. I think Kirk Cousins brought it to life in the Netflix. What was it the first season of the football documentary on quarterbacks? Yeah, that's right. We had Patrick Mahomes and I think it was Deshaun Watson and Kirk Cousins made just such a positive impact in how open he was about his faith and even this year and that, you know, the run up to the college football national championship. You know, there were so many awesome stories of faith coming out of that. And I realize by even talking about college football, we're immediately alienating a ton of people on the pod. But I grew up in FSU fans and Notre Dame was a hated sports enemy at the time. But, you know, seeing the way the coach at Notre Dame comported himself, the way that he conducted that team, how open he was about his faith, some of the players on both sides of that game and how open they were about their faith in athletes or to be credited because I think so many of them are using their platform for good right now. And it's so encouraging to me to watch the cultural influence that they can have by doing so. That's obviously granted to them because they are so focused on running the race as if to win it literally some sometimes and by the platform that that gives them to influence others, you.
Richard Cunningham Know, and it reminds I mean, Tebow is on those who are able to watch the conference at the end of the conference. And he's talking about rescuing image barriers. And we'll get here. That can be our last topic as we get into the venture capital side of this and the work of Wesleyan and the team at Eagle Venture Fund. But I just could not not laugh listening to Tim Tebow almost like get out of breath. He gets so excited and animated as he's presenting. He's just so fired up all the time. But okay, coming back to a little bit more of a mainstream investment topic, real estate and the real estate kind of market. An asset class was visited through this lens, an idea of stamping out loneliness and building social connection via a sense of place and the ministry that was highlighted as one that's a great friend of the movement is apartment life. Pete Kelley, CEO. And this statue startled me. 40 million people the size of the state of California live in apartments in our nation, and 95% of them are unchurched. And just thinking about real estate and the opportunity to engage people and where they spend their time as a ministry opportunity, but also this angle of apartment life providing an annual average 200 K and the bottom line benefit to multifamily owners and operators because of reduced tenant turnover, staffing turnover is lowered and then just greater leasing rates and occupancy rates. And so some of your comments challenge the the real estate space and where you're seeing encouragement, but also where opportunities kind of still for work to be done.
John Coleman Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's interesting to me, churches will often talk about wanting to reach the younger generation, right? They'll often want to talk about reaching the unchurched, reaching the new immigrant, reaching those who are struggling financially, etc.. And if you think about just a platform tailor made for that, the multifamily housing space or apartment space, is that right? I mean, disproportionately you get to reach younger people disproportionately. You often get to reach new immigrants who are coming to the country because of affordability. Disproportionately, you meet those who are struggling, maybe financially, especially depending on the type of apartment complex, multifamily housing unit. You know, these are often folks who are at a different phase in their life. And so it's just this concentrated, incredible ministry opportunity. And you get to meet people literally where they live, you know, which is another kind of church phrase, meet people where they live. Well, we can actually meet them where they live, right? Not metaphorically. You can actually go to the place. That they live and create a community that's welcoming to them, that not only introduces them to their creator, but helps them to build relationships with others there. And to me, this is a beautiful encapsulation of the thesis that I talked about earlier in companies that you can do well by doing good in this space. You can create financial outcomes that are positive while also creating personal or human outcomes which are positive in apartment life. And the statistics they showed are such a big component of that. You know, if you build a community that people want to live in, that they're dedicated to, where they know their neighbors, where they feel uplifted, where they're flourishing, where they're connected to faith. It turns out turnovers, less people pay their rent on time. Better people stick together to stop things like crime in those communities better. They're just a host of positive outcomes that come from building a community in which people want to live and can be themselves and really flourish as individuals that accompany this incredible human impact that you can have in a way that's that's different than almost anywhere else. And if you think about the ways in which you can minister to people, right. We talk a lot about ministering to people at work through company investing. Maybe you can them 40 hours a week. Certainly it's important to minister them at church, know whether they come Wednesday nights or Sundays or join small groups or have other ministries. And then if you're able to catch them at home. Right. If you can find ways to make ministry into each of those areas, you're really surrounding someone, right? With positive and uplifting encouragement, with community, with ministry. And so I think apartment life has obviously been at the forefront of that. I think it's an incredibly important industry, and they're working with a ton of great investment managers right now. And I'll say in the state driven investing space, real estate is about as high impact and asset classes exists and Faith Driven Investor thing. Right now there are a ton of great real estate managers out there that are operating from a place of faith, that are working in multifamily and other areas that are working with apartment life and other ministries that are so dedicated to creating these types of communities that serve people spiritually as well as physically. And so if I were to tell Faith Driven Investor to take a hard look at something today, I would definitely point him to real estate, because I think it's just such a tangible and innovative way in which to put capital to work in a way that fundamentally improves people's lives in an asset class that almost everyone is in writer needs to be in. And so I think it's a cool opportunity. And apartment life has been so central to that, as we heard.
Richard Cunningham You know, what about John, in the spirit of just marks in the markets, I know you're not a full time real estate investor, but just any comments on like the interest rate, environment, new administration. One of the things that we all tangibly feel the effects of that is just kind of real estate costs and just the real estate deal market. Any thoughts there?
John Coleman Yeah. So I put on my investment hat without the faith driven component of it. Just speaking about returns, I'm still reasonably cautious about a lot of the real estate sector right now. I think in particular office space, it's just a big question mark to me. I still think we haven't seen the shakeout of return to work and how that's going to work. Whether people physically use offices, how much it's now permanently hybrid, where people work based on shifting demographics. I mean, now with the new administration, obviously there's a push to get rid of a lot of federal properties, for example, which in certain markets is going to flood the zone, so to speak, with available properties like DC, etc.. And so in general, I'm pretty cautious about office right now on New high that rates are still very high. And so there are a lot of office buildings that are underwater right now that may have leases resetting or borrowing resetting at unfavorable rates, etc.. Multifamily, I feel a lot better about, you know, there are short term challenges with interest rates, certainly. And there's this disconnect between renting and owning right now. And owning is substantially more expensive than renting right now, which is a bizarre disconnect in the market brought about by the new mortgage rates and house prices. But if I think in secular terms, secular meaning long term, not in the absence of faith term, I, I mean, two things. But if I think long term, you know, the United States has too little housing. We have a deficit of something like 7 million units of housing or something on the order that that has to get resolved, despite the fact that we're seeing reduction in immigration right now with the new administration. The US is still people are having babies at about replacement rate. We still are one of the top destinations for immigrants in the world. We have this deficit of existing housing. That's a structural issue. And so I'm confident that that continues to be a good place to invest because we simply haven't built or refurbished enough housing to take care of the existing demand in the country. And so there may be short term blips in that. But if I'm thinking over the course of 5 or 10 years, I feel really good about that space. And then it's probably a mix for other things like retail. For, for things like industrial storage space, etc. A lot of it's so market dependent or dependent on the sub asset class. But I continue to think there are opportunities in real assets right now. And I'd remind people that we are, though interest rates feel high right now. We're basically at long term averages for interest rates right now. You know, if you go back to the 80, 7650s, interest rates were much higher. It was this period 2008 to 2021. It was bizarre. I mean, interest rates were approaching zero in most places in the world. And so we are much more a normal interest rate now. So I'm confident the markets can function with those interest rates. I think it may just take a while for everyone's expectations and financials to reset from this 15 year period or more of unusually low interest rates.
Richard Cunningham It's good. It's well said. Well, thanks for the commentary there. And this takes us into kind of our last theme of the conference, if you will. And so some of the voices you heard from were Jeremy Lin and highlighting Linsanity, family office and just the approach they've taken to. Almost a sports mindset to being excellent in their investing, their giving in their stewardship to kind of what all God has entrusted to Jeremy through his kind of storied NBA run. Then we heard from Tebow, as we mentioned, and his just epic out of breath, just passion towards rescuing image barriers and the 50 million people tragedy that is human trafficking. $150 billion annual enterprise that dovetailed into West Lions. Wade Myers and the team at Eagle Venture Fund doing the risky, audacious thing they're doing, which is standing up a venture capital fund to find for profit solutions to choke out the human trafficking industry. It really is an industry. And so they're thinking about this in a, you know, financial capitalistic mindset of how can we raise the expense line and human trafficking to where it's no longer a profitable business? So this gets into family office investing, John In a family office being on mission, it gets into influencers wading into these waters. This also gets into the venture capital and private equity space and funding businesses on purpose. Just what what comments would you make about kind of faith driven investing in the opportunity for engagement on the front lines with for profit businesses?
