John Coleman: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. This is John Coleman. And I’m very excited about our conversation today with Adesuwa Rhodes. He’s the founder and managing partner of Aruwa Capital Management. I had the good fortune of running into Adesuwa the first time a couple of years ago, right as she was starting Aruwa. And it’s been a privilege to watch her since she since closed her first fund as she’s made a number of investments which we’ll get to talk through today and has embarked on her second fund here shortly. And it’s just a real success story of a number of things, including her own personal leadership journey, gender lens investing, investing in women and investing in emerging markets. So Adesuwa, we’re very excited about this conversation. Thank you for joining the podcast today.

Adesuwa Rhodes: Thank you, John, for having me. Really excited to speak to you today.

John Coleman: Absolutely. So maybe let’s dive in first on kind of the topics. I want to get to your personal story. But, you know, part of what you’re doing is investing with a gender lens or investing in or alongside women as a part of your strategy at Aruwa. And you have a LinkedIn banner image, for example, that reads, Women don’t need a seat at the table. We’re creating our own tables. Talk to us a little bit about what’s motivating about that for you and what investing with a gender lens or in women looks like for you at Aruwa.

Adesuwa Rhodes: Yeah, that is a very important quote for me, and it holds significant meaning to me because it reflects my own perspective on how best to advance women’s economic empowerment and women’s progress. It really embodies the idea that women should not be waiting for opportunities to be given to them or rely on existing structures or systems to grant them a place at the table. But we need to be proactive. We need to take the initiative if we want to forge our own paths to success and our own path to leadership. And this was really, you know, particularly relevant for me as I looked at, you know, the number of women that were capital allocators on the continent in Africa. You know, for my previous fund, we were fundraising for about four and a half years. And I looked around and I saw that there were really only less than ten women founded and led private equity funds on the whole continent, you know, a continent of 1.3 billion people. Women make up 50% of the population. So it was very clear to me that there are systemic barriers that are preventing women from starting and running their own funds. And if we continue to wait for those opportunities to be given to us, you know, nothing is going to change. So that part really just embodies, you know, be the change you want to see in the world. Take initiative, be proactive and create your own table. Even if your table is small to begin with, you can create your own table and, you know, be in charge of your own story. So that was really what prompted me to set up Aruwa because I wanted to, you know, in my own small way, hopefully be an example for other people to look at so that when they’re looking around and trying to find other, you know, women and applying funds in the continent, at least they can see one more and that may encourage them to, you know, battle themselves and that may encourage them to start up their own funds. And and as we see more success stories of, you know, women creating their own tables, I’m hoping that will also make room for more people to want to support women that are looking to do so. So, yeah, it’s really kind of important that as women, you know, we take our own steps rather than, you know, asking for permission. We take our own steps, you know, to try and influence and impact other women. Because as women see us, they are also encouraged, you know, setting up Aruwa and you know, where we are now. It’s such a blessing that women reach out to me and, you know, they say, well, look at seeing what you’ve done in Aruwa. You know, I have confidence to start my own business. So I have confidence to start my own fund because I you know, now I know that it’s possible. So that was really the kind of the onus of setting up Aruwa was trying to be that change. And, you know, I was asking for permission for a long time. And I thought, you know, it’s better to be the change and create your own table that can influence others.

John Coleman: I just wanted to pick up on that of, you know, serving as an example to others, because I can definitely see that Adesuwa. I noticed you’re quite active in terms of media, in terms of social media, in terms of encouraging others. But in your personal journey, where did you get the confidence to take that perspective? Who was it in your life that really encouraged you to take that path if there was anyone? And how did you come to the decision that you could be a leader in this space and an encouragement to other women?

Adesuwa Rhodes: Yes, I don’t think it was any one particular person. I think my faith played a huge. Role in that. So, you know, we were fundraising for this one for four and a half years. I had a lot of conviction. And you know, what I had built on the ground in Africa because I was headhunted by a European private equity firm to set up their Africa business. I had a lot of conviction in what I built, but we just weren’t making headway. So, you know, in my prayer time, you know, I was praying. I was fasting a lot, you know, just trying to ask God for direction and what to do, because I quit my job at Jp morgan to embark on this journey. So I always kind of seek advice from the Holy Spirit and pray. And, you know, what am I what should I do next? And I felt very strong leading that, you know, everything that has happened in your life so far is for this time. And it was really at that time that I took the decision to buy out my previous partners, you know, exited my investments, sold some of my shares on my Jp morgan bonuses, and approached the partners and said, look, I want to buy this out. And, you know, I rebranded the company to Aruwa in July 2019, and I was just 29 years old at this point. So a lot of people were looking at me like I was crazy, you know, They were like, well, you know, the fund hasn’t worked. I’ll just go back to Jp morgan. But I felt a very strong meeting from God that, you know, you’ve gone through all this. You’ve got in the track record from Jp morgan, you’ve come back to Nigeria. This is your chance to be that example. This is your chance to really leave a legacy and, you know, leave a life of impact where you could be an example to other women that may not have the courage to bet on themselves. You know, as a black young woman, you know, it could be something very, very powerful to be that example in the world because there’s really not enough of us. So, yeah, it wasn’t really one person. It was really in my time of quiet prayer and reflection that I got that leading to do this and get that courage and get that confidence, even though I just come out of what people would have deemed a failure because we never raised that $100 million fund. So, yes, I looked crazy, actually, to a lot of people, but it was my faith and my trust in God that if he has placed this on my heart, then he will fulfill purpose and he will fulfill what he’s told me. So it was really my faith that kept me going. And, you know, it’s been a seven year journey until Aruