Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, and I want to set the stage a little bit, faith driven investing, of course, is about Christ followers coming to understand that there’s an opportunity for them to steward their investment capital in a way that advances God’s kingdom, the traditional method. And if this is video, you’d see what I’m talking about here. But in my left hand, I have making investments in Goldman Sachs and in Maverick and Greenspring instead of trying to make as much money as you possibly can over here on your left hand. And then to the extent that an investor understands the biblical message of generosity, then over on their right hand, they try to give away as much as possible. Well, this movement that you found yourselves in a podcast on is about the fact that we believe that the very process of investments might accomplish many of the ministry goals that we’d otherwise just relegate towards giving in this industry we found ourselves in. We have all sorts of different players across, all sorts of different asset classes, all sorts of different geographies. We have real estate. And if you go back into the podcast archives, you’ll see some great real estate conversations. You’ll find conversations with people onshore here domestically. You’ll find people all over the world. And you also have different types of people running different types of funds. I often tell people, especially as we launch this faith driven investor marketplace where we highlight a lot of individual angel deals that are super exciting. Let us know if you’re an accredited investor, want to get access to that. But most people who are waiting in the faith driven investing need to look at funds.

And today we’re talking to a fund manager, somebody whose job their vocation is to go out there and find great investment opportunities that have spiritual integration and have you participate in what they’re doing as God is honored in the different communities that they’re at now. Of those fund managers, not only do you have different types of asset classes and different types of geographies, but you have different types of fund managers. Some amount of what we’ve done in the past is talking to people like Frank Chin at Andreessen Horowitz, who has Andreessen Horowitz, one of the biggest funds out there, and Frank talks about how he brings his faith to work in what is otherwise a very secular world of Silicon Valley. And how he looks to be a faithful witness is he loves on his portfolio companies. We’ve had, of course, Terry Stephens from Founders Fund that invested in some of the biggest deals ever alongside of Peter Thiel. And he talks about how his faith informs contrarian view of investing. And to some extent, there’s some amount of retrofitting in the industry. And these are people who are established fund professionals who are going back in to look at their funds and say, how do I bring in and how do I weave in spiritual integration and what we’ve been doing for decades. On the other side, you have a group of successful business people that have said, gosh, there’s an opportunity to get out there and to have funds that would invest in companies and industries like. I know. And I’m going to start Denovo. I don’t have to worry about retrofitting a fund or an industry. I’m going to go ahead. I’m going to start things out with my new fund, exactly how I’d like to have them intended, completely consistent with my faith. That’s going to be something that’s a driver for me from the beginning. And it is Mike Arietta from Garden City that fits into that latter category. So, Mike, awesome to have you. Thanks for being with us. Thanks, Hennery. First time caller, longtime fan.

So, Mike, you’ll know from having listened before that we try to get really good understanding of the history in the story. Who is the person we’re interviewing before we get into what you do? So give us some background. What’s your story? Who are you? Where do you come from?

Mike Arrieta: Yeah, sure. In regards to who I am, I’ll answer that question by saying that a couple of years ago, I read Pat Gelsinger, his book called The Juggling Act, and it encouraged me to come up with a life mission statement of who I am. So I’ll just recap that Mike Arietta is a beloved son of Christ, knowing that there’s nothing I can do to earn more of his love. I’m a faithful and loving husband to my wife, Veronica. I’m a presence and engage father to my two little kids, Olivia and Lucas. I’m a loyal friend to my family and community. And lastly, I try to keep it. Lastly, not first and foremost is I work to make a big internal impact on the world through business.

Henry Kaestner: So that’s who I am. I don’t William, we’ve done hundreds and hundreds of these. I don’t think anybody’s done that as crisply is. That was definitely one of the preparation of word to start out on a bar that I may borrow, that I may end up saying that my kids are Olivia and Lucas. Oh, was that good? Okay. All right. So tell us about tell us about your growing up, your faith journey as you grew up in a Christian home. Has faith always been a part of your life? Bring us through and maybe take us through your to your first work experience.

Mike Arrieta: Sure. Sure. Great question. I was the first of my family actually born here in the States. So my two older sisters and my parents, they were all born in Puerto Rico. So I’m I’m Puerto Rican.

Henry Kaestner: Did you know that my grandmother grew up in Puerto Rico? You probably didn’t know that. But we share that kind of. Yes.

Mike Arrieta: With disciplinary cases. You’re Puerto Rican.

Henry Kaestner: So I am Puerto Rican. Yes, my grandmother grew up in Puerto Rico, spoke Spanish, and I am. Yeah, absolutely.

William Norvell: And if this was a video podcast, our listeners would be more surprised by that fact.

Henry Kaestner: I don’t look very Puerto Rican, but nonetheless, my grandmother did indeed grew up in Puerto Rico.

Mike Arrieta: Should we do the next phase driven investor conference in Puerto Rico?

Henry Kaestner: I love to do that. I love the old San Juan. Absolutely. I love that place.

Mike Arrieta: So you’re probably more Puerto Rican than I am because I was raised in South Florida my whole life. I had two very hardworking parents who did their very best to provide for my two sisters and I. There was always food on the table and we always had a roof over our head. We were raised in a Catholic church the way probably ninety nine percent of Puerto Ricans and Hispanics are. So we have the fear of God to kind of God somewhere way up high. I don’t know where that way of high is way up there, but we never had an intimate daily relationship of walking with the Lord. And so it was purely a Sunday morning thing. You know, you go get your little wafer and you dress up and you go back home afterwards and then you resume life. Right. So it started and stopped there on Sundays. We moved 10 times and about 18 years growing up on the same kind of town due to our financial situation. My father worked a ton of jobs. He started selling Flon like the Puerto Rican or Cuban. Yeah. You know, he started selling Flon, that kind of of cards. And he worked at Home Depot just in the warehouse. And then I started selling timeshares, worked in furniture store. My mother worked in a retail store, just hourly worker to make matters more difficult. My father had very severe health conditions his whole life growing up since he was two years old, particularly Type one diabetes. He worked around the clock, you know, came home after I was sleeping already ten, eleven o’clock every night. So the constant theme around our home was financial stress, which, you know, in a hard working family automatically leads the marital issues. So they constantly fought and eventually they got separated by the grace of God. They came back together. But that was it kind of growing up, you know. So I’m very grateful for my family, for my parents and looking back. But looking back, my youth was pretty difficult to zero in on myself. I was never a good athlete. Pretty terrible. It was never a 4.0 students. I’m confident that if yes, all my teachers, which of the students they were most worried that would do something meaningful with their life, I’m pretty sure I would be at the bottom of the list. I was just rebellious. I challenged everything. I did not like to be in control, which now that I know I’m an eight on the anagram, it speaks a lot of that at a young age. However, I started realizing that I was naturally really gifted at selling. I was a good salesperson. I just came naturally to me. I would go buy something from someone next door and sell it to someone down the street for fifty dollars more. I would ask my dad to do a garage sale and I would have a whole strategy of how I’m going to sell my Nintendos and only sell that for an inexpensive price. We get a lot higher prices for the games or for the controllers, right? I would buy a little Caesars box for five dollars a pizza box. I bring a knife to school and cut them up into 16 slices and make it three hundred percent return at lunch on a couple of boxes. Right. I would buy baseball cards, Pokemon cards, Beanie Babies and figure out which shops wanted what based on the geography that they were in. So I was a sales guy, you know.

Yeah, that was it. And then the three things really in my life, I would say, were sales, as I just mentioned of the second one was service workers. I was just surrounded by hard working working class people like my family who are trying to do their best to stay alive or survive. But they really didn’t have any dignity or purpose or fulfillment or any calling. It was purely just a paycheck. And probably the third theme was I was obsessed. It’s really weird.

I think boring is so sexy. Right. William and I have talked about this for a while, but service companies have always been obsessed with learning about car washes and furniture store deliveries and dry cleaners and restaurants. I was naturally drawn to them. And so all that was kind of it that I was drawn to.

Henry Kaestner: So coming back to the born and natural salesperson, when I think about all the different organizations that are really focused on being able to be a sales guy, I guess maybe when I was growing up about encyclopedias, sales people, but then very quickly, that was eclipsed by the cutco knives vector marketing. If you’re a sales guy, like kind of the best form for you was to go work at Fekter Marketing, Cutco Knives, and you did that. And so I think about this is like the job for salesmen. And you were like the salesman of all salesmen where you ranked like number one in the country or something crazy.

Yeah. Yeah, it was, yeah. So how many how many nice sales people were there. Are there there bunch. There’s a fifty thousand I think. Yeah it’s that’s, that’s, that’s pretty good. That’s pretty good.

William Norvell: It’s really helpful. One of my best friends was number twenty four along to. And every time he starts bragging about it and he knows Mike, we all went to the same church, I’m like, Yeah, but it sucks for you. I know Mike like, this is not impressive. Like, what is number 20?

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, I bought some nice from Cutco. Great night. OK, so tell us about that. Probably half of our audience has heard of cocoanuts. Tell us about your experience there and what you learned about yourself and what you learned about selling short.

Mike Arrieta: One of the most difficult parts of my story. It was I had a severe stutter problem and I still do. So today. I manage it better. But it turned out to be the biggest blessing of my life because I was granted a state grant by Governor Jeb Bush, which provided me the opportunity to get out of the public school system and go into the private school system. And so my greatest disability became my greatest blessing. Mean that’s where I met my best friend Protagoras, you know, when I was 12 years old. And so I was able to get this huge benefit of experience and a whole new world, this world where I gain older mentors that I looked up to, my friends, parents. Right. I saw the way they live, where they went to college or professional careers. And I just wanted to be like them. It reminds me of that podcast you had Reggie Joyner and Chris Naib that they were talking about were kids in poverty. Don’t make it out of poverty because of education and talent. Two out of every three make it out because of the adults in their life who help them take the next step, what to do and where to go. Right? Yeah, it was my Zach story. My father got very sick and pancreas transplant, kidney transplant, dialysis. My mother got breast cancer. I felt calling to help and ease the burden. So I asked a friend of mine’s father, he said, start selling cutco knives. It’s been around since like the 40s and you could kill it and make a great amount of money. And so I started doing it. So I woke up every morning and I made cold calls. I ask teachers, go to the bathroom and make cold calls during lunch, make phone calls.

Henry Kaestner: You made Kolka, you left class. You do cold calls from the bathroom.

Mike Arrieta: Oh, it’s crazy. I used to have a schedule that I would know. Today’s Wednesday. I asked my math teacher on Monday to go to the bathroom so I could do it again today. But I can’t do it tomorrow because I can pick up on me. So I’d have this little puzzle of knowing which teacher I would go to the bathroom and what they said to pick up on me. Unbelievable. Yeah. So it was my first real job. I had to succeed. I felt like at least I told myself that. So success was the only option. Failure was not. And so yeah, my back was against the wall. I think your true colors showing your backs into the wall and just something came natural to me. I had a big vision. I didn’t get Bob. I had persistence, perseverance. I had a big vision. I built rapport very naturally. I wasn’t scared to ask for the order. I focused on value, which in cutco value is recommendations and the long game rather than just a transaction. So I don’t care about selling Henry. I rather much so have Henry refer me to William and everyone else, ten of his friends around town, rather than just because I know long term I’ll always have something to eat first if I just focus on the sale and I run out of recommendations now I’m only eating for a day rather than a lifetime.

Henry Kaestner: I’m OK. Bridges through obviously setting up a fund and you haven’t set up a fund to invest in more mature businesses. You said boring. Boring is the new sexy. Williams says that a lot as well. But you didn’t go from knives to starting a fund, so bring us up to speed. You worked as chief of staff at some really, really important businesses. Tell us about your career and more established business. And I shouldn’t say more established somebody from Cutco. Can you hear me right now and think differently? But tell us walk us through your career, please.

Mike Arrieta: Yeah, after college, I went to Silicon Valley and joined a company that the CEO did a recap on called Lies. He gave me an opportunity, which is a great reminder of me to give people opportunities. He said, Alexander the Great Conquer the World in nineteen twenty one. I have high expectations. You’re two years late. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so we got acquired by Dell about a year later. At that point in time was the largest payout I’ve ever seen. Right. And I thought that’s the point, that I would be content and happy and have purpose and say I made it. I’ve never felt so empty my entire life. Right afterwards, I got the opportunity to be the chief of staff for the cloud group at Dell. I was traveling all around the world going to World Economic Forum in Davos every year, and I’ve never felt so empty inside. My best friend Brett Haggler calls me and tells me he just got baptized in Atlanta and invites me on a trip to Haiti. And then that’s where my Life 2.0 started. I became a believer in 2013, and that’s really where I started to live on the scales off my eyes and saw the world in a way like I never had before. I was able to love and see and experience in a way that before was no longer I truly Christ who lives and still lives in me. And it was amazing. I started following him that year and I never look back since. That’s where I met William right when I became a believer running the gates there. And so after that, twenty fourteen was a big year for me. I got married. We start a new story charity and I joined this company called DocuSign and I became the chief of staff then at DocuSign to the CEO there. And I was there for six years. We grew the company from one hundred and seventy five people and so I left in February of this year. We were about five thousand people now and the chief market cap of about 40 billion dollars. And yeah, it was a tremendous opportunity. And I realized none of it has to do with our own ability. But really got favorite was with my involvement with it.

Henry Kaestner: So Mike is really interesting. I mean, when you look at a company like DocuSign, Dell Time in Silicon Valley, DocuSign, having that type of growth, one hundred and seventy five employees of five thousand or whatever the case is, that seemed very, very different than where you really feel called now to be involved in kind of more traditional businesses that are presumably growing slower than that, growing profitably, but slower than that. But tell us about what you learned in those six years and how it informs the way you think about your career now.

Mike Arrieta: Yes, during those six years, especially when the chief of staff plays the role spans across the entire organization. Right. So you’re doing M&A integration, equity, fund raising, international expansion, launching your products, recruiting and everything in between. It’s like a little mini CEO role, which I just loved so much. And during my last tenure there, when I was operating a business unit, I missed having a holistic view of the business. Right. I liked actually being one inch deep and a mile wide rather than just one mile deep. And so I was really reading this book called Garden City February of twenty eighteen.

And it just talked about how when God created the world and in it he made us in his image to thrive, prosper and flourish, and he made us to labor and co create alongside him so we could get the kingdom of heaven and we could bring it on to earth and say it is good, it is good. And that’s just really spoke to me about thinking about people like my father and like my family to say how come they have not experienced that kind of culture or that sort of environment here in the city as it will be in heaven. So what would it look like if we met those people? Were there wrath, which is in the marketplace, in those service companies? What if we actually invested in those companies, service companies? And once we were investors, majority investors, we would have the opportunity to build a kingdom culture so we would radically pursue the enrichment of working class through culture. We would enable the business to make it beautiful and modernized and reimagine. And then lastly, we would help them with sales and create new technologies out of the business and everything else in between. So that’s where the vision came in.

William Norvell: We also McWilliam, jump in. That’s awesome. We’ll put that in the show, notes John. Mark Colmer, amazing book. Weingarten’s You Stole the copyright from him and double-Check, that one. But it’s an amazing book. My Faith and ERG starter pack is usually ten killers, every good endeavor. And John Mark Combers, Garden City. I think it’s a great head and heart combo pack. And John Mark really does an amazing job. He’s a guest pastor at the church. Mike and I went at Mike and I met as part of the random Alabama people that happened to be wandering around San Francisco crowd and someone ran into him. And as usually happens, they say, oh, I know a guy that went to Alabama, you should meet him. And I remember that little restaurant off of the street in San Francisco. There we grab a drink and then started, you know, along for. A ship that went through church, that went through Huxley, which we didn’t talk about in the news story in the Garden City, and it’s been tough on brother, it’s been a ton of fun to watch what God has done in your life, but mostly in your heart and in your relationships with Veronica and everyone around you. OK, so excited about Garden City. I know you’re very particular with your phrases, as we saw from your opening, and I know that’s something I always love hearing from you about. And so I want to talk to you about a couple of the terms you use to describe Garden City and let our audience into that, because I know you’re so thoughtful with what each word means. You say on your website, you say in your talks that you are purpose driven, holding company. Walk us through that. And I also know you did a lot of diligence. I want you to walk us through what it means and then why you chose that model.

Mike Arrieta: Sure. Purpose driven goes to exactly what Henry first started with in regards to it is more about financial returns for us. It is about true impact. And that is our purpose. That’s our ethos. That’s what makes us tick. So the reason why we exist is for our purpose. Right, which is to honor God and to commercialize the working class service workers.

Right. In terms of holding company, why do we choose the holding company model? For a few reasons. One of the reasons is shared services. Right? We believe that once we have a good amount of companies in the portfolio, we could be of value add to the portfolio companies by providing the back offices such as our marketing, legal finance, so that they could focus on what they do best. Right, which is providing the actual service and the operations instead of the office stuff which typically box them down. The other reason why we did a holding company model is because we want to share best practices across the companies. But the probably the biggest reason as to why the holding company model is we were not called to do a fund or a fund had an end life. Right. So most funds have a typical year structure of three to five to seven years with a couple of years extension. Right. That’s the way typically fund models exist, especially buyout models. There’s an impending event that you’re being forced to embrace regardless of the performance of your portfolio companies. Right. So in that ticking time bomb comes in, you’re seven years out. So we sat on it for about two years to say what is our approach that when we make investments, we have no outside selling date, so we have a permanent horizon? Right. So we basically modeled it of saying we buy companies and we have the ability to hold them forever.