John Coleman Yeah, for sure. So. I think family offices and high net worth individuals or individuals generally are always going to be the innovators in this space and have both a remarkable opportunity and responsibility. The truth of the matter is in any innovative approach to investing. So you mentioned Eagle Venture Fund and what they're doing with human trafficking, faith driven investing broadly. Institutions are always going to be more conservative, right, because they're managing money for others. If you're a college endowment or if you're a Baptist foundation, you have a responsibility to your students. You have a responsibility to the pastors, missionaries that you serve. You're going to be much more conservative about new approaches to investing as you should be. Right. Because you have this fiduciary responsibility to others when you're running a family office. When you're investing on behalf of yourself. You can take risks. You can do new things that are difficult for institutions, whether you're Susanne Daniels or Jeremy Lin or Tim Tebow or any of the other great families that we've engaged. And I think that's an opportunity, because often family offices can act on new, attractive opportunities faster than institutions can that can lead to higher returns. I think it's also a responsibility because that means that if someone's going to drive to push the envelope of what fate driven investing can mean to stand up things like Eagle's Human Trafficking Fund, to stand up new public equity funds that are focused on positive integration and engagement with companies to invest in developing countries in new and innovative ways. That's going to happen through individuals and family offices. It really is. And families have to make a conscious decision like the learning hands have, like others have to really accept some of the tradeoffs of that risk return spectrum in order to push the envelope of what's possible. And what I love seeing is schematically like Tim Tebow lending his voice to this anti-human trafficking movement broadly and then also lending his voice to the innovative private market solutions to that through Eagle, through others, and then lending capital to that. Also, through his investment, he's able to drive that conversation and drive innovation in that space in a way that few institutions could. Right. Jeremy Lin is doing the same in other areas. We know awesome networth individuals, family offices that are doing the same in a variety of areas. And so my message to family offices listening would be look, engage in this space. No one's going to be able to push this forward if you don't. Right. We see that one of our friends and partners, Henry, has been at the very forefront of this with his personal portfolio. I know each of us has probably done this more than the average person, at least in terms of our personal portfolios. And I just think there's a remarkable opportunity for individuals and family offices to play the leading role, the standard bearer role in normalizing these funds and proving that they can work and proving these investments can work so that these massive pools of institutional capital can eventually participate and drive the movement even more comprehensively. Right. Because they're likely to be more conservative. And I just love some of the innovative approaches that are taking shape in these private funds. Right. I think it's great that Eagle is entering into a space that has such great need and trying to set up a concentrated, positively themed fund in that space. There are other examples that aren't quite as overtly missional as an anti-human trafficking fund. But, you know, we're going through the process right now of investing in a health care oriented fund where the manager that is driving through a number of faith aligned practices into the portfolio of all these physician practices that they work with in a way that cares for patients, cares for doctors, cares for nurses, cares for staff that they might not experience elsewhere. And so I'm hopeful that just like in real estate, that that continues to flourish. I really appreciate folks like Wes who are driving that conversation forward, and I appreciate family offices, especially those with big public platforms like Jeremy Lin and Tim Tebow leaning into this space to help make progress alongside those managers who are trying to create these funds.
Richard Cunningham Yeah, I like that. And I also appreciated how faith driven kind of at the end introduced another European based venture fund, Roy Ellis, and they teed up this concept of cathedral thinking and saying, Hey, you're being invited into a mission and an opportunity that you actually won't see the end of, not on this side of eternity. And it's kind of like the invitation to create a cathedral where this is going to be a decades long project. But think long term, think patient, think, partnership mindset. I mean, that's just what it's going to take to attack some of these problems. So, John, we're going to go to our closing question here just in a moment. But one more time, in the spirit of kind of marks on the markets. I know we've done a real deep dive on just kind of all the themes and topics of the conference. Any macro quick hitters from you of just kind of things we've seen in the press lately? I know there's a lot of talk on tariffs and those is a negotiation tactic for something that might come to existence, government cost cutting and the work of doge there is. Generally markets are up. The S&P 500, Russell, 2000 are both up around 3% year to date. They've seen some volatile days. There's the arms race, of course, with Nvidia having the massive hit a couple of weeks back because of Deep Sea kind of coming out and saying, Hey, we've accomplished what you've accomplished with less of the cost. Just any kind of macro quick hitters you leave the audience with. Before we go to our final question.