Right. We never have to sell how that goes.

William Norvell: So that’s one of those things that I hear. And I go, OK, that sounds really great. It’s a fantastic model. I think we’ve already mentioned this your first time. I know you’re not calling it a fund, but fund manager or first time operator of an investment vehicle. Right. Let’s some of our investors. How did that track go out on the trail, raising the money for it? What were the pushbacks to it? What were the critiques? What were the wins? What do people find exciting? What do people not find exciting? Just walk us through how the journey went.

Mike Arrieta: I love these deep, tactile questions. It’s kind of what matters most and put meat on the bone. So, William, there’s I mean, baby boomers started more businesses than ever before in our country’s history. You know, you wrote the search on paper at Stanford, right. And they were the most entrepreneurial generation. Now they’re all in their 60s and 70s and they need to figure out something to do with their baby. I mean, business. Right. And so they got to figure out something to do with their business. Their son became an architect. Their daughter became a nurse, and they run an eight track business. What are they going to do? Right. They’re getting older by the day. The years are taken away. They don’t have a succession plan. They don’t have a liquidity plan right now. You would say private equity funds, private equity funds are typically too large to ever entertain deals in this one to five million dollars of EBITA. Right. They cannot put enough money to work in there. There are some lower middle market funds, but for the most part, they do not like to play in there. So you have a lot of onesies. And these players like great search funders or independent sponsors. Right. But in terms of committed pools of capital, that you can make multiple acquisitions. Right. And you’ve committed pool ready to deploy. It’s very rare to have committed capital in the lower middle market. So what we do is we raised thirty five million dollars from all mission aligned investors and we call down that capital as we find companies to acquire. Once we called on that capital into that company, we take a majority stake targeting anywhere between 60 and 80 percent. We like the owner to hold some equity and do a roll over. It shows us that they still believe in the future of the business. It also still keeps them as part of the team, which we believe is sacrosanct. So now that we have the business, that means we now have control of 70 percent of the cash flow that comes out every year. So this business is already making money, right? So let’s say we bought a business for two million dollars of EBITA. Well, we bought it at four times EBITA. That typically means it’s going to take is four years to get back our investment. That means starting in year five, now we profit two million dollars with no growth. And you’re 60 million. You’re 70 million. You’re at 80 million. Right. That’s the whole model. We buy existing profitable business at a couple times. Iveta, we call our investors capital. Our investors get paid back in a couple of years. And then once our investors get paid back, here’s a big question. How do they make money? We split ongoing distributions in terms of the percentages to investors and to Garden City, and we do that in perpetuity. So it’s more like a yield play. It’s more like a dividend play. If you’re familiar with the commercial real estate investment. Right, that it’s mailbox money, as I call it, it just keeps coming. And as a company compounds and grows, it makes roll ups and tuck in acquisitions or builds new technologies. The checks in the mail get bigger and bigger, so there’s no reason to sell. If you’re investing in Garden City, it’s because you’re OK with the model that we’re going to buy and grow and hold and you’re going to get distribution in the mail rather than when we sell this in five or seven years, because that is not our model.

William Norvell: Let’s get in. And I love what you’re highlighting there because it’s so good, right? There are different models for different people, both what God put inside them like you. And you want to dig into a company for 20, 30 years or so and investor basis who want to be a part of that. And that can be part of their portfolio. Right. I think one of the things we talk about a lot on this is especially the faith driven investment space. There’s not always right and wrong. There’s just different. And God is calling us all to different things. There’s nothing inherently, quote unquote, wrong with the 10 year fund.

Right. It just does mean you will do different things with those companies. You will use debt differently. You will look at growth differently. And to make sure that if you go to work for one of those places or decide to start one, that you understand the trade offs you’re making and understand what you’re going be able to say to these business owners. And on that, furthermore, you made another decision.

You have focused on the southeast specifically. So you have taken the chance. And you said, you know, I actually think God is even I don’t put words in your mouth.

You tell me if you feel like it’s a calling or if it’s just a good business opportunity or both. Tim Keller says ability, affinity and opportunity. But you’ve intentionally focused on that niche, saying this is where I want to build Garden City in the southeast. Walk us through how you came to that meeting and how that story played a little bit on the investment trail. And and if that got people excited or if they invested, even though they’re nervous of that, but they still believe in you or anything like that.

Mike Arrieta: Sure. Sure. Yeah. So really, Garden City, it’s like Berkshire Hathaway meets ServiceMaster, right? That’s the way that we see it is we like the approach that Warren Buffett takes by with no intention of selling. Right. Keep things very simple, especially on diligence. Right. Keep your team nimble. Allow them greater autonomy to do what they do. That’s the reason why you’re buying those, because they did something right. So don’t break it then. Also, ServiceMaster, where we love those service companies, as we mentioned, they’re very fragmented in nature, right. That they need some professional misandrist, great opportunities for efficiencies and everything else of that sort and then mix in a culture with Silicon Valley technology enablement. That’s kind of a four legged stool there. But to answer your question about the Southeast, personally, I wanted to focus on the Southeast because I’ve heard horror stories over two years of Prain into the insurance business about how demanding private equity is when it comes to diligence and business development. To me, as I mentioned, to start off with my mission statement, the second most important thing for me is to be loving to my wife and to be present engaged to my children. I knew that if we bought companies in California or Washington or anywhere else, it’s longer. Flights longer or earlier or later calls more time on the road. And so I made the decision up front to say we focus on Southeast. I could go to Birmingham, I could be back the same night. I go to Kentucky and be back the same night. So it was more of a personal thing for my kids family night for the longevity. Second reason is has the largest density of service companies in the entire country and it has the largest density as well of retiring business owners. There’s more baby boomers. They go to the southeast than anywhere else. Right. We also have great seasonality so we don’t shut down for the winter, unlike the Northeast. And then lastly is our network, our network of investors are primarily in the southeast. So there’s great referrals that we get on businesses, make it supports as well and deals.

Henry Kaestner: Can you give us an example? Just walk us through a company that you found what the story was of the founder. Maybe you can speak into the spiritual integration of the companies.

Mike Arrieta: Well short. Two examples. One, I’ll say that the owners and secular owner and the second one, he’s a believer. Right. So the first example of the owner, that is a secular owner, they own a children’s sports camp company. So this company does sports camps all year long. You did about five hundred sports camps that fifteen thousand kids went through last year. He’s. Older and he started this business because he was an assistant baseball coach at a university and he had to make supplemental income, so he started the sports camps 13 years ago. He’s getting older. He no longer wants the calls, the emails. He wants to retire. He realizes his own shot clock. His brother had a brain aneurysm. Right. It made him realize how precious and short life is. Right. And he’s willing to sell at a multiple of a couple of years ahead to get this off of this place so we would engage with him. And on that example, we would figure out which of our advisors are skilled in the sports arena. Right. We would invite them in on that diligence process and we’d say, you know, this is way better than we do. What should we look out for? What are they telling us? That’s true. What are they telling us it’s not true? Or are they not telling us that they don’t know about their own business? Right. And then we put together an offer to see if that works. That was, you know, Henry, it’s months and months of cultivation and there is no impending event for them to sell. Right. When you’re dealing with an investment banker or broker, those are companies that have a for sale sign in front of your front door. They’re willing to sell right now. When you deal with what we’re looking for, proprietary deals, it’s cultivations, building trust of money over time. So that’s one example of a company that has no spiritual integration that we told them, hey, we believe in chaplains, OK? The Senate uses chaplains, airport chaplains, teams, police chaplains. They are so value add every human deals with financial circumstances, marital circumstances, work circumstances. What is the downside of having someone who’s going to love on our people with nothing to gain or return? That’s my permission only. So that’s something that as majority investors, we would want to institute. We want to institute a new training to focus on how the pursuit of excellence. We want to focus on integrity. We want to focus on having fun. We want to focus it on a bunch of things that to us, we call that honoring God. They don’t have to be believers. Right. They do need to agree with the ethos that we have on what it looks like to have a humble pursuit of excellence. Right. Got it. So that’s example. And then there’s other examples that people are already believers and they already have a head, that they may already have a chaplain or have Bible studies. Right. Or tithe out of their profits and so forth. So there’s a wide variety of them.

William Norvell: Well, if Henry’s first love language is telling you his podcast is great, his second, his corporate chaplaincy. So I love chaplains. You are just you are just knocking it out of the park today, Mike. Well, you just you gave a great pitch for it.

Mike Arrieta: I’ll be honest. All the chaplains I was not very passionate about chaplaincy until I experienced it firsthand at a company that we did an on site with. I heard verbally what the benefits were of chaplaincy, but until you experience it firsthand, you could never truly understand and comprehend the impact and the value that it has.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, I think you did a good job of setting up why you do this. You know, as people if you love unfocussed and it’s something they opt into. And when we roll out chaplaincy at bandwidth, we had a couple of people, senior people in the company saying, listen, we know that you guys are really serious about your faith. I think that’s a little bit too over the top. And when we decided, of course, to continue with it. But when we introduced Jeff, who was our first corporate chaplain, we said, you know, we’ve got a ten thousand dollar bonus for those of you who adopt a child.

But I wouldn’t presume that any of you feel pressure to adopt a child. Right. And so same type of thing here. This is a benefit. It’s there for you to use. And as you ever find any opportunity or need to talk to somebody, know that it’s something you can do and you do it off site. But ultimately, you know enough about our family and our ethos, our foundational values of faith first and family, then work in fitness. We want you to be able to bring your whole selves to work. And if you have to check who you are as a spiritual person at the door, we’re not getting all of you. And that’s just going to be just seeing you as a person in black and white. So we want to be able to afford this to you as something for you to be able to see as a resource. So I love that you’ve picked up on that. And you’re right, you got to experience it. Some of the guys that had pushed us back on bringing on board corporate chaplains ended up becoming some of the biggest believers because they saw the way that these chaplains were able to love on people, on their teams.

Mike Arrieta: As an investor, our responsibility is to be stewards of our investors capital, and that is stewards, both impacts and financially. Right. I believe investing in chaplains through corporate chaplains of America what not that is a financial ERG you could quite literally calculate because you can say, well, what is the retention of this business pre and post? What is the employee satisfaction? How does that translate to customer satisfaction? I visited a dear friend of mine’s company in South Florida, best roofing company. The gentleman’s name is Greg Wallach. He’s had a chaplain there for the past 13 years. I was there in the morning when he did a little quick message to all the roofers, and I had a one on one with the chaplain afterwards. He told me I have four hundred employees that are there. About one hundred and seventy have put their faith in Christ.

And out of that, every time he speaks, his meetings are booked up about two weeks out because there’s such a high demand from people and we love him Amen as we’re coming near close.

William Norvell: I want to switch to this. You have a very interesting as we’ve gone through this, a very interesting. Niche and and focus, and it’s really cool to see how that’s come together manifested itself in Garden City. I know just personally, because we’ve talked a little bit that you found some other people and I guess we’ll call cultural investors for lack of a better term. That also called the vision that maybe had experienced something similar through their own life and journey and maybe the impact they have been able to have on a community. And a Drew Brees, for instance, was one who I think probably really just looking outside in. Right. I mean, what he was able to bring after Katrina to that place, I assume was a big part of why he emanated with your vision. But could you talk us through a few of those cultural investments? Have they been an encouragement to you, maybe some of the stories they’ve shared to sort of put some wind in your sails? Because, as we all know, there’s still a tough journey finding companies to buy as hard work and it doesn’t come easy. And you hear, as you know in your life here, a lot more no’s than you hear yeses in this job.

Mike Arrieta: Yeah, for sure. You’re smiling because you’re sure it’s such a messy, messy world, but it’s beautiful. At the same time, we’ve been very blessed.

It’s funny, William, we’ve known each other now for probably 10 years or a little bit less. And, you know, as an entrepreneur, you’re constantly thinking of things to start, right? You’re always thinking of things to start. But when the Garden City vision came to me on February 20th of twenty eighteen, I knew something different. It was this wind behind my sails. The doors were opening and I knew that we were on a high speed train that was never going to slow down. I knew that it was just a matter of time that God was going to launch us. And I think a big question mark on that was, well, will the investment come through right? First time fund folks in the lower middle market. Will the investment come through? And God has just flooded, flooded, flooded Garden City with Favre, financial Favre from missional and investors. So as mentioned, we’ve now raised thirty five million dollars. We have to criteria’s for all of our investors. One is, are the mission aligned? Right. Ninety five percent of them declare their faith in Jesus. They’re strong believers, right. The other five percent, they are totally aligned. They would love to see the Garden of Eden come into our cities. And then second of all, are they willing and able to be value add? So are they giving us the green light that they will help us in any which way or form introductions, diligence, whatever else it may be? And so they’ve all agreed to that. So, one, it helps us build credibility when we’re talking to businesses like we were talking to a company right now in New Orleans. And I was like, oh, well, Drew Brees is one of our investors. And they’re like, Drew Brees is one of our investors. Are you kidding me? Like, can we quickly go to management on site right now and invite him for Joe? And of course, I tell him that if we’re talking to a company in Raleigh, North Carolina, that Henry Gates, there’s one of our investors and they say, you got to be kidding me. Can we have lunch right now? The Henry Gates or you come to our lunch, right? Oh, my God.

William Norvell: Look, whenever you get to Florence, Alabama, I’m your guy just throwing it out there. I don’t have a lot of pull a lot of places. But I’m your guy.

Mike Arrieta: Exactly. Exactly. We’ll do a whole campaign there in Florence, but they give us good deal flow. They give us great wisdom. They introduce us to strategic people for the investments. They help us with diligence. Like I mentioned, the sports camp deals. So we have great people like Pat Gelsinger at VMware. Right. Maggie Walter. She’s a chairman of DocuSign, Lyft, Tiboni, HP, Tannebaum. I mean, she’s amazing. Just Korell in Kentucky. They’re Horde Chelsy from the Ritz Carlton. Right. The gentleman Lecrae more than you guys. I just interviewed a Grammy Award winning rapper. So just a whole variety of people.

William Norvell: Amen brother, nice cross production value. You gave us their go listen to FDE Lecrae and been Wilsher. Unbelievable.

Great story that Brett Haggler. We’ve had Brett absolutely Paramjit and Marshalsea. That’s right.

That’s right. You’re just you’re just you’ve just given us free publicity now, Mike. And well, and we take that to be very clear. We we happily accept that. Unfortunately, Mike, we do have to come to a close. And it’s always a sad time when I have to come to a close of the conversation with you. But in this one, we want to invite our listeners into where God is in your life today during the season. It’s always fun for us to see how God’s word is alive and living and transcends generations and thousands of years and from a podcast from someone in Atlanta to someone internationally or even in San Francisco.

And so if you wouldn’t mind sharing with us where God has you in his word and what he may be taking you through and teaching you during the season your life.

Mike Arrieta: I remember when I first moved to Silicon Valley, I was part of this. I actually met you there called legends Kleiner Perkins. And one of my friends and mentors, Joie Chen, told me he was a venture capitalist. And he told me every single day he leaves the office around five thirty. And the reason why he leaves the office of five thirty is because he’s exemplifying exercising his faith.

Right. It takes faith to leave the office at five thirty, go home to dinner with your family and then get back on at nine or whatever else it is. And I asked him. How in the world can you do that, you know, like how can you get the best deals and still provide the best returns? It goes well, if I’m only working just as hard as everyone else. But I’m saying that I’m a believer God’s basically just like a cheerleader for me. But I’m not truly trusting in what faith does it take for me to try to be the best investor but to work just as hard as everyone else? So he pointed me to Daniel, and I never really studied Daniel ever since then and probably never spent some time in it until last week. We had a company that we were about to go into Loai with, and last minute he tells me he gets an offer that’s significantly more than ours. And I had a moment to realize what to do. I could either be like the rest of the world and compete on price alone, which the price is all predicated upon debt. If you’re competing, it’s a secular buyout investor or I exercise my faith and I trust wholeheartedly on God. And so I’ve been reading the book of Daniel like crazy over the past five days. I’ve been studying in such a way of how a man trusted that God would legitimately save him multiple, multiple, multiple times, and how he eagerly prayed for God to intervene in his life and all the circumstances that he found himself in. So I am currently in the season of Daniel and just trust in the Lord like I never have before to get a place to trust.

William Norvell: That’s a good place to trust. Thank you for sharing that with us, brother. Thank you for sharing your time with us. Thank you for sharing your heart with us and in your vision for Garden City and just in just how God has placed you in the new FDE landscape that we’re trying to bring people into. And it’s just such a joy to see the different segments and the different pieces, the God’s pulling together across this landscape.

Thank you for sharing it with us.

Host: Welcome to the feature of an investor podcast, if you’re a fund manager, investor or financial adviser driven by your faith or want to be driven by your faith, then you’re in the right place. The best way to stay connected in the faith driven investor community is to sign up for our newsletter, Faith Driven Investor ERG. This podcast doesn’t exist without you, our community. One of the things we’ve heard the community asks for is help in finding great deals to invest in. And so we’ve launched Marketplace. It’s a new platform of funds and direct deals, everything from private equity and real estate funds. That’s from philanthropic to market rate deals made in the U.S. in emerging markets. Check it out at faith driven investor ERG for slash marketplace. While you’re there, please send us any thoughts you have about how this podcast might better serve you or any questions you have about being a faith driven investor.

All opinions expressed on this podcast, including your 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.

Daryl Heald: The big idea here is for us to see it as opportunity, not obligation. Right, so we kind of think that when you say investing, giving generosity, the investing side implies opportunity, right? Because we all like, hey, here’s a great opportunity. It’s right. Everything every deck built on that. Right. Every pitch is built on what’s the opportunity. Right. What’s the potential? What’s the upside? How much am I going to make? What’s the game? Right. Well, if we really understand scripture, which is why I ask you the why question on your giving.

So it’s not about the tactics of giving. It’s about why and why is the answer and why is important because the answers to the why question our beliefs.

Henry Kaestner: Thanks, everybody, for joining us again this week on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Our guest today is a friend of the podcast, someone we look up to and respect, but more importantly, someone we’re also happy to call a good friend. Darryl Heald is the founder of Generosity Path. For more than 20 years, Darryl has traveled internationally, sharing the message of biblical generosity in his role with generosity path. He focuses on mission related activities, strengthening and developing relationships with champions, facilitating journeys of generosity or jox and training, as well as encouraging business people to be generous. He’s here today to share his personal story, to give us a primer on what it means to be generous and explain why you never meet an unhappy, generous person. Let’s listen in.

Welcome back to the future of an investor podcast. I’m here with my great friend, business partner, confidante Luke Roush. Luke. Welcome back. Good to be here. Dude, we got a great guest. You know, a lot of times when we have guests on, I do some amount of prep. A lot of times I don’t. But most of the times I do. And I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t do any prep because I knew we had Darryl. And Darryl is one of our best friends in the world, is a guy that if you’ve listen to this podcast or at least a Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast long enough, you know that there are two major foundational faith moments in my life. At age twenty eight, I came to know Jesus through God, speaking to me through his word in a very patient associate pastor. And then at age 38, I got introduced to this guy named Darryl Heald. And Darryl came to know me and endeavored to understand some of my story. And then he stopped maybe two hours into it and said, hey, I think I’m following this. But why do you give? I talked a little bit about why I was talking a little bit about some of the different ministry things that Kimberly and I were involved in at the time. We were given probably 20 percent of why we thought there’s a special place in heaven for the double tither. You get box seats at Angel games or something like that. There’s something in it for me, undoubtedly. And that simple question from Darryl sent me, Raylan, and sent me back to Scripture and allowed me to just have a completely different and renewed relationship with God. And I’m forever grateful to Darryl for that. I wanted to get involved in the ministries that he was running. He’s a co-founder of Generous Giving, founder of Generosity Path, and he loves bringing the biblical message of generosity to people as they come to know God more fully. And it’s a great message. And I love our friendship and our partnership in ministry and so many other things. He formative in the starting of sovereigns, capital and his journey with us through every step of the way. And it is an embarrassment and an oversight that we have not had him on the program, any of our programs. So I’m really grateful. Thank you for join us. Maybe we’ll start off by talking about a ministry that is really important to you at this time of year that has nothing to do with generosity or actually it has everything to do with generosity, smoking for Jesus. What is it?

Daryl Heald: I don’t get some smoking for Jesus. All right. We’re diving right in. This is one of my favorite topics. Well, I’m a Texan and I think it’s just in our blood to smoke meat. And I tell you, it was I mean, just one of these amazing gifts twelve years ago that God gave me a friend here in town, man named Big Kenneth Johnson, who also loves to smoke, mate. He’s a Tennessee. And and, you know, through God’s providence, he brought us together. And we are at lunch one day. And I said, you know, Kenneth, what’s your dream? And he said, you know, there’s a lot of people hurting out there.

And, you know, I like to help him.

And his brother’s a great preacher and things like that because I’m not a preacher. He’s I just like smoked meat. And I said, I think we got something like we got something there. And so we started smoking for Jesus and we just started would take our smokers and we’d go into some of the housing projects and. We said our smokers just brought the aroma of Christ, and if you want to draw a crowd said, you know, you got three components that will always draw a crowd smoke, fire and meat, and you will draw a crowd. And sure enough, he did. And he was the oldest of 13 kids, no father. He grew up in these different housing projects back in the civil rights era and 10 years older, me, one of my mentors and best friends, he went to be with the Lord last year. A huge loss for me there. But we continue the ministry. We just smoke. Two hundred and forty turkeys for Thanksgiving takes us about forty two hours of continuous smoking. We’re hoping to do three hundred at Christmas and it was very interesting. We took Kenneth, we just had a notebook and his distribution system is he would call up different people he knew. That worked with refugees or worked with widows or worked with homeless people, teachers at school that knew kids that were in trouble and needed help, it was just a hand ledger. And so for 12 years, we have his notes from these hand ledgers, and that’s what we went off of this year. His wife, Connie, just worked off that ledger and called all the people and said how many turkeys you need? And they would say, well, I need five. I need eight, I need six. And we welcome and that’s our gift to the community and we feed. Well, covid has been a terrible year for us. Last year we had twenty seven events and fed well over ten thousand people a year. And yeah, just a simple history of loving people this way and being able to do it with our past and we just stay up all night smoking butts.

And what meat would you say most resembles the aroma of Christ?

Well, so we always have this, you know, people that know barbecue, which I just said, I’m a Texan. He’s a Tennessean. The big rivals here are brisket versus pork butt and pulled pork versus the brisket. So I’m a beef guy. And so, you know, we didn’t argue too often, but basically I did the beef and he did the pork and it was a good teamwork.

Luke Roush: That’s awesome. Body of Christ in action.

Henry Kaestner: That’s right. So we started talking at the outset about the impact you’ve had in my life and in others lives. And it comes down to this concept that I think is really important for the faith driven investor. And on one hand, somebody might say, what is investing have to do with generosity and at one glance kind of their distant cousins? Yes, they have to do with money. And yes, there’s faith in there somewhere. But I think that we’re coming to understand with time that it’s all kind of lumped up into the same concept. And I’m hoping that you might be able to help us unpack that a little bit and refine it a little bit, because my sense is that it’s a similar DNA and similar heart posture that allows for somebody to be a good faith driven investor as well as a generous person. And maybe you can help us sort through that. What’s a heart posture? What’s a mindset? Somebody is listening as podcast and saying, what does it mean to be a feature investor? Where do I start? How would you help them with that?

Daryl Heald: Yeah, well, I don’t think they’re distant cousins at all. I think they’re the same. But I think the big idea here is for us to see it as opportunity, not obligation. So we kind of think that when you say investing, giving generosity, the investing side implies opportunity, right? Because we all like, hey, here’s a great opportunity and. Right everything. Every decs built on that. Right. Every pitch is built on what’s the opportunity. Right. What’s the potential? What’s the upside? How much am I going to make? What’s the game? Right. Well, if we really understand scripture, which is why I ask you the why question on your giving.

So it’s not about the tactics of giving. It’s about why and why is it answering? Why is important?

Because the answers to the why question our belief. And so none of us act on unbelief. We only act on belief. But here’s where I want to make the connection is it is all about the investment because it’s all about our stewardship. One hundred percent. Right. So we have a hundred percent that whatever God has entrusted to us as a steward. But the big idea is not like, well, now you’re obligated as a steward to do well and you better do good. Otherwise, I’m going to you know, I’m going to get you know, it’s really about the opportunity I’m giving you to be the steward. And so it’s about allocation. Right. And so it’s all about to me, investment is the same. Meaning whether you’re investing in a for profit or you’re investing in a ministry in the kingdom, right. Because to me it’s all about queendom investment. And so then it’s allocation into different types of asset classes on this, and that’s where I think we hurt ourselves when we bifurcate it, because then we think differently. We allocate differently. If I’m saying, oh, this is a for profit investment and this is my type of return, and then I have this conversation, oh, this is now a different conversation. If it’s to a ministry and this is right pocket, left pocket, never the twain shall meet.

Henry Kaestner: And just the whole process is different when you’re suggesting that it’s not it’s the same type of fundamental process to endeavor to understand how do I steward and how do I lean into this opera? And I think you mentioned something really important there is that I think the two oftentimes people think, well, it’s an obligation. And I think that there is an element of us being held accountable. But that’s not the way God designed a guy designed us, gave us an opportunity to participate in the work that he is doing in his kingdom. And we can participate alongside. And you’re suggesting there’s that type of mindset that can guide both our giving and our investing?

Daryl Heald: That’s right. Well, I think we have one hundred dollars and how we choose to allocate that in a stewardship side. Because here’s the fun thing is a lot of the different entrepreneurs that we see here in the US that are faith driven, we see globally that are faith driven, the lines have begun to blur, actually, even between what is traditional ministry, what is a traditional investment, you know, from a philosophical side or learned a lot from a friend that works at the Omidyar Network, Randy Newcome, and he told me how the Amedi are set up their investment. They said, look, this is not, you know, so typically you go looking for money from the Omidyar’s and you say, well, if you’re a for profit, you go talk to these people. You’re not for profit. You go talk with these people. What beer are figured out is Nagas know, I want great people with great ideas and in the continuum of capital, I’ll figure out what type of capital I need to allocate to it. But I see it all the same. And I think that’s where we’ve kind of traditionally bifurcated this. I think this is all about Kingdome investment here, regardless of whether it’s a not for profit or for profit entity.

Luke Roush: So as as you think about some things that are maybe better capitalized with for profit dollars and other things that are better capitalized, and what’s your methodology? Darrel’s you think about kind of what goes into what bucket, because the concern might be that you got something that really should be for profit, but somebody just wants a better valuation. So they end up kind of cassin is kind of a non profit deal or vice versa. How do you think about that just in your own practice?

Daryl Heald: Well, I think there can be. This was the interesting thing that I actually learned again from the middle class is there’s this continuum of capital. So you can take a great person with a great idea that in some ways sometimes has started maybe as not for profit, maybe in the in some of the early, early stages. It might have done that. There are actually a number of what I’m beginning to see are actually either for profits or not for profits, attaching the complementary organizational structure to it. Like, for example, news story has started a venture capital fund, which is a not for profit, but they’ve created a for profit venture capital fund to fund innovation in the building space, because if their big idea on the nonprofit side is to solve the homeless issue, provide great housing to people globally, they realize that in some ways you almost can’t get to it in the traditional nonprofit way. And this is where my experience, too, is the difference between, like you have again, this bifurcation. You have two pocket books of what I have to give to a ministry and what I have to invest in a great deal. Well, what I’ve seen is it’s typically a huge multiple of what someone’s willing to invest in a great deal versus what they’re willing to give.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, well, you know, there’s something there that I think is really powerful and I want to make sure that we don’t pass over it too quickly because otherwise we might go onto a different subject. You’re suggesting that there’s a big difference between a bottom up approach, which is the way that most crossfires think about versus a top down approach. So here, what a bottom up approach means. OK, I have a certain amount of money that I’m going to give this year and have a certain amount of money I’m going to invest this year. OK, how am I going to invest it?

Where am I going to get the return? And then you’re saying, no, no, no, no. Top down. What are the causes? What are the things you care about? What are the problems you’re trying to solve? Start there, go to people, find out what’s the best way, what are the best ideas that are out there. And if you do that, you start based on where God is calling you, whether it’s justice related or whatever it is, maybe it’s housing related, whatever this space is, if you’re looking for the best ideas, if you get ten of them, you can come back and there are going to be. Investment ideas, and they’re going to be giving opportunities. That’s right. Let’s start off with the cause and the passion you have first, and that’s the top down approach.

Daryl Heald: I like that as well said. Yeah, it is.

Luke Roush: Whatever. So, Daryl, just to kind of ask a follow up to something that we let off with, in your experience, what’s kind of the number one thing that keeps people from being generous?

Well, I think it’s fear. I mean, there’s a number of different other issues, but I would say at the base, a lot of it, it’s fear and it’s almost like fear of the unknown.

Henry Kaestner: Maybe you could share some stories about some of the people that you’ve worked with that have given too much money away and are now living despondent and homeless. Paint the worst picture for us. How many times have you seen that happen where people say cash gave away too much money three years ago? I really regret that.

Daryl Heald: Yeah, well, I do remember actually being in Northern California, guys. I do remember being there in Silicon Valley in the late 90s. And for those, they’re all still old enough to remember that time. I mean, everything was just going crazy up, up and up. And I remember I met with a venture capitalist, a young venture capitalist, and, of course, everything he’d been given, which is multiplying like crazy. But I had been in this conversation with him about his giving. And so I said, well, OK, great. So you’re making all this money, has your giving. And he goes, have you not heard me? He goes, I chilliness, I’m killing. I’m making 70, 80, 90 percent on my money. Why would I give it right now? Why would I give it right now in an badami in these early days, I was like, well, OK, but I said, here’s the risk you run right, is what we think is one since the great temporal investment. Right. And he was making a good point. Hey, how much do I let this kind of run before I do give it? And I said. You know, that’s legitimate, right? So I get a bigger number to give later, and I said, yeah, the only risk I see in this is that we are at once competing against maybe what a kingdom return is, which we know from a biblical size thirty six to one hundred forty three thousand six thousand ten thousand percent. So when he was, I think, very confident about what he had, but I do remember a follow up conversation. And as you all remember what happened in two thousand. Right. The incredible intimately crash. And it was a very interesting, sobering conversation. But to his credit, he’s like, all right, I get it.

I get it. Now, he said, look, maybe I was riding this a little too strong. And he said, I do regret not giving.

Henry Kaestner: No, because is interesting, you said the thirty six hundred fold and that is that OK, so you are so confident in your ability to make money that, by the way, that’s probably the first sign that the wheels are about to fall off in the market or whatever you get going on, number one. But number two is that that presumes that the rate of return that you have in human or earthly terms is greater than the spiritual return of what that money or that investment might mean in something that’s more attributed to the kingdom of God. So if it’s at school that you’re investing, that you might otherwise give a donation to in Ghana. Were that a new class of high school seniors might come to know that there’s a God who loves them and transforms the trajectory of their life, they’re just different types of spiritual returns. And you miss out and it’s what you’re doing is you’re missing out. And it’s not the obedience, it’s the opportunity. Yeah. You think that the opportunity of making the money in the market is greater than the opportunity of participating in what God is doing the world? Now, let’s come into a related and very important topic, which is, does investing with a kingdom mindset necessarily mean that we need to get ready for just mediocre returns and we’re just cash? We need to just prepare ourselves for single digit returns, lots of losses. What does it look like to have a when you go ahead and you talk to the and they find the problem that they want to solve or they see the opportunity in a particular region in the world, how do they invest that with excellence? What does that look like? And can it include the spectrum from philanthropy all the way to market returns or market returns? There’s just no place for that, because if you’re doing market returns, that means you’re exploiting something and that necessarily is bad.

Daryl Heald: Now, I think it’s part of what we’ve been discussing here is I think we have to broaden our spectrum here and realize in one sense, what are we trying to accomplish? What are we trying to solve and creatively figure out how that’s going to be done. And that’s that’s in all the different ways. Right? We’re looking for great people with great ideas. And then irregardless, however, they’re incorporated in what they’re doing and how we allocate those, whether it’s philanthropic capital or investment capital.

Henry Kaestner: Well, you’ve been involved in deals like Grab and CloudFactory and in others where you’ve seen where somebody comes out and says, I’ve got a mission. I want to be able to bring safety and transparency to a vulnerable population in Southeast Asia. Know, Anthony Tan starts off his business not as a business. It was a ministry. It’s going to be five Wannsee three. It just so happened that the easiest the best way for him to accomplish his mission after some counsel from some others ended up being a business. And it’s a business worth 14 billion dollars plus. Right. And so when you look to solve a problem with excellence, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not going to be able to deliver financial returns to. I think about Ashoka’s Kandarian wanted to be able to love on single moms that were trying to get their cars serviced and being able to provide software to auto shop owners. And he just took in a fifty million dollar investment from Bessemer. Right. Then maybe that’s a sign for us, too. So coming back to what you’re saying before, start off with the idea and then be open to work out what leads you. Then you talk to these entrepreneurs that say, here’s the problem I’m trying to solve, then you can come alongside them and in the marketplace you can actually get good financial returns.

Daryl Heald: Right? Absolutely.

Luke Roush: How do you think about so if what you’re really looking for, Daryl, is people who have passion, incompetency about tackling something, then you’ll figure out kind of how do you blend the right mix of at market capital and concessionary and or grant capital? But part of what we’ve seen make really good relationships is where when we as an investor fall in love with the entrepreneurs idea of where they want to go. Let’s make sure we don’t fall in love with our idea. Make sure we fall in love with their idea within the context of an investor really sensing a call from the Lord about where they might be called to engage or how they might begin the process of engaging in things that the Lords put on their heart. And they go out and kind of find the right people who are also called in that direction. Any tips maybe from when you talk to first time to Henry or others about kind of discovering their passion for why they give? I know there are some specific kind of missional focal points that came out of that discussion between you and Henry, you know, 20 years ago or whatever it was. Any kind of tips for how we might individually discover that with a Lord? You mean what a particular focus or passion would be? Yeah, because, you know, you can go everywhere, right? There’s a million different there going on in the world, the thousands of deals. How do you decide kind of how does someone individually discern where they might go?