John Coleman Man, I don't know that that's a quick question. I'll be super brief. I mean, two comments. One is I genuinely think we're on the verge of a series of technological innovations that may be greater than at any point in history, which is kind of a bold statement between artificial intelligence, robotics, breakthroughs in energy technology, quantum computing. We could be on the precipice of a series of technologies that fundamentally change the way in which we live more than and more rapidly than any prior technological innovations. The only thing I could even compare it to would be the breakthrough in nuclear technology during the Second World War, which was less of a day to day thing in the sense that it was a threat. You know, it became an energy source, but it was a little bit slower. And thankfully the weapons technology was not broadly used. But artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing, augmented reality, virtual reality. I think 20 years from now, the world will look so fundamentally different than today that we won't even be able to process the pace of innovation. And so I think that is one big macro theme I'm watching in markets. We saw the deep sea. I think Nvidia lost something like $600 Billion in value in one day. It's since come back. It's a big company big nominal loss 17%. And I think all of us are just in for a period where we're going to get whiplash from the different innovations that are happening. And none of us know exactly how those will end up, but we do know the world will be fundamentally different. And then on the political side, again, regardless of your partizan affiliation, I was in D.C. the last couple of days. I don't know that we've ever seen a presidential administration in modern history act so quickly on so many different fronts. You know, there are multiple announcements each day through executive orders, through initiatives, through international agreements that in normal times would be momentous announcements by any administration in what's happened in these first few weeks has been an extraordinary pace of change. Right? I don't know that we fully have processed how that will end up. President Trump has obviously been using tariffs as a negotiating tool with China, with Canada, with Mexico. He's been using other tools of places like Panama as well. Just yesterday, as we're recording this, he had a public statement with Prime Minister Netanyahu from Israel and announced that the U.S. was going to occupy Gaza, which may or may not come to fruition. I think the common theme in all of that is just, again, the pace of change being greater than we've experienced in recent history. I expect this to be largely a good year because I think many of the technological advancements are going to be good for the world ultimately. I think some of the policies that are being pursued will ultimately end up good, but I think there will be a great deal of volatility as we see things change so rapidly, whether from the political environment or the technological environment. I think we'll see more winners and losers take shape really quickly, like stocks climbing out of nowhere like Palantir has over the last couple of months and stocks collapsing when their fundamental premise for being is eroded by artificial intelligence or by policy. And so I would hang on tight, guys. I think 2025 is going to be quite a ride in investment markets.
Richard Cunningham Well, I think that's just a good overall analysis. Well, let's take us home with this, John. When we love to ask at the end of each and every podcast, I haven't gotten to ask you it in a couple of episodes now because we've had some outside guests, but what's the Lord been teaching you through his word lately?
John Coleman Yeah, and I think I may have actually mentioned this on a prior podcast, but it came up again recently for obvious reasons. Given that I'm very interested in and focus on this House of David release coming up in a few weeks. I've been thinking about the story of David and, you know, one of the central tenets of the story of David, particularly relative to Saul, is just the importance of remembering God in the successes you experience in life and in honoring God with those successes in obeying him, rather than seeking your own understanding of events. You know, Saul eventually went off the rails because he forgot where he came from with God. God had anointed Saul. He had lifted up Saul. He had placed trust and saw it made him the King of Israel. And as Saul was lifted up from this tribe of Benjamin, which was a very small tribe, right? He forgot all that and he started disobeying God. He started worrying more about the politics than about his faith and about what God commanded of him. He started to believe in himself more than he believed in God and to attribute his success to him. Self rather than to God. And for that, he lost his position. Right. And his family lost their position. Whereas David just seemed to constantly keep and he obviously had major problems throughout his life, but especially in the early days, had just that cognizance of how reliant on God he was and how dedicated he needed to be with God and how courageous he could be if God was with him. Right. And that combination of humility and courage that David represented the humility to understand that we are not the authors of our own story, at least not fully, that we are servants of God and that we should give honor and glory to him. But the courage that comes from that promise is just so remarkable. I think that's part of why he was a man after God's own heart. That combination of humility and courage. And that's something I hope we seek or I seek every day. Right. Which is the courage to do bold things, the courage to act, the courage to be definitive, but the humility to remember that when those things go right, that we are not the author of that story, that we are relying on someone else, and that when they start going right, we can't just stop obeying all the promises that got us there that we need to see God and faith, that we need to continue to discern his will and that we need to be humble in our pursuit of the next thing. So that's been very much on my mind, really.
Richard Cunningham That's good. Let's get one more preview for All movie. Enjoy yours and show watchers out there that later this month, House of David will be coming out so late February on Amazon. So John Coleman I was deeply inspired by Friday's feature and investor conference. Really fun to kind of get to unpack and revisit some of the themes with you. Thank you for the commentary, as always. And friends, we will catch you next time. Thank you so much.
John Coleman Thanks, Richard.
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