Daryl Heald: Yeah, that’s good. Well, maybe one of the simple things that I’ve always used to help me discern. God, what are you asking me to do? And John Scott talks about discerning the will of God in a calling, has two components to it. One is a push and the other one’s a pull. And so he’s saying you need to be aware of contextually aware that if God is pulling you into particular conversations, you’re meeting these people and then all of a sudden some of the dots are connecting. Be aware of that. Right, because none of these things are by accident. Right.

It’s not randomness and it’s not by accident, but it’s is God’s sovereignty operating to either push you out of a place of comfort and pulling you into this new place and then obviously with prayer and then with the word of God and then the Council of Peers and some friends that can help you discern that, too. But I think to me, one of the things that’s been helpful has been those two components, like internally just being aware. Well, you know, I’m getting this pull and I’m seeing not by accident that this person’s about this this person is about that. It seems like we’re all having the same conversation. Then I should be really aware of that. That’s good. So, Henry, at the beginning of the program, you were saying that you have this transformational experience. When I ask you the question, can you elaborate on that a little more?

Henry Kaestner: So today came to faith and I knew that there’s a God who loved me and that changed everything, but when I started thing, when I thought about money, money from me was something that was a requirement of me. OK, so God has blessed my business should probably be more generous because there are other people who are not as successful in business and they need finances to run the orphanage or whatever the case is and so can win. I should give more money away and maybe the tide is the right level for us. And then we started getting more generous. We saw some more needs and we thought, gosh, you know, God bless us a lot. We probably should give more. It was a responsibility and an obligation and it was a way of us giving back. If you had asked me at the time what you did, why do you give? I may have even said I want to pay it forward or something like that. Would transform for me, and I think that it does have everything to do with the way that I think about things as the fate of an investor now is that my motivation for giving became one of a sense of gratitude. So when you ask me that question, it wasn’t like this all sudden, this light bulb and everything, just like, oh, my goodness, that changes everything. It was over the next six months, every passage in Scripture having something to do about money. It was amazing. It’s unbelievable. And listen to this podcast probably can identify with some of that and those passages like God taking five loaves in two fish and feeding five thousand. What does that have to do with money? Well, it had to do with the fact that up until that point in time, I thought that God actually needed me to underwrite the five loaves and two fish. Wait a second. He can take something out of nothing. He doesn’t need my lousy money. He just wants me. And then it would be messages just simply about just the gospel and the fact that I came to realize that, you know, why I might give is out of gratitude, not an obligation. And, you know, it took me from this life where faith was important, the real ramifications to just being alive and having a sense of joy. And I get a sense of gratitude. But, you know, with time and over the course, the last 10 or 15 years, especially as I’ve looked to invest more and more, it’s really motivated by the sense that you mentioned before, which is opportunity. And it’s it’s a special privilege. It’s a special, amazing thing to participate in the work that God is doing in the world, not because he needs my capital, but he invites me in. And it’s an opportunity to commune with the living guy doing some things that are really, really important. I love the stories of the entrepreneurs we get a chance to invest in, and I love the stories of the funds we get a chance to participate in. It gives me great joy. You know, I’m an investor. Luke and I are both investors. We invest in pattern recognition. OK, so there’s a good amount of selfless ambition that drives me now with how I think about generosity and more specifically, faith driven investments when I invest in something has some level of spiritual integration in it, and even better yet, a gospel proclamation element of it, particularly overseas. When I do that, I feel joy. You know what I’m all about getting more joy in my life. And I find that when I’m in line with God’s plan for my life and so I want more of it, I get more joy from participating in some of these funds, particularly some of the ones that are emerging now in frontier markets that have got spiritual migration and really making a difference overseas. I just get 20 times more joy than I do for my Vanguard index fund. And so, again, I invest in pattern recognition. I’m going to do more of that. And it’s just that’s the difference. It’s the first way is out of an obligation and now it’s an opportunity.

Daryl Heald: I love it. I love it. Yeah, it is is. I mean, joy. Yeah. We’ll keep moving into joy. Right. Everyone wants a little bit more of that. See, that’s some of the fruit.

You know what I think sometimes to how we kind of misunderstand giving because we think what we’ve given is gone and like there’s no inurement in actually the way God has his designed it is that there’s actually there is some future sense of however he’s doing the math of laying up treasure in heaven. Right. For Matthew six. But there’s actually a Daubert, you know, force here even presently to even described. This is part of, you know, this gratitude and this joy. Right. But so there are some other things that when you look at the grace of giving and we look at the and what’s doctrinally what that means, some of the other things that are new to us when we’re willing to invest in the things that are unseen, which are eternal, when we’re investing in the kingdom, then, you know, things like favor, things like rest, things like lack of fear, lack of anxiety, grace, you know, reward worship, all these things.

These are like true promises in scripture. And that’s why he said, you know, move into this. That’s why he says it is more blessed to give than receive. That was awesome, dude.

Luke Roush: That was very good. Very good. That was brilliant. That was really awesome. I want to ask a question, Dara. So one of the first times you and I really actually spent some time together was when you brought the journey of generosity to Indonesia. And I had a chance just to kind of see a number of people that I knew well really transformed through that experience. And then, of course, you know, the journey of generosity is really taken off since then in Indonesia and in the region. I’d love just for listeners to be able to hear and get a sense of the scale of how God has worked through those events to be able to just convict people on their hearts, what generosity means to them, and kind of a reframing as you’ve done with us. So, you know, how far is gone, how many people have been touched. So you’ve got to be an encouragement.

Daryl Heald: Yeah, thanks. I still remember that that was the first one we had done in that country. And as you know, because you lived there, the Indonesians are fun, man. They love to talk you. So when you’re facilitating this, I mean, sometimes you’re wondering, OK, or people are going to talk, are they going to share and so on. I mean, every time we threw a question out there, every. And around the table wanted to share, everyone wanted to talk, but the scope of the movement now, so we started generous giving in 2000, the global work started in 2012, and we’re in seventy four countries in thirty two languages now. So it’s just a testimony of God’s word. This is God’s message and his movement is how we’ve always seen it and what I’ve always stated and what he intends for his church. Right. Because here’s the other big idea of, you know, a lot of times, too, we have talked about bifurcation. Sometimes that investment and, you know, the difference between for profit, not for profit investing versus giving. And we also think between the West and the east and, you know, the developed countries and the developing countries. Right. And socioeconomic status and so on. But ultimately, we all have been created and designed to be givers and receivers. And one of the most exciting things that we’ve seen in this movement globally has been generosity, stories that I could share with you from Venezuela and Zimbabwe and Romania and India and Nepal and places that we would normally think, OK, wait a minute. Like I just got a letter the other day from a guy from Sudan and he’s been taking the journey of generosity to Syria and Yemen and in Iraq. And I was like, OK, those I never thought we would have, you know, the generosity movement, OK, might go, you know how many countries you like. I just unfortunately, I typically was thinking we go to the more Western wealthier countries. And I mean, my mind has just been blown the last several years, just seen how guys like my messages for everybody. And this particular the generosity message is not about, you know, socioeconomic status for everyone because we’re all givers and receivers. If we understand this, then we all, again, have the opportunity to not only be givers. And so we shouldn’t have these kind of hardening of the categories between people that are you know, they live in this country and they have this type of GDP or something like that. Certainly they receivers and I just been blown away with that. That’s the fun part. That’s the fun part. Again, it just kind of flips the whole deal on its head.

Luke Roush: Yeah, well, you know, something that clicked for me is that we might have something to learn actually from the marketers of the world. The marketers of the world aren’t focused on old rich people and younger people who are potential customers for the next 30 or 40 years. And maybe there’s something to be learned from that. As you think about let’s really invest in the next generation and said demographics are destiny. And there’s some truth in that. In a country, like you said, you know, if you can really see something with younger women in a country that’s as young as Indonesia is, is just one example. The legacy of that is multi multigenerational and it’s not counting down in terms of population, the way Western Europe or Japan or maybe even the US would be net of immigration.

Luke Roush: That’s awesome. Thank you for. Yeah. Yeah. Like 60 percent of India’s under the age of 35.

Henry Kaestner: Now they’re going to be more entrants into the job market in Africa over the next 20 years than India and China combined. So there’s something really promising about this next generation. I love the way that you’re investing in them. So tell us if you’re trying to figure some more of this out, what are some ways for people to get plugged in to this generous journey?

Daryl Heald: Yeah, thanks. Well, you know, we’ve had to pivot this year and develop all of our experiences online, so typically when we you know, I’ve mentioned the word journey of generosity that we commonly referred to as a jog. And we’ve also developed the giving plain retreat coming out of the journey, transformational experience to be able to apply it. So we’ve developed those online and we’ll be happy to to help guide through one.

Henry Kaestner: They’re really, really good. I did want the fact that you’re now doing them online aloud, Kimberly, I because we get kids at home. Otherwise, typically a journey of generosity happens at a really nice hotel. Somebody pays for it. This is always a very safe thing. Nobody ever asked for any money. And it’s really usually at a really nice hotel. But Kimberly’s never been able to go to one before. And so this actual format allowed us to do it as a couple. And it was really awesome. And I’d say it was every bit as powerful as the in-person version.

Daryl Heald: Great. Well, that’s exciting to hear. We are going again. Holy Spirit does the transformational work. But, you know, you can go to the Generosity Path ERG website and you can contact us and we can help you get into a journey, generosity, experience. So we love to do that for you.

Henry Kaestner: Excellent. We close every one of our episodes off, as you may know, by asking our guests something that they’re hearing from God through their time in his word. And it could be this morning, this week, this month. But what’s something that you feel that God is speaking to you about right now?

Daryl Heald: Well, I mean, one of the unique things is, you know, you and I do a reading group together. And so we’re in the New Testament.

We’re actually in second Timothy right now. Second Timothy, one second, Timothy to both. Paul speaks about sharing in the suffering for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of the ELAC. And he speaks in suffering a lot. But that’s just jumped out to me again, is to in a convecting way. I love buying into, again, all the things that seem good. Am I also willing to buy in and take a share of the suffering? You know, this is really convecting for me, you know, and as I’ve had opportunities to interface with a lot of our Christian family around the world, I mean, there’s there’s a lot of suffering and I see them sharing in that. Well, I’m just personally convicted in my own heart that I need to have more faith and be willing to share in that. The second thing is, is I’ve been convicted on my motives in whatever I’m doing. I guess back in Thessalonians talks about, you know, did you nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit. Mm hmm. And so I’ve found myself now using that as almost like a daily mantra. OK, what what is asking myself, why am I doing this? What’s my motive here now? Is their pride? Is there you know, is I after something that is just temporal? Right. I need to use that as a check and my spirit.

Henry Kaestner: Sorry, sister versus so obviously both of those are great. I will mention that people that might start off in second. Timothy, go back one chapter before the first Timothy six, which is probably my favorite chapter on giving in the Bible. Second Corinthians eight nine are awesome. But first Timothy six. But I’ll tell you, starting to go back through Proverbs with my boys. I’ve got three teenage boys and Proverbs 16, two and twenty one to speak to exactly what you talking about with this Linton’s. And it’s almost haunting to me. It’s all the man’s ways impure to him, but his motives are weighed by the Lord. So gosh, even if I’m conscious of vain conceit and try to steer clear of that and I think that my motives are pure, God really understands how sinful I am, deeper, and it just needs its convicting. And and yet, in a strange way, it’s also encouraging that there’s a God who knows me that well, who must also love me that much.

And that’s a great encouragement for. Thank you, guys.

Daryl Heald: Thanks for having me. I was a real pleasure.

Love, love, love all y’all. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us on today’s show. We’re very, very grateful for the opportunity to serve the larger faith driven investor community. Hey, the best way for you to stay connected is to sign up for our monthly newsletter at faith driven investor Doug. And while you’re there, we, of course, want to hear from you. We derive great joy from interacting with many of you. And it’s been very rewarding to see people join the discussion now from all around the world. But it’s also very important to us that you feel like this is your show and that you’ll help make it something that best equips you on your journey, one that you’re proud of and one that you’ll share with others.

Host: This podcast, it wouldn’t be possible without the help from many of our friends. Executive producer Justin Forman, program director Johnny Will’s music by Carl Chigwell. You can see and hear more of his work at summer drag’s dotcom and audio and editing by Richard Bahle of Cornerstone Church in San Francisco.

Host: Welcome to the feature of an investor podcast, if you’re a fund manager, investor or financial advisor driven by your faith or want to be driven by your faith, then you’re in the right place. The best way to stay connected in the faith driven investor community is to sign up for our newsletter, Faith Driven Investor ERG. This podcast doesn’t exist without you, our community. One of the things we’ve heard the community asks for is help in finding great deals to invest in. And so we’ve launched Marketplace. It’s a new platform of funds and direct deals, everything from private equity and real estate funds. That’s from philanthropic to market rate deals made in the U.S. in emerging markets. Check it out at faith driven investor ERG Ford slash marketplace. While you’re there, please send us any thoughts you have about how this podcast might better serve you or any questions you have about being a faith driven investor.

All opinions expressed on this podcast, including your team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guest 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.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back everyone, to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. While Chip Ingram, CEO and teaching pastor, was Living on the Edge, Ministries has been a two time guest on the FDE podcast, this is the first time we’ve had him speak to faith driven investors. Today, you’ll get to hear his talk from the faith driven investor conference. In it, he shares what the Bible has to say about investing as he challenges the bifurcation between giving to Kingdome causes and investing in faith driven ventures. Hear him ask How might God use you to make a new paradigm so that you build businesses? You realize that this is an opportunity to also give generously and invest in Kingdome impact. Let’s listen in.

Chip Ingram: I’m not really an investor, been a pastor for the last 30 years. And, you know, I’ve written a few books and invested a little bit here and there. But I’m here, first of all, to welcome you and kind of kick this thing off. And second, to commend you. You know, there’s a lot of investors that invest well and then they take their profits and are very generous for Kingdome impact. But there’s not many investors who really get that. What you actually build in terms of the marketplace, what you invest in and how you develop that can have as much Kingdome impact as even your philanthropy or your generous giving. And so what I want to do is three things. I want to give you a little biblical precedent for what we’re going to do. I want to challenge that whole bifurcation that, you know, when we give money to Kingdome causes, to church and to projects, that’s the work of God. And over here, it’s you know, we do a marketplace ministry to make money. I’m going to really challenge you to rethink that. And then third, I have a story. I’m not much of an investor, but recently I got to make an investment and everything that you’re going to talk about. I think my story might be a parable for the entire conference. So biblical precedent, a very familiar passage. But I’m going to look at it a little bit differently. Follow along, Matthew. Chapter twenty five. This is the third parable about being ready for the Lord’s return. Verse 14. It says, Ford is just like the man about to go on a journey Jesus is speaking who called his own slaves and entrusted them with his possessions to one. He gave five talents to another two and another one each. According to his ability, the one who received the five talents, put his talents to work, traded them, worked in business and got five more talents in the same way. The one with two talents put his to work and gain two more talents. But the one who received the one talent dug a hole, put his money in the ground for his master’s money. Now, after a long time, the master came back to these slaves and he business term settled the accounts. When the one had come and received the talents, he said, I have five counts, master. I’ve invested them and I have five more. And notice, he says, the master says, Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Very interesting. I want you to catch this. I will put you in charge of many things and enter the joy of your master. Most of you know the story. The two talents received the same commendation and the one with one talent is sharply criticized and his one talent is given to the other because he’s irresponsible with it. Now, I don’t want to teach this whole passage, but there’s a handful of observations in this passage that I think are of biblical precedent for Faith driven entrepreneurs. First of all, a talent here wasn’t coinage. It was a literally like a block of metal with value and. Probably the best way to get it is talentless, usually about 6000 denarii, and that would be are you ready? The one talent person basically got what it would a daily wage for 20 years. Sometimes I’ve heard this Totò and people think, oh, I only have one talent. Now think about not having to work for 20 years. That’s a lot of money. The two talent would be someone who said, how much do you make in 40 years. There you go. Here’s a block of money. I want you to invest it. And the five talent son was given literally enough money that if he worked every day, he wouldn’t have to work for one hundred years. Here’s my point. They all have very significant amount of money. Second, it’s each according to his ability. You know, it’s not egalitarian. God intrust different things to different people, according to their ability. And then he evaluates and rewards them. Not based on how much, but what did they do with what he gave them. Third, there’s a dual role in the ancient Near East. During this time, when Jesus is talking, a slave would almost become like a partner. Yes, he’s a slave. Yes, technically he was owned, but there would be a very familiar relationship. And so as he goes off, he has two roles. One, he’s a steward. This is your money master. But you’ve entrusted all this to me. Second, though, he’s an investor. And don’t think when he says he invested the five talents, don’t think like he he put it in a 401k or he put it in some financial institution because of the way this is written and the time and the group. In other words, he created a business. He had to invest in a business. So he had the dual role of steward and investor for the observation is notice the reward. His reward isn’t, wow, you had five talents. Here’s five more. Here’s more money. He says, I’ll put you in charge of many things. In other words, you know, when you’ve built a business, when you invest and when it grows, the reward is the impact, the platform, the extent. And what he’s saying to them is your trustworthiness has allowed me to give you an extended impact. And, you know, if you when you invest just like all of us and whatever we do, when you’re made for it, when you think you pray, you invest in this person, you help them along the way. You give insight here. When it grows, there’s great reward. But then notice, not only is there a horizontal thing that happens in terms of extent of impact, more responsibility, but there’s a vertical one now enter into the joy of your master. What I want you to get here is that investing, building a business, taking money that God has given to you and creating it in businesses with people that can really make a difference, that provide goods and services, that create jobs that make an impact on employees lives that are goods and services that that blessed the common good of other people. That’s very significant impact. By contrast, I’m a pastor, and so my only investments are, you know, most workers are like me and say you have A 403 B, right. And so I’ve put a little money out of my paycheck for 30 some years. And, you know, it’s a fidelity or a principle or this or that. And they send me a bunch of papers. And yes, by now I do have a financial planner. And I by the way, we need you to go into your website in Large-Cap SmallCap. I have no idea really what I’m doing. And I don’t know whether fidelity or principle or any of those groups, you know, I know that we’re not investing in immoral stuff, but I’ve seen investments in my life just as I need some money for later. I’ve never thought ever in my life, where are you putting that money? And could your money in investments have a kingdom impact rather than just I’ve taken my money and I’ve had a great chance to give an Kingdome causes. So I want you to really think this. How might God use you to change your whole new paradigm so that as you build businesses and as you coach people and as you develop people, you realize this is an opportunity not just to make money, not just make money even to give, but both in. Yes, make money so that you can give generously for Kingdome causes. But what if you invested in things that had Kingdome impact by the virtue of the actual investment? Now, here’s the story I want to tell you. And you know, many of you, obviously, you’ve invested lots of money and millions of dollars and and I’m a pastor. Right. But over the years, I’ve been debt free and and I’ve written a few books and I made some pree decisions about what to do with that money. And probably like many of you, when I was young, I learned to tithe and then I learned to do kind of proportional giving. And in the last maybe eight or 10 years, I’ve had a handful of times where God has allowed me to make a six figure gift and to the church building program missions living on the edge. And it’s been just an amazing joy to see God provide resources I never dreamed I would have and to see it invested in books in China or missions, things. And, you know, it’s been really exciting because I never saw myself ever as a major donor. And yet over the years, I’ve gotten to be a bit of that here and there. Well, about must have been, I don’t know, two, three years ago there was a young man who I really believed in. And it’s a long story, but it was an investment in a group. And my wife and I, as we prayed about it, had it prompting from God. Now, I’ve never invested in a company. I’ve never invested in a startup. And if you knew the whole story, you would know maybe why we were prompted. But I won’t go into that. And so I’ve kind of come to at this stage in my life where, yes, I want to put some money aside. But at the end of the day, it’s numbers on a piece of paper. I don’t want to die with a bunch of numbers on a sheet of paper. And this young investor that I really believed in, I took one hundred thousand dollars out of my savings and he couldn’t go full time on his startup. And that allowed him to go full time on a startup. Now, because he was related to Henry and got coached and mentored by Henry, he was going to be a faith driven right entrepreneur. And so built into his strategy was, we’re going to have ministry, we’re going to have a kingdom impact built into his concepts, for these are our values. Every time he does an off site, he tells the story. This is what God has done. These are what our values. He’s hired both Christians and non Christians. Another part of his story was it has to do with cars and repair and software and stuff that I don’t really understand. But part of it was we want to help people as a part of our you know, we have a dashboard of success and one of our dashboards is maintenance for moms. We want we want to help moms, single moms in desperate situations. And whether that’s repair, well, OK, so he got his first round of funding and that did really well. And and I was glad because there was a big part of me that thought, well, you know, I really believe in that guy. And if I never see that, it’s not like I have a lot of money laying around. But I thought God told me to do it, so I did it. Well, then he got a second round of funding. And it just what you know, like off the charts. Well, here’s what I want you to get. I got to be a part of his first emails. You know, when it’s family and friends, we would meet over coffee and he would talk about, these are my dreams. I got to do a little coaching just just now and then from a distance. Not the business side, but just the heart side. And then little by little by little, I watched him as he just championed his faith every month for, I don’t know, the last six, eight, nine months they have given a car, given a car to a single mom, but not just the car, but with discipleship, with meeting with her friends and family every time it’s actually in this building that I’m in right now. When they do the car, all the employees come out and they gather around and they give the car and then they pray for, well, now he’s got a group of people and one of the Eastern European countries and 15 or 20 or 30 people there. And it was a lady there. That’s a part of that company that had one of the only one or two outreaches of there’s all more abortions happening in that country than anywhere in all of Europe. And so now there’s ministry there. I’ve looked at first it was 30, then 50, then 70. All these people now have jobs. Here’s the virus. All these people, they have jobs, they have a ministry, and then he has these off sites and he keeps championing. This is why this is what God says. And you know what I realize I’m really glad when I’ve been able to give a six figure gift to ministry in China or ministry to help build a building at a church or ministry over in this place or that place.

But when I look at the investment that I made, I’m looking at all these families being changed.

Now, one of his employees lives very near to me, and I’ve seen the evidence in his life. I’m seeing moms get minister, too. I’m seeing international ministry occur. I’m seeing a whole group of people with a testimony to all their clients all across the country. And by the way, when needed, did that second round. I just thought to myself it’d be kind of nice to at least get my money out of it. I’m not sure where it’s going to go. The return on my investment was unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

And what I want you to know is that as you all start this conference, I want you to really be thinking about not just here’s my investments, how do we make money? And to be generous with it, I’m going to challenge you and you’re going to have great speakers to know all about this. I want to challenge you to be that kind of servant who says I’m going to give generously out of my profits, of course, but I want to be a part of marketplace ministries with faith based entrepreneurs that have a kingdom mindset so that the impact in the marketplace is not just money, it’s not just a return on my money, but I mean its lives and it’s transformation. And you invest your money in people. You know, when I read this little parable, I thought to myself, you know, think of the Jewish culture. Do you think the slaves went out and cut a deal with Rome in a business or with some gentiles? What did they do? They met some other Jews, people they trusted. They built a relationship and they built a business. And pretty soon he had one hundred years worth. Right. Big, big money. Now he’s got two hundred years worth of in. All right. And he did that because he built relationship and ministry and investment in people and saw the kingdom impact not just in the profit, but in the actual process.

Host: Thank you so much for joining us on today’s show. We’re very, very grateful for the opportunity to serve the larger faith driven investor community. Hey, the best way for you to stay connected is to sign up for our monthly newsletter at faith driven investor Doug. And while you’re there, we, of course, want to hear from you. We derive great joy from interacting with many of you. And it’s been very rewarding to see people join the discussion now from all around the world. But it’s also very important to us that you feel like this is your show and that you’ll help make it something that best equipped you on your journey, one that you’re proud of and one that you’ll share with others. This podcast, it would be possible without the help from many of our friends. Executive producer Justin Forman, program director Johnny Will’s music by Carl Chigwell. You could see and hear more of his work at summer drag’s dotcom and audio and editing by Richard Burley of Cornerstone Church in San Francisco.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. This is a special episode for us. They all are. I know. But this is one where we get to say that Faith Driven Investor and of course, is not a North American thing only. In fact, of course, we think that some of the very best investment opportunities to participate in what God is doing in the world are overseas. And if you’ve been paying attention to this podcast over the course of the last several months, you’ll know that I have a renewed interest in Africa. Sovereign’s Capital has been an investor in Southeast Asia, which is very clearly not Africa, and the United States for a long time. But it was a trip that I made to Africa last summer, first time having been to East Africa in oh gosh, almost 40 years where I came to understand and just really impressed by the amount of economic development and the extent of the Christian community in Nairobi. I had spent quite a bit of time in South Africa over the last, say, 15 or 20 years. But God really pricked my heart, if you will, just led me into really being excited about the continent. And then I read this book called The Prosperity Paradox, written by Clayton Christensen, who wrote The Innovator’s Dilemma. And his last book, right before he passed away was Prosperity Paradox, talking about the investment opportunities in Africa. And I’m looking through and I see that he’s got two coauthors. One is the editor, the Harvard Business Review, and another one is a guy by the name of Efosa Ojomo. And as I’m reading this book on a plane, I’m thinking, oh, my goodness, I wonder if Efosa is a believer, if he’s serious about his faith. And as it turns out, of course he is. And we had him on the podcast several months ago. He was a featured speaker at our Faith Driven Investor conference, and he was kind enough to introduce us to our podcast guests today.

And it is how we know him. He’s got a much longer name that he’ll share with us here in a second. But E Aboyeji has been identified by Efosa as one of the young leaders of tomorrow in Africa. And that’s apropos because Africa is such a young continent with so much potential and really, from a demographic standpoint, has more people that are going to be entering the workforce over the next 20 years than the rest of the world combined. And so it’s really something extraordinary when you consider the fact that India and China are not in Africa and South Africa is a continent that’s on the rise. And as we just as I sit this kind of frame before we welcome to the program, I do think about this great presentation that Finny Kuruvilla gave at the Faith Driven Investor conference. And if you attended the conference, you’ll know what I mean. If not, you’ll see a link to the Finny presentation in upcoming newsletter. And when he talks about Christopher Columbus and he talks about the fact that as he went off and to sail into the new world, he did that with investment from not the Italians and not the French. No, of course, people in Argentina and in Mexico would be speaking Italian. Today, if he had been able to get his financing from Italy, his home country, but instead he got it from Spain and of course, the new world, speak Spanish. And it does make me wonder and hopefully will make us all wonder what might it look like if Faith Driven Investor us are the ones that come behind African entrepreneurs and African investors? What might the continent of Africa look like over the course the next 20 years? If Faith Driven Investor is more specifically, Christian investors are able to come alongside of bring an encouragement to the entrepreneurs and the building out of everything from infrastructure builds all the way through to software as a service and everything in between. So we’re going to look at that and we’re going to talk about the opportunity for that with E! Who is the founder of Future Africa. And welcome to a program on Africa. Thank you very much for being on the show.

E Aboyeji: Thank you so much for having me. It’s such a pleasure.

Henry Kaestner: Well, as I mentioned before, we’ve had some episodes on the show dedicated to Africa and something we’re going to be talking about a lot over the coming months as well. But before we do that, I want to get personal. I promise that you’d say you’re much longer name and pronounce so perfectly, much better than I. But who are you? Where do you come from? What was it like growing up and going to school in Nigeria?

E Aboyeji: That’s awesome. So my full name is actually Iyinoluwa. So it’s like I am, you know, like I am. And it’s not spelled that way. But basically, you know, when I moved to Canada High School my last year of high school and university, my teacher couldn’t pronounce my name. So just started calling me E and that’s been my name ever since. So you can just call me E and save yourself. Well, who am I? I mean, at the end of the day, I consider myself a child of promise. A child of grace, really. My parents were pastors. They were very big in the student movement, used to be called the SU movement scripture union movement back in the 70s and 80s. And so my parents basically were entirely committed to service of God for the longest time. My dad actually currently leads the Foursquare Church in Nigeria. It’s a very popular global church. He leads the one in Nigeria specifically. And basically, I think, you know, one of the stories that my parents taught me was basically, look, what we heard from God when you were born was basically, you know, I will reward your faith when that’s to me by giving you a son who will become a glory for me to the rest of the earth. So, I mean, that’s kind of the prophetic quality that I operated, essentially, which is really about how do you give glory and honor back to God. Right. All the amazing things that he does, just as a matter of course. But by way of profile, I mean, I went to school in Nigeria. I had the pleasure of going to having an incredible education at a Catholic school achievement school, for that matter. And that really, really shaped the kind of person that I am today and what I consider useful for me to do with my time. And then after I graduated from high school and I was going to Anglican primary school, by the way, I went to university in Canada after I finished high school, did a gap year, went to university in Canada, University in Canada, went to a specific Catholic College of the university, even though it’s a public university that’s called St Jerome’s University, so also a faith based university education. And then through that period, I mean, when I graduated, I had started a company. I graduated and immediately sold the company I was working on throughout my university education. I think from about the third year of my university education to the last year. I sold it year after I graduated. And then I moved back home because there was a lot of work that had to be done to rebuild the country and I felt called to do that work. So I went home. Even though most people tend to go the other way, people typically immigrate from Nigeria to Canada, not from Canada to Nigeria. But I went home and then, you know, I built a company that ended up morphing into Idella, which was a home run. And then I built another company called Flutterwave afterwards and then after basically retired from active entrepreneurship to become more of an investor. I thought that’s what I’m focused on today.

Henry Kaestner: Tell us about some of these companies. Most, as I know Flutterwave, of course, Efosa had introduced me to it, but most of our listeners probably aren’t familiar with some of these very successful startups that you’ve been involved with in Africa. Where are these companies? What do they do? What are they selling?

E Aboyeji: Absolutely. So with Andela, which was really the breakout startup I got involved in, what we did was we recognized very quickly that. Africa had a massive, you know, talent pipeline, and like you just said earlier, more than half of the world’s working population is from Africa. It’s going to come from Africa over the next 20 years. And we realized there was no dedicated system for identifying that talent and helping them grow to their full potential. So specifically, if you think about it, in the US, I think schools right. In India, you have I teach in China, you have the major university exam, which kind of distinguishes the most talented from everybody else and that, in fact, the most talented to help them get to wherever they need to be for the betterment of the country in Africa. I mean, you could have a very talented young man or woman hawking oranges in the street, which is just a travesty to, you know, what God has put in that young man or woman and what he expects of that young man or woman over the long term. So what we decided to do was we would identify exceptional young people who were extremely talented. We’ll put them to a very high pressure training program over a period of four years during which after the first two years, they start to work for global technology companies from Nigeria. And then at the end of the four years, they kind of have the freedom to go work with other companies or build businesses or, you know, do whatever they like, really, after the four years is kind of like a pseudo university education, but extremely talented. And that’s what we did. We built that business from 2014. It’s still going strong today. We raised one hundred and eighty million dollars from all sorts of folks from Spark, which backed Twitter, to Mark Zuckerberg putting in some money as well. Al Gore also put his money and the business is very strong. I mean, last year you get about 50 million dollars revenue. We have about two thousand plus engineers on the platform and we serve roughly about two hundred technology companies from across Africa. So it’s now expanded beyond Nigeria, where we started to. It’s in Kenya. It’s in Ghana. It’s in Egypt. It’s in Rwanda. It’s in Uganda. So we’ve now expanded across multiple different African countries to bring things back to Nigeria a little bit.

Henry Kaestner: And I’m going to mention something. We’re going to get out of the way because a number of American investors have been invited to participate in investment opportunities in Nigeria before. This is not the first time they’ve heard of it. And I’m going to presume that these are not ones that you would all endorse. Correct.

E Aboyeji: Which ones?

Henry Kaestner: Well, there are a number of you might know of the emails that will come in saying listen, I’ve got an opportunity for you in Nigeria where some money…

William Norvell: This is Henry asking if you are a Nigerian prince I think.

E Aboyeji: I am not a Nigerian prince. But, yes, I understand what you mean. But, yeah, basically, you know, I mean, the reality of those emails is that the screen and under utilization of talent, because those young people imagine what they could do if they knew there was a better way. You know what I mean? I mean, if they could figure out without infrastructure how to send emails like that that were just stupid. And to be honest, most people don’t even open emails. So it’s actually much harder work than most people give them credit for. Imagine if you could teach them how to do software. You can teach them how to do business or teach them how to be content with that same skill set. I mean, it’s incredible. Yeah, that’s what you see here in Nigeria.

Henry Kaestner: I think by 2050 it’s going to be the sixth largest country in the world. Lagos is going to be a city of 32 million people. And I don’t want to talk about just Africa, although the different investments that you’re involved in are all over the country, as you just talked about. But they help us to understand Nigeria because it’s a misunderstood country, obviously, one that has a whole lot of promise. Make the case for Nigeria, but help us to understand what Nigeria is about.

E Aboyeji: I think, you know, when you look at Nigeria, what you see is. What happens when a human being is actively denied the human dignity that God has given to them? Right. And there is almost like a concerted effort to drown your potential, right. Just keep it under, you know. Let me give you a picture about Nigeria. Nigeria was essentially created as a corporate entity. It’s the first charter city in the world. Right. The Royal Niger Company arrives on the shores of Calabar. Right. And establishes itself and creates a protectorate from which it was supposed to be shipping all power and doing trade, ultimately kind of slavery, perverted that original purpose. And while the British government stopped it, a lot of people conspired to maintain the slave trade for way too long. I think according to some research, over a fifth of all the slaves in the world came from Nigeria. Right now, what has happened over the years is Nigeria has shown itself to be the best of black people and also some of the worst, as you can indicate by the emails that you see. Right. And what’s the differentiating factor? What’s the water column? The moment you get a Nigerian out of these circumstances and you put them in a position where you are valued for who they are as a human being and for the talents that God has given to them, it’s life and death, right? The same group of people who can’t get infrastructure right in Nigeria, the same country produced somebody like Occulus, who’s the general partner of global infrastructure, is one of the largest infrastructure investors in the whole world. He owns Gatwick Airport, owns trains and all that. The same Nigeria that can’t get the right kind of leadership, currently has a candidate in the running for the World Trade Organization and the person Engozi Okonjo-Iweala, right. And did an impressive job out of the other women and other leaders that have done impressive jobs all over the world.

Henry Kaestner: You know, I’ve heard, by the way, that of all the expat groups, the Belgians that have moved to the United States, the Swedes that have moved the United States, the Vietnamese, the Chinese of all the expat groups, the expat group that is doing the best in terms of earnings are the Nigerians.

E Aboyeji: This is very true. Very, very true. And so you can just see that contrast where it’s usually like taking somebody like fish out of water. And look, I wouldn’t believe it, Henry, if I hadn’t seen it myself. So in our program, right, we get this young people and some of them were earning like maybe one hundred dollars, right. Hundred one hundred dollars a quarter. Right. We’re just doing our jobs and all that stuff. In four years, some of them are earning one hundred thousand dollars a year. Right. Many of them have left the country, unfortunately. Right. Because they’re just so wealthy and so well paid that it would be a security risk at the time, at least for them to continue to live in the circumstance. Exactly. But looking for better quality of life or maybe starting a family elsewhere. I mean, perception is reality. I’m here and I think I’m OK, but to each their own, you know what I mean? But that is the case for Nigeria. You know, it is just a country that’s so full of exceptional talent that if you can just create the right kind of environment for that, I can only imagine how the world benefits from the presence of the people.

William Norvell: As you’re telling that story, I can’t help but think of the famous play, Les Miserable and Jean Valjean’s character of, you know, someone who when he was given the opportunity, what he was able to do. Right when the priest gave him a small opportunity, something so small as grace and forgiveness and some seed money. If you look at it from an entrepreneur perspective and what he was able to turn that into in the lives he was able to change, including his own. And that story just rings as you’re talking and so on, that I want to switch back to Andela a little bit. I think I can tell you’re our first guest that’s taken a big round of funding from Mark Zuckerberg that we’ve had. Tell us what that was like. How did you get his attention? How did that come about? What was it like working with him? What lessons did you learn sort of having him involved at that level? Walk us through that a little bit.

E Aboyeji: OK, I wish I had a more interesting story to tell, but for the most part, I mostly dealt with his money manager. And it wasn’t just me, it was kind of me and my team. That said so the story around how we came together was, you know, we wrote an article myself and my co-founder, Jeremy Johnson, whose father, Marty Johnson, is another amazing social entrepreneur based out of Trenton, Near Princeton, New Jersey. We wrote an article about I think the article was, Will the next Mark Zuckerberg come from Africa? And we wrote an article just talking about what I just explained now. There’s so much beyond energy and potential, this continent, but no one’s interested in mining any of it, and the world needs more of these entrepreneurs that are going to change people’s lives and bring people out of poverty and create all this microcredit for the patients. So how do we square this together? Well, we need to create these opportunities for young people so that they don’t all devolve into violence of war and all these other evil. And they see the light that can come as a result of the creative power that got just passed through entrepreneurship. And that article, I think, got to him somehow because within The Wall Street Journal got to him somehow and he reached out to my co-founder and I started a conversation. And after that conversation, those other conversations, I met him once when he came to Nigeria. We showed him around the facilities and we had a town hall with a lot of young Nigerians. We also had a meeting with the president. So we met. But as you can expect, with a lot of this stuff, a whole bunch of our relationships, really to kind of his money management. But that said, you know, his investment really did bring an incredible amount of focus to Nigeria. And over the last you know, it’s been four or five years since he visited. His visit has so transformed the landscape, you know what I mean? In Africa brought so much attention to what people are doing here that, you know, I would give him that credit, could really use him to put Africa on the spot, like, you know what I mean? Because he was a real validation, like if Mark Zuckerberg got on a plane to Nigeria then who the heck are you, you know what I mean? So that was that what it was.

William Norvell: That’s amazing. It’s an amazing story. I love the way you put that of how God uses people to shine lights on places that people aren’t paying attention to. So that’s amazing. And to transition a little bit, it sounds like that’s where you’re heading now in your career. Could you talk a little bit about the lessons you learned at Andela and Flutter Wave as well, but how you’re transitioning those into an investor? Tell us a little bit about the vision for your investment fund and what do you hope to accomplish?

E Aboyeji: Absolutely. So, you know, when I was done with Andela, you know, I had a revelation on my 25th birthday. I was praying. I usually go and pray on my birthday. So I went to a secluded cabin and I was praying and fishing and, you know, literally Mark had just invested. And I heard a voice very clearly, basically your work here is done. And I’m like, wait, calm down, right, like he just invested was about to get really interesting. I can have a nice salary, maybe find a nice girl to marry. Let me just leave with a little bit of stability. It’s like, no, the work is done. I have another assignment for you. And I went back really, really troubled and I wasn’t sure what the assignment was. So I kept praying. And one day, you know, I had a friend who was a client of the company and there were only local client. So we never took local projects because for a whole bunch of reasons, including many times, I couldn’t really afford to pay what foreign clientele will pay. And we really wanted to be able to pay well and give these people the kind of exposure that kept them right. So we didn’t really take local clients out like Nigerian clients, but we took this one. And one day he reached out to me, asked for advice about how to build a company. And I was like, yes, I think about it is what I’ve learned. And he said, look, I’m going to have a meeting in Dubai. I don’t mind paying for your ticket. Why don’t you come with me? And I wasn’t doing much at the time. I was technically already thinking what that message meant, business school. So I was starting to prepare to go out to business school and that just started as the journey with flutter waveh. And it became clear to me what it was, was we had built talent, but we had not built a way for that talent to be able to turn get talent into money, into something that you could actually live on. So what was happening was we would build talent. The talent would leave the country with new talent. The talent will go work for somebody else. But it could have become entrepreneurs because we had to build any platform that allows people who build software to be able to accept payments from all over the world. So that was what led me to flow. It was basically that realization that the job isn’t done. We built the soundboard with the people. Right. And so that was basically how we got into Flutterwave. And I was there for two and a half years. It was very stressful because with flutterwave you were battling the depth of Nigeria’s very corrupt financial system. I mean, the financial system in Nigeria. I don’t mean this. I mean, it’s just what it is. It was it was basically the foundations of the system is on a lot of blood. Like I told you, Nigeria was the original charter city, you know. So I think about all that money compounding over the years, blood, violence, money. It had a spiritual undertone to it. And I had to deal with that system and work through that system as a man of God and honest person every day. And that takes its toll on you. So when I left in twenty eighteen, I was just tired and I was like, I’m done with Nigeria, I’m moving to Fairfield, California, to be right next to Henry. I’m just kidding. So that was really what it was for me. And I was done. I wanted to be with my daughter and my wife and that was it. Right. We just got married. I was happy. But you know, I had I’ve lived in America for a long time. I’ve never had it as hard as I did in America those couple months. I felt like Jonah running away from Nineveh, you know, because I would open bank accounts and they would shut them down. You know, a lot of very weird things just happened. Right. And one day I was praying and I just heard a voice basically say, look, this place where you are is just not where I sent you. Right. Like, you have no ministry here. What are you going to do? Right. What are you going to do? You can’t even find a church close to you. Right. You know, so just go home, go home and do the work. And the specific word was, I will preserve you. There’s a person, Jeremiah where God says you know, I formed you. I created you and I formed you. And I sent you for specific purpose. Right. And I will preserve. And so that was the faith on which I basically decided right before covid broke out to just move back to Nigeria and take on this whole investing thing full time. Now, what are we doing now? What we’re doing is we understand where the country is and where we go. And we understand very much like Efosa probably said on this podcast that we need more micro creative innovation in Africa to be able to drag Nigeria out of the doldrums of government failure and all that stuff and really get it to a solid spot where everybody has access to prosperity and purpose. Right. How do you ensure that all these young people that we just spoke about can live a life of prosperity and purpose? They can make money doing what they love or whatever God has called them. Right. And hopefully they love it.

Henry Kaestner: As you bring this up, this is the book title of what Efosa wrote with Clayton, some number of people have heard about the prosperity gospel has been just a type of theology that. Seems to be most prevalent in Africa, although it’s not just Africa. It happens very much in the United States and it happens everywhere. Yeah, but to us, just a little bit about that, because some people hear, oh, Africa prosperity, you know, walk us through a little bit more about what you mean about prosperity and is there or do you see the prosperity gospel at work in Nigeria and maybe talk about some of how Faith Driven Entrepreneurship might be misunderstood or misapplied?

E Aboyeji: Yeah, I mean, I would say this much, right. Like the whole idea that God exists to meet your needs. And that’s the reason why you should accept to it has an appeal in an environment where a lot of people are poor. And a lot of people are in need and they do need things, you know what I mean? So, sure. You know, if I come to you and tell you when you’re poor and you need things that God is here to provide for your needs. Right. And that’s all you hear, you know that God is bound to grow in leaps and bounds. But, you know, here’s the thing, right? As an entrepreneur in this country, you don’t have the same mechanisms as an entrepreneur in the US, just like every single thing is a struggle of faith and grace. You know, from getting a license to even getting your company incorporated, there’s just so many things that can go wrong. I was trained this morning and I was thinking, God, we just had a little bit of unrest in Lagos and none of our portfolio companies were affected. That’s a fair point. You know what I mean? That you don’t have to worry about that in America because you’ve got insurance. But in my case, insurance by that actually paid, you know what I mean? So you’re essentially working by fiat because you don’t even have the infrastructure that folks on your side do. So I guess, you know, a lot of it is misunderstood because every action is an act of faith when you’re an entrepreneur. That’s right. So you really live and die by. But, you know, sometimes people might look at that and be like, you know, it’s an offering and this and that. But, you know, at the end of the day, the principles of sowing and repeat become even more important. Can I just say this small story for me? It is a testament even for me, right? Because when I moved back, I started this other company and I lost all my money, basically because I didn’t get the right on the treat approvals to do that business, which was basically selling online courses into universities. I didn’t get the approvals, so I lost all my money. I had one hundred dollars left in the bank and on this day there was a preacher. I moved home. That was how bad it was. I moved back to my parents home after a very expensive foreign education. My parents were getting laughed at and there was a preacher who came and he ministered and had a world of knowledge which was basically, you know, you’re basically down and out, right? You don’t see a future for yourself. You have hundred dollars. You put it on the altar and lived there. And I did. And honestly speaking, since that time, I’ve just been like this. Right, just on an up and up. So I think it’s really a very personal thing when it comes to prosperity gospel, because I think it’s like sometimes deep acts of faith can be mistaken as just moneygrubbing. And I think this is where the spirit of the segment really plays a big role. Right. Because you’ve got to understand for yourself, you know, is this somebody I should be listening to? Because these are the end times and there’ll be a lot of false prophets. But, you know, then you’ve got to listen for yourself. But I’ll tell you, every entrepreneur I’ve spoken to in this country has a story like mine because it is a miracle to build things here. And that’s what makes it fun.

Henry Kaestner: Tell us about kind of the infrastructure in the Faith Driven Investor community. Are there people of great faith that are investing back into the community. Generally is the capital that’s being used to spur on faith driven entrepreneurs is it coming from Canada and the US? Is it coming from inside the country? Help us to understand the ecosystem?

E Aboyeji: So, yeah, I mean, there’s some attempts, right? So for example, all and I think it’s important to kind of understand the demographics of a country like Nigeria, like most people are building tech startups like me. Right. You know, most people are kind of doing they’re penetrated or, you know, they’re doing their, you know, like just small business and all that. And what’s amazing about Nigeria is that the churches do aggregate their capital and try to be helpful to members who are trying to start up small businesses. I don’t think they wrap their head around market creating innovation just yet. And I think I’m a little bit. But like, you know, you can expect that this company capital, my church has capital. We just try and just come together and support young entrepreneurs in our country who are, you know, trying to make a change in their lives and trying to do stuff. And sometimes we provide them our facilities, give them the ability to leverage it for other purposes during the week when we’re not having a service. So I think there’s some support and that’s the level to which it is. What I’m really looking forward to is more participation in the. Innovation ecosystem, more building of platforms, more building of investment outcomes, and I think that’s one of the areas where I think Faith Driven Investor I’ll share this with my dad, you know, he’s excited. He listens to it sometimes. And I think there’s probably a community to build here because they are Faith Driven Investor us. But the bulk of the money in the system, like I said, is not necessarily driven by the same level of ethics. You know what I mean? Like, it’s a lot of it may not be the kind of money, which is why we’re very careful about who invests and who doesn’t invest, particularly at specific levels. On the whole, you know, we think about ourselves as a service. So, you know, so long as we know they’re not criminals, we do try and put their money where we can. But we are also very cognizant of the ethical considerations when it comes to backing businesses. Lots of great businesses that we see. And we refused to back because we just aren’t convinced that they’re actually good for people.

William Norvell: That’s great. And I want to pull out one piece of what you said because I thought it was so profound. And, you know, maybe somebody listening needs to hear that at some level, too. When you talk about Andela at the peak of let’s call it success, you heard God tell you your mission there was done. And that he had something else for you and you followed that. I just want to sit in that for a minute. That’s very difficult. And just for you to sit with the Lord in a cabin and hear from him. And that is something that I think so many investors, so many entrepreneurs need to probably work more and myself included, into a habit of, you know, you can’t be able to have that level of discernment unless you give the time to listen and to walk away.

E Aboyeji: In a place like Nigeria, you’re walking through a minefield, right. Discernment is everything because you could take the wrong money, you could say the wrong word, you could literally, just innocently do the wrong thing, and it blows you up.

William Norvell: And to be in tune with the spirit every day is so key. I want to move to future Africa a little bit more, if you could take us a little deeper into that. So how are you helping people go on that trip? I mean, you’ve got such a gift of experience. How are you helping people, maybe specifically sort of walk through that? What types of investments are you making? What size investments are you making? What types of companies? And of course, ultimately, how could we get involved, have our audience get involved?

E Aboyeji: Absolutely. For me, you know, with future Africa, what we try to do is and, you know, actually the inspiration came from a verse where it said, the stone to builders rejected, will become the chief cornerstone. And so for us, the way we look at it is basically Africa has a lot of challenges. In fact, that might be the only thing that has talented people and challenges. And for us, our mission, our mission is how do you turn these challenges into incredible business opportunities? How do you turn the fact that Africa doesn’t have a landline network that can serve millions of people into making it the biggest mobile phone market in the world? Because it’s one thing that happened, the other thing would be unnecessary, and that’s what we do every day. So we do that by connecting entrepreneurs and investors that are essentially turning Africa’s biggest challenges into global business opportunities. One of the biggest challenges, these capital, but is also a need for a lot of coaching, supporting entrepreneurs, helping them try and make new mistakes, not the ones you’ve already made, and then building communities around them that can support them and give them access and give them opportunity wherever it’s necessary. So that’s the work that we do at the fund. We basically identify ourselves incredibly. Our problems help them train those problems, those solutions into global opportunities, and then kind of marry the two together. By leveraging our capital coaching and our community. We focus on four sectors right now. So technology and talent, infrastructure, media and the environment. So just to give you a sense, you know, technology and talent, like you were talking a lot about applied research. So someone does something really cool in a lab somewhere. I want to take it out and help it scale infrastructure. It’s hard infrastructure and soft infrastructure. So hard infrastructure. We’re building a city right somewhere in southern Nigeria. In Lagos, we’re building a cable car system because there’s no subway. That’s not going to work. Right. So we have to build in the cable car system that employs people around. Media. We invest in new forms of media that can keep business owners and government officials informed because we invest in new forms of youth, media, youth focused media. We’re buying a radio station, stuff like that. Then we have the environment, which is how do you do better on sustainable agriculture? You know, we are a nation of smallholder farmers. We don’t have plantations, we don’t have big commercial farms. And we don’t think we can because, you know, land is so cultural, so traditionally out, you know, in small families. So you can’t really have that culture of a big plantation with lots of people because this is not how the country works. So how do you make that sustainable for people to continue to live that way despite the challenges with economies of scale? So that’s what we do on a day to day. We certainly see investment opportunities in those areas. We such that present them to our community of investors. And if you want to join, it’s really simple just for a future that Africa’s collective you fill out a form as an investor and then we reach out to you and send you a nice email. Thank you for joining us. All we do we don’t take fees, but we take a thousand dollar membership fee a year, but we don’t take like a typical two percent. Or a 20 percent cut. So when your investment is realized, we will wait for you to get back to capital and then we take a 20 percent target on that. So that’s how it works.

William Norvell: Super, super helpful. Thank you for walking through that. And I’m sure we’ll link to that in the show notes as well. People want to jump in and go deeper there. And as we unfortunately have to come to a close with our show, we love to invite our guest into a couple of things to share with our listeners. First of all, we would love to know where God has you in his word. What may be inspiring you today could be something you’ve been meditating on for a while, could be something he spoke to you this morning. And then second, if you could just share how our listeners could be praying for you and the work gods called you to do.

E Aboyeji: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I’m going through a really, really interesting time. And I’m just glad because the joy of the Lord is really our strength. You know, I don’t know how many of you know what’s going on in Nigeria, but, you know, we’ve had an incredible couple of weeks because the young people have been demanding from the government for the last four years that the government stop police brutality.

I’ve been a victim myself of police brutality. Young people in my network have been victims of police brutality. And many times we have to rescue ourselves, by paying the police, if you can believe that it kind of let us go for doing nothing, right. And, you know, young people have been asking for a long time. You know, it hasn’t been working. So all of a sudden that was kind of a number of deaths associated with police brutality, very similar to what happened to us. And there was a big peaceful protest for 10 days. And then, you know, as the devil often does on the last day of the protests, right before it was supposed to be called off. There was one last protest and some young people went to it and they were shot by the military and then the whole place erupted. There were looting, those fighting those all sorts of a lot of people have broken.

And I think really like where the country is. It’s an interesting moment because on the one hand, you know, this was a watershed moment for young people demanding to be treated with dignity. Right. Which is something that the country never really mastered. But on the other hand, there’s all this pain of losing people and property and lives and families being torn apart because of this demand, which is. Right. Right. And so I think for me, I’ve just been learning how to mourn that. And, you know, I write on this verse in Revalation, 21:4, when I had to speak to my team about the issues. I need a bunch of young people in prayer about the issues. And the verse basically says, and the Lord will wipe every tip from our eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. But this was the part that really got to me and I’d never seen it before, even though I read it so many times. It says there will be no more death or mourning, when the old order of things has passed away. And, you know, normally when I read this first, I’m thinking about the order of things as like. You know, eventually when Jesus comes back for us all and we go up into heaven.

But I never occurred to me that the work that we do is shifting the old order. Right. The work that we do is essentially making way for this new order where there is peace and people are joyful and people that live in impactful lives and people will have prosperity and purpose. Right. So I don’t know. That gave me a jolt in the arm that I needed because it’s really hard to tell a bunch of 20 something year olds that, look, folks died and there might be nothing you can do about it because we can’t go the violent route. So you just kind of you know, it’s very hard. Right. But, you know, it was like, look, we got to work for change. We got to work for change our way because this morning and crying and that is all part of the old order. We got to work for a day when there’s joy, dancing and rejoicing and newness. Right in whatever it is thatat we do. So I mean, that’s just what God has been kind of laid on my heart the last couple of days.

Henry Kaestner: Thank you. That’s a great perspective into a country that not a lot of us have access to. And yet it’s a really important one, I think, strategically for investors that are looking to benefit from a growing market. And I think that that’s what we all look at. We all wonder most of us aren’t old enough to have been able to invest early on in the early days of the Asian tigers. And yet people who did did remarkably well. When we look at the demographics in Africa, there’s so much that lines up to really think about population expansion and just innovation and Africa’s ability to leapfrog, as you’re talking about, over more traditional technologies. You’re talking about telecom. Was it looked like you just leap out and leapfrog ahead into the next generation of communication. So much that’s going to happen in Africa. And, of course, what a role for Faith Driven Investor, because not only do we see an opportunity to be able to make an investment into a green space, but we have an opportunity because of our belief that transformation happens in a marketplace to be able to do that in a way that’s got honoring and to think about coming alongside Faith Driven Entrepreneur so that everybody in Africa speaks Italian, so to speak. Back. tothe Columbus analogy, right? For a faith driven entrepreneurs coming out, rather than having to go out and get capital from the Spanish, they might get some backing from the Italians. And what does that look like? A Faith Driven Investor and Faith Driven Entrepreneur team up with just a goal to to bring healing and restoration, to solve problems, lean into opportunities and to thrive and flourish towards that prosperity that brings people closer to knowing God. So what a great leader to take us through that. Thank you for that. And may God bless you. I look forward to meeting you on the ground in Lagos.

E Aboyeji: Same. Amen. Thank you so much.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back. Live to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. I’m here with my great friend and partner in Sovereign’s Capital, Luke Roush.

Luke, welcome. And it’s good to see you, brother. We are doing this on both audio and video. We’ve got Bryce Butler in the house and we’re just coming in as we’re getting live online. We’ve got Bryce, who is sharing with us right before we went live, about what it looks like for him to have four daughters who are learning about Faith Driven Entrepreneurship and doing that out on a farm and some really neat e-commerce businesses. And we’re going to put some links up there and in the show notes. But we wanted to go ahead and talk with Bryce about what he uniquely does and some of the gifts he has and some experiences he has with Access Ventures. This is, of course, a podcast for an audience of people that are getting really intentional about storing their investment capital for the glory of God. And as we do that, we like to have stories. Luke and I like to get out and interview people that are being faithful and being innovative with the way that they’re deploying capital in a way that they are loving on their communities and looking for investment returns. And Bryce has done just that, and he’s done it for a long time. We oftentimes think about Faith Driven Investing and being in three buckets with the funds we look at. We think about funds that have existed with some level of spiritual integration in them. We think about the funds that are starting up and there’s a great new group of men and women that feel called by God that have operating or investment experience, that are launching new funds. And then also there’s a fair number of funds that are being retrofitted, funds that have been run by Christ followers and have had great success and are getting more and more intentional about how they love on their portfolio companies by bringing in things like chaplaincy and faith driven employee resource groups, et cetera. Bryce is very squarely in that first camp. He’s been very serious about his faith and investing for a long time. And one of the people that we look to and talk in at the conferences that were involved in and so we’re grateful that he’d spend time with us today, sharing with us what God has done through his life and Praxis ventures, what he does, why he does it, where he does it. You’ll get a sense that place is really important to him. So, Bryce, super glad to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.

Bryce Butler: My pleasure. Thank you.

Henry Kaestner: We love to open by hearing how our guests have their stories, what your origin story is, who you are, where do you come from to tell us a bit about who you are and and how you got here and how God and in your faith has led you to Access Ventures.

Bryce Butler: So my journey a little circuitous. I’m the son of an Army officer. My dad actually this summer retired after 45 years of federal service. Twenty three with the army, sixteen or so with the US attorney’s office and and recently as a judge. So I moved around a lot, actually, when I was growing up. I moved eight times in twelve years and so lived all over the place, lived six of my years overseas. And really the military is a big part of my life. My great great great grandfather was a sergeant in the union cavalry. And so ever since, as far back as I can track, there have been members of the military in my family. So it was one of those things where that’s what I did. So when I graduated from college, I got an undergraduate degree in economics. I went into the army. That’s what paid for my school. And so the timing was like 2003. So the ground war started in April of 2003 in Iraq. And I was commissioned in May of 2003 as an Army officer. So I was on tanks and I actually found myself being deployed to Korea. And so I spent two years on the DMZ in Korea before being reassigned to Fort Knox in Kentucky. And that’s what brought me here. So I actually live in Louisville, Kentucky. I’ve been here for about fifteen years now. It’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere. But I married a Kentucky in I am deeply planted here. I actually inevitably got out of the military after four years on active duty and went to seminary. Are calling from the Lord to step into ministry, didn’t know what that was. Didn’t really know if it was pastoral ministry, international missions, but really at heart for just learning more and applying my faith more deeply. And so I went to seminary, but I wanted to work in a church while I was doing that to actually put that into practice. And so I found myself at a church plant and this was two thousand seven. That was really on a pretty steep cliff trajectory of growth. They went from 400 to three thousand in my time there in about two years, one campus to four church called Sojourned Community Church in Louisville, Kentucky. And I just honestly, it was more I was in the right place at the right time. The more I use the gifts of strategy and logistics and operations that I had. But I became the executive pastor for about five years and kind of in that process learned a lot about church, church dynamics, church growth. And that brought me into kind of like, OK, Lord, I’m here at seminary. I enjoy preaching, I like teaching. But it’s not that doesn’t drive me like a lot of the students that I see around me. I really get jazzed by working on these complex problems of organizational dynamics and leadership. I started working with the Entrepreneurship Initiative at Redeemer, got involved in their effort as a judge, spoke at a couple of their conferences and just really got turned on to business for the common good.

This was probably two thousand, ten or so.

And just really it activated a lot of just my own gifting and desire. And it was then that I was like, I really feel like the Lord is leading me back to the marketplace. So I finished up my masters. I do a master’s in theology, and then I ended up leaving the pastoral ministry and working at a family office and so worked with a family that was doing pretty innovative microfinance internationally, also investing in India and East Africa and also their foundation. And kind of through that work, I learned a ton and kind of over the course of four years, kind of took those learnings and built what has become Access Ventures.

Henry Kaestner: So tell us about Access Ventures. Tell us about what uniquely does.

Bryce Butler: So Access Ventures is, you know, so technically it’s a 501c3. It’s a private operating foundation. So we’re not like it when you hear the word foundation. A lot of times people immediately jump to grant writer that, you know, just this endowed capital that is investing its resources to maximize financial return and then turning around and writing grants to organizations that align with their charitable purpose. We don’t do that. We are an operating private foundation. So we actually kind of are a hybrid. We function much more like a public charity. We run programs. We’re strategically looking at things like program related investments, things that are aligned with our mission. So we don’t write grants. We do activities as a charitable entity, but we also are endowed. So over the course of the last seven years, I went from kind of this idea on the back of a napkin to what is now a fully endowed private operating foundation with about fifty million dollars. And then what we do is we look to take all of those resources that we talk about this idea of a one pocket mindset. And so we really have been since the beginning saying like it’s not the charitable dollars that should be achieving our values and purpose. But how can we align all of these investment dollars across a multi asset strategy, whether it’s real estate, whether it’s private equity venture? How can we take these tools, i.e. capital tools, resources and identify fund managers, identify entrepreneurs, identify real estate opportunities, identify partnerships that are in line with our mission and that get us across that board a blended strategy, a blended portfolio, a blended return. And so we do charitable work. We do a low market lending. We do non concessionary direct investments. We have a block change strategy. We have a lot of other asset classes as well. So we look to take that entire portfolio and invest it in line with our purpose. And it’s a lot of fun.

Henry Kaestner: So that’s really interesting. I love this idea and I hope that we’re going to be able to unpack this a lot more during our time together of this one pocket mindset. And I think that many of us can kind of understand it intellectually at one level, which is that we have bifurcated our giving from our investments and maybe there’s an opportunity to bring them both together. But that’s hard work. And even though I obviously are maybe not so obviously, but I obviously believe in that. Just understanding how to do that is something I really want to understand more. And so tell me if I’m getting this right. Traditionally, Christians have thought of I want to make as much money as I possibly can over here in my left pocket. And then to the degree that I understand the biblical message of generosity, I want to give away as much as I possibly can over here with my right hand or my right pocket. And you’re suggesting that the very process of investing capital might accomplish the same mission’s goals that we had over there on the giving side. And so we need to be thinking about storing that capital in the same way. And yet it goes. Backwards, too, which is that sometimes when we might otherwise think about investing, maybe we should be giving. So how do you think so? You stored a large sum of capital. How do you go ahead and say, gosh, I need to have a certain return on this? What’s a framework you use to be able to process all of this? Is it just the impact now?

Luke Roush: How do you create buckets and you decide kind of what goes and what bucket?

Bryce Butler: Well, I think you have to start by asking yourself a lot of questions like what is the purpose of capital? What is the purpose of this capital? What do I need as a return? I think we need to be unapologetic about what we’re trying to accomplish. And so if it is outsized returns or market returns, that’s fine. Put it on the table and let’s talk about that and then say to what you’re saying, Henry, I think the old adage of like, make all you can save, all you can give, all you can. I do think there is a notion like make all you can so that you can give all you can. So we still need to do charitable work. We still need to do philanthropic activities. We need to support local churches, ministries that are sharing the gospel in places that are unreached. But in the course of making all you can, how do we align our values and who we are as people and our understanding of God and his universe and our responsibility in that universe? How do we align that with the making? Because I do believe that there are unbelievable fund managers, there’s Sovereign’s Capital and others that are intentionally trying to align various return profiles with Kingdom or impact orientation. And so as you think about your own personal net worth or your own organizational purpose, make all you can. But in the making, the one pocket mindset is thinking through. It’s really fundamentally. Do you believe that money is a tool? It’s a resource. And so how do we deploy resources? Right. When you’re building a house, you don’t use a screwdriver where you should use a hammer. And so you fundamentally do have to ask your question, what is the purpose? What is the purpose of this capital? Do I need this to be non concessionary? OK, great. In the pursuit of a manager or an entrepreneur that’s going to help me achieve that financial outcome. Can I. Is there a way that I can work to align that with someone also pursuing a business model or intentionally leading their company in a way that honors the Lord? And so I think your point on chaplaincy or the way we lead our companies, the way we think about resources and the stewardship of those resources or time off, or when you start to unpack what it means to really understand the dignity of the person and how that’s manifest in our companies and how we care for people, it gets really exciting. And then you get to work with these entrepreneurs, these fund managers that are really trying to think creatively about things, you know, like the tent making. Right, T1-T4. I think sometimes people look at like the ones that are the business models in unreached people, groups that aren’t financially sustainable as lesser businesses. I like to put it up and say, well, if that was their intention, it’s not necessarily bad. There are places where we should go into those countries and the business model may just be sustainable, i.e. we’re covering our costs, but it’s allowing that missionary to be in a place that they otherwise wouldn’t be. If we’re achieving our intended goal, our intended outcome with the financial return and we’re able to bring about human flourishing, the Imago Dei know that’s a beautiful thing. If the goal is outsized returns and also to invest in Kingdom-oriented entrepreneurs, great, let’s do that. But I think what we’ve got to do is start to look at what was the financial goal, what is the impact, and to look at that and not compare a nonprofit return on community activity that’s charitable and supported through grants against a technology company that’s scalable and looking for venture rate returns.

Luke Roush: So I think that’s good. And, you know, I always love examples when you talk about Access being inclusive and creative and resilient. You know, we recently had Jewel Burks on the show and she talked a little bit about less of a pipeline problem, more of an access problem. How have you kind of seen that playing out within Access in the mission that you serve and then maybe just elucidated some of what you’re pointing to there, Bryce, with a couple of examples of how you’ve seen that play?

Bryce Butler: Yeah, Jewel’s great. And it is an access problem. So, I mean, our name Access Ventures, I think at the end of the day, as Christians, I’m not surprised by inequality or Jesus as the poor will always be among you. So the issues of inequality that exist aren’t surprising because they’re products of the fall. It’s not as God intended, it’s not as it was to be. And so in our role as his created image bearers, like what does it look like to participate in rolling back right. To roll back these injustices? And so I think the notion of an access issue is true. There are things in our world that are unjust. And so I think as Christians, what does it look like to right the wrongs? And so I think for entrepreneurs of color specifically, they have an access issue like less than two percent of venture capital goes to founders of color. When you have white families in America, that average over one hundred thousand dollars in net worth and the average black family is seventy six dollars in net worth. When you talk about who has access to financing, that’s an access issue, right? There’s a capital I as a white man in America, I can go to my family and friend network. And more often than not, it’s the first place an entrepreneur goes. And I’m not going to have of a time finding capital to support my business. Whereas a black founder, they may have great social networks. Oftentimes communities of color have unbelievable networks. But when those networks, because of wealth inequality has existed for centuries, when that network doesn’t have financial capacity, it makes it very, very difficult. And you look at issues of redlining around housing and the modern day redlining around business financing and access to just debt through traditional means. It is an access issue. So I think as Christians, we’ve got to look at solutions, i.e. companies that are solving for problems, i.e. one of our portfolio companies is a company called SoLo Funds. So SoLo Funds is a technology company venture makeable. Just close the series a based out of L.A. and they’re a marketplace as an alternative to payday lending. So by nature, the product itself is helping to solve for a community issue, which is the crazy payday lending system that we have in America where people are paying two or three hundred percent to access a loan that you used to get at a community bank on a signatory. Right. You can get a signature loan for less than a thousand dollars. You can’t do that anymore. And so what happens is low income people are pushed to these check into cash places and it’s just this vicious cycle. So SoLo is creating a marketplace where the borrower can actually set the terms on the loan and then the lender, individual, peer to peer, can go on and accept that term and in two weeks. So it’s a great win win. And so that product itself is doing an amazing thing in solving for some of the injustice that exists. But then on the capital side, we’ve got to say there is an access issue related to capital. So Jewel, for example, with Collab, is looking at how do we get more money into the hands of black founders, female founders, because historically they haven’t had the same opportunities with regular mom and pop businesses, not your impact oriented one, like a solo funds, but a great company where there’s a decision bias because most of the people on the investment committee look like me or look like you and don’t understand perhaps the business models that they’re bringing forward or the type of capital they need to scale is different than traditional venture. So I think it’s our responsibility then to reimagine what it looks like for the capital itself, to meet the needs and to help solve for some of that injustice as well. We need both. And new models. New businesses.

Luke Roush: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And as you think about the capital that you guys are in charge of shepherding. Fifty million dollars, a lot of money, but the access problem is certainly a lot bigger than what’s going to be solved by 50 million dollars. How do you think about catalyzing others to step into that gap, particularly in secondary market cities, not the big three or four or five that capture 80 percent of the private equity?

Bryce Butler: Yeah, so this kind of hits a little bit of Louisville, Kentucky. So Louisville is one of those cities. And I think what we’re trying to do, we created a new regional fund called Render Capital that sits under Access Ventures. And really, it’s a strategy. It’s not a fund, even though it’s about 15 million dollars. We have portions of it that are managed traditionally like a traditional venture fund, because that’s what some entrepreneurs need, but actually trying to create the capital structure in a way that meets the needs of the entrepreneurs. So we actually have a portion that’s focused on partnering with banks, because what we found in our market is banks aren’t lending. And, you know, especially with what’s happened this year with covid and what’s just happened over the last 10 years since the housing crunch of 2008. So what we’ve seen is banks have retracted from startups. And so if you don’t have collateral, don’t have a personal guarantee. Good luck getting access to capital from a bank, even though they’ll tell you all day long. Yeah, we’ll work with you. And so what we’re trying to do is actually create guaranteed pools. We have a guaranteed pool that we created to try to attract local banks. Where you do the underwriting, you help them build credit. You build this relationship with the traditional bank and we’ll guarantee that loan because we believe that the entrepreneur is good for it. You know, it’s really an access issue. It’s a capital access issue. So can we put our money at risk and help support that entrepreneur by parking it at that bank and working through the bank to lend to that entrepreneur? So we have that going, looking at alternatives to equity, profit sharing or revenue based financing, which are some new kind of creative models on how to deploy capital. But then also because it’s a strategy, looking at a market like Louisville, we have to acknowledge we’ve got to be on some level as a market builder. So I’ve got to look at below market lending. I’ve got to look at even some philanthropic work through universities to spur innovation for future next gen entrepreneurs. And so what we’ve done is we’ve built a actually a pretty robust blended strategy that has philanthropic work, traditional equity, alternatives to equity guarantees with banks, main street lending. Because the other thing we found, too, in a place like Louisville, as you do work literally in a grassroots community like that, Main Street supports high growth, tech enabled companies. Talk to any high growth company. We were just talking about it before we jumped on the podcast. Austin, Denver, these entrepreneurs are attracted to. Places where there is a thriving cultural scene, they want local food, they want something to do with the outdoors, they want their people, their talent to have a place to go and be excited outside of work. And so if we only solve for the capital access issue of this high growth, tech enabled company, i.e. venture, and we ignore the issue going on in Main Street, how are we going to create an environment where that tech enabled entrepreneur sees this as an opportunity to grow and thrive? If the local coffee shop, the local ice cream store or the local brewery, whatever, is struggling to find capital, nobody wants to go where there’s, you know, tons of fast food chain restaurants. So we need all of that. And so we we’ve got to get really created around the structure of capital.

Henry Kaestner: So when you talk about the structure of capital and you’re talking about the different sources and different purposes, you alluded to something there that I want to look at a little bit more, which is that you find out that as compelling as some of these opportunities for impact investing are or more market return investing might be, there’s this third area, which is grant capital, that’s also part of the battery or the areas that you have in your quiver to address a particular societal need. So tell us about know Faith Driven Investor in a lot of people think, well, guess we’re going to be focused on impact investing, we’re going to be focused on market return investing. And yet what makes us unique in this podcast is that we’re all Christ followers. We’re trying to understand how God might have us allocate his capital, and that absolutely needs to include grant capital. So if you’ve got a large sum of money, you may be called to writing a large check where you don’t get any return back because of the ultimate return. In addressing the particular issue, you feel called to say, how did you do that in this instance? Because you talked about a number of really compelling investment opportunities. And yet at the end of the day, you said it’s probably not enough. We also need to invest in the next generation. How do you decide which programs to support, how to decide how much to put in that program versus what you would otherwise put in the investment pocket?

Bryce Butler: It’s a great question. I think some of it’s driven by the strategy, some of us driven by what you’re trying to accomplish. So for us, I’ll give you an example. I was talking with some folks recently about opportunity zones. So we’re part of an opportunity zone fund. We help incubate one call blueprint local that is now in Texas and Maryland and across the southeast. And it was kind of incubated off of some of the real estate strategy we’ve deployed in Louisville. But what I was sharing with this group was they were really interested in attracted to this idea of the opportunity zone funds. Right. This equity investment predominantly in real estate, in under invested communities. And this is a great financial opportunity. And it is it is a great way to grow wealth. But the real intended purpose of the opportunity zones is to reinvest and to build wealth, not just for the investors, but also for the community. And so what I was trying to help them see in which a light bulb finally went off with them, I said, what are you doing philanthropically? As if because if you look at the communities in which you’re deploying your opportunities zone fund, they’re all below market neighborhoods, they’re all low income neighborhoods. By definition, they are an opportunity zone. And so as you look at your donor advised fund, as you look at your own foundation, as you look at your own charity, who in that community is already doing good work that would support the work that you’re doing on the real estate side? You know, think about like the businesses, right? The Opportunity Zone Fund doesn’t allow for debt financing, but every single business that you want to go into that brick and mortar shop is going to need tenant improvement financing. Well, if the banks aren’t lending, what are you going to do? Can you create some sort of debt vehicle that supports businesses that might be willing to establish their presence in that community? Who’s doing early childhood education? What churches are in that area? What other local ministries are there that are supporting the needs of those neighbors so that as you’re doing the work in the opportunity zone, you’re working philanthropically or in other creative ways to support that work. But ultimately, the community wins because that’s the goal. The goal is to build wealth for you, but also to build the wealth of that community and the the flourishing of that area. And so leveraging that tool, but then wrapping around it some other ways that you can bring about some shalom that doesn’t exist or hasn’t existed there for a while. So, you know, as an example of a way that we try to think about it on the investing side, the render capital side, we’re just looking at and saying, look, we’re trying to solve for this problem. The issue is access to capital, regional entrepreneurship. And in order for us to do that, it has to be a longer vision. And so how do we create opportunities for the entrepreneurs that exist today? But if we want a thriving economy, thriving community, how are we setting the stage for next gen?

And so it got us kind of focused earlier and looking at high schools, universities and saying, OK, for us to be successful five years from now, 10 years now, we’ve got to be thinking about that. And that’s not something we’re going to get a financial return from. So we kind of start to build back. Into kind of how much capital, what type of capital, that kind of stuff.

Luke Roush: Yeah, so, you know, as you’re talking about Eco-System, which really resonates with me and it’s mirrors some of what we’ve seen in markets where we’ve invested, it’s not just sort of one thing that needs to get done. It’s actually a whole ecosystem of things that need to get done. Love to understand just how you think about sequencing. When you were first starting access, how did you think about what do you do first? You’ve been really active in real estate. You’ve done some other things that are exotic, like Bitcoin.

Bryce Butler: Well, I think I would like to at least start by saying we kind of made up a lot of it as we were going along. I mean, to be to be frank, like when I started Access Ventures, it was a side car project. I was working in a family office. I was working at a manufacturing company. I kind of had this idea to take some of the lessons learned that we were doing in India and East Africa and say, look, there’s some problems here. Could we just get creative around the financial structure? So I built this real estate holding company, basically borrowed patient debt from a couple of high net worth individuals that caught the vision and started putting it to work, worked with some homeless shelters to create jobs in the renovation of those projects. And so it just started working. And then like a year later, we had to ask ourselves the question, like, OK, what is this? And that’s when it started to become a thing. But even as it became a thing, we realized that much like ecosystem building, the real thing is these problems and these solutions are so connected. Housing is connected to capital, is connected to jobs, is connected to transportation. I mean, so when we started working on housing, we realized very, very quickly, I can give somebody a better home, a more stable home.

But if they don’t have a job, if they don’t have any education, you know, so we found ourselves in other areas, we started doing micro lending because the banks aren’t lending.

And so we just kind of as problems emerged, we tried to think creatively about how to solve for that. And then over time, as the capital grew, we were able to kind of build more of a cohesive, cohesive strategy. But, you know, it’s been the last six years journey to kind of learn some of those hard lessons and try to figure it out.

Luke Roush: Yeah, well, the idea of kind of making it up as you go along or at least kind of doing the right next thing is certainly not unfamiliar territory for us. So that resonates. And, you know, just the idea of not having to necessarily have a grand master plan on day one of how the next 10 years are going to roll. But you’ve got a vision and a calling and a mission that God put on your heart to sort of do one thing and then you do that one thing that leads to others.

Henry Kaestner: So it resonates with me as you’ve proceeded, as you’ve done this, though, and done the right next thing. What are some lessons you’ve learned along the way? And I know enough about you and your story and what actually adventures has done and how God has worked through that, to know that it’s been really successful and you serve as such a great model for people to be intentional about the local communities. But you probably have learned some lessons along the way. Like, for instance, in the early days of Sovereign’s Capital looking, I learned that you really actually should have a cap for every convertible debt loan that you set out. Right. And so we won’t make that mistake twice. But what are some of the things you’ve learned as you’ve gone out there and kind of just rolled up your sleeves?

Bryce Butler: Yeah, I think so. We used to be heavily invested in real estate. We’re not so much anymore. So that’s one of the things that we learned rather quickly. One, it’s like, what are you good at? What are you not good at? And I think we were successful in what we set out to accomplish financially. We got better returns than we had anticipated. And I’m very proud of the work that we did. But we’re not a real estate development company. You know, we worked with a general contractor. We worked with different partners. But a couple of years ago, we looked around and said, where is this going? And are we uniquely gifted in order to do this at scale? Or are there better ways for us to apply our team and our talents to address some of these community issues and what are those underlying issues? And so as much as we did a lot of real estate early on, we actually don’t do that as much anymore. You know, that’s what Genesis to the opportunities own fund and different things. So those are some lessons, I think.

Another one is being flexible, especially this year with covid, one of the things one of the passages I love is like we planned to God determines our steps, Proverbs 16:9.

And so I think there’s an important like we do need to plan the God term. So we need to hold these with open hands. But like, I didn’t plan any I mean, I had plans for twenty twenty, but the things I planned haven’t manifested in the way that I thought they would. And so how were we flexible? How are we looking at the impacts of the market and saying, look, what are we not doing now because it just doesn’t make any sense. And instead of being dogmatic and pressing forward on something that’s just not going to work, we’ve got to be flexible and adjust in order to meet the needs of our community. Ultimately, what’s the mission? What are our values? And the path might be different and circuitous. But ultimately, if those are the things that are forefront, then I think then we can get pretty creative. So I’ve learned a lot. I think evaluation is an interesting thing. We’ve talked about this before, Henry, and can I just run? I think defining at the outset what you’re trying to do and then how you’re measuring towards that, because I think in this exciting world of impact and Faith Driven Investor and Faith Driven Entrepreneur ship, it gets pretty sexy, but it also gets pretty squishy. And so we’ve got to get real about what we mean by that.

Henry Kaestner: Give us an example. What does that look like as you look to measure success and understand that indeed we’re making the progress that we think we’re capable of or that needs to happen? What is success look like for you?

Bryce Butler: Yeah, I think it’s having a conversation at the beginning so that it’s not assumed. You know what else Faith Driven Investor mean for you? And I think because the unfortunate thing is, if we don’t have these conversations, what happens is sometimes it can become unbelievably tribal. And so I have a conversation with my faith tribe, my denominational tribe, about what Kingdom impact means. And so that might be chaplaincy, that might be conversions or church attendance or, you know, dollars donated to homeless shelters or whatever it might be. But how do we expand that and make it more of an accessible conversation for Christians of all stripes to come to it and say, well, here’s my faith, here’s my values, here’s how I think about Shalom, human flourishing Imago Dei people, planet profit and how that’s reflected. And I think what happens is you have a more you have a more full conversation. You help an entrepreneur understand, maybe expand their understanding around what it means to be a gospel centered entrepreneur or Faith Driven Entrepreneur because they’re thinking as well. I need chaplains. Well, that’s great. That’s a great first step. But like, how are you paying your people? How much time off are you giving? Are you allowing for them? Do you have adoption services to help support families? Do you have I think as we start to imagine what this could be, it gets really, really exciting child care on site services for women to be able to work and to grow in their profession, but not have to sacrifice their profession for families. They start to make those choices, like what does that mean for you? And then once you define that as an entrepreneur, having those honest conversations with your aligned investors to make sure, because I think what happens sometimes where I’ve seen it go kind of squishy is one, it’s not defined. And on the other side, it might be defined, but there wasn’t a conversation and so there was an expectation that was unmet. And so the investor might get frustrated, like, I thought you were going to do this or why aren’t you doing this? This is what it means to be kingdom oriented. And I think where those conversations can be thoughtful, consciously determined, collectively understood, I think we’re going to see a lot more, I think, exciting future for both the entrepreneurs and the investors.

Luke Roush: And, yeah, the idea of the conversation up front and being clear about how do we want to think about impact. Otherwise you can kind of become whatever we want it to be over time. And we’ve seen investments that started out being for profit, investments at market that become concessionary investments.

You know, it’s could be on the financial return. Yeah, it could be like I’m just the definition of what it means to be Christian. Right. So I think because even in our modern world, it’s like a lot of people culturally are Christian. What does that look like? And so defining that and ultimately, what does that mean for you? What does that mean for me? Are we aligned? Yeah.

Luke Roush: How can we have that as a conversation that you and I have had, I think in the past, is this idea of how do we invite people in? You know, and you and I and Robert Kim had this conversation at some point about how do we engage within even SOCAP, which is a decidedly secular environment. And yet there are some common ground points that we can kind of reach with people. And so this idea of having a conversation up front and also being open minded about what impact is, it’s not one size fits all.

It’s one size fits one. Maybe just one thing I’d love for you to share for two minutes. And then Henry’s going to wrap us is if you could just maybe just offer an encouragement to the other Bryce butlers who are out there who are thinking about really wanting to have an effect and be used by God to effect change in their city, but are unsure kind of how do they get going? How would you encourage them to kind of lean in and start down this road that God’s taking you on over the last eight or ten years?

Bryce Butler: It’s a great question, a verse that I’m reminded of often is 1 Thessalonians 4, the goal of a Christian life is to lead a quiet life. And I think sometimes in scripture, God is this interesting, awesome, awesome thing, you know. So he has passages in the Bible about ambition. Right. And he has passages in there about patience and rest and waiting on the Lord.

And on some level, you could think, well, those are you know, there’s a paradox. But I think what I love about, like First Thessalonians four is like let’s pursue again, much like the planning and God determining our steps. I’m always asking myself, what’s the difference between complacency and contentment? And am I being complacent with the prayer that I have oftentimes is am I being complacent, i.e. burying my talents, not doing the things that I should be doing as a follower of Jesus, or am I truly just living into, like, resting, you know, be still and know that I am God? What does that look like to be still? And so I think as people are working in local communities, they’re going to have to wrestle in that tension. And because it’s hard work, it does require persistence. And so where I’ve seen people go awry oftentimes is they press into these ambitious goals and they forget to rest or they get a little complacent because they’re comfortable in the work that they’re doing and they don’t take some of the opportunities that they might.

So what does it look like to live in that tension of saying that I love is like how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I think some people hear my story and it becomes overwhelming because I hear it sometimes like, oh, my gosh, I don’t have 50 million dollars, so I can’t go do that. And what I would say is like, what small incremental steps can you take? You know, I started with a half a million dollars. It didn’t have to be that. It could have been far less. It could have been one home and just partnerships. And so what is a very small step that someone can take in investing in a strategic fund manager that cares deeply about the kingdom, adjusting their allocations, looking for real estate investments that have some value alignment, aligning their charitable dollars with something that’s different than just traditional philanthropy. So I think what are some of those small steps instead of getting overwhelmed by the enormity of it?

Henry Kaestner: That’s very good. And then you also touched on some of the things I wanted to ask in our final question. We like to finish off every one of the podcasts that we do across Faith Driven Entrepreneur Faith Driven Investor by asking our guests what they’re hearing from God through his word. And then also something we can pray for you about. Our hope is that this will be a podcast that will be an inspiration and encouragement to many, and it will be passed along and shared with other people that want to be intentional about loving people in their local communities and that people will listen to this and be able to lift up a prayer for you and Access Ventures and what you’re doing. But tell us what you’re hearing from God and his word. And yes, of course, let us know how to pray for you.

Bryce Butler: Well, I think I hit on a little bit, but just this notion of rest, I mean, 20, 20 has been this crazy year. And I would say 80 percent of the plans that I had, the things I’m doing are not the things that I had planned to do this year. I am unbelievably excited about the future. I’m resolute on the work that we’re doing and love it. But I think for me, the complacency and contentment, resting, trusting in the Lord, patience, balancing that, though, with this push for doing as much as I can. And so I want to be faithful. So the prayer is kind of tied to some of my own. Wrestling with First Thessalonians four. And this notion of proverbs and planning and God’s direction is I don’t want to be so content in what I’m doing that I miss out on something that the Lord might have for me.

So I do covet prayers that relate it to just wisdom for myself and for the work that we’re doing that we are pressing forward and the things we should be pressing forward into. We didn’t talk about it much, but I have four daughters, married 14 years and four kids, and they’re getting into that age of just curiosity and maturity and that I would lead them well, give them good direction as they venture out into this crazy world.

Henry Kaestner: And for you, too, buddy, not north. That’s right. Good good byes, Baker into divinity and beyond. That’s right.

Outstanding. Well, thank you very much for your friendship and encouragement and partnership in the Movement and Access Ventures.org is a great website that goes through what you are doing and what God is doing through you. And may God bless you and everything that’s going on in Louisville and and beyond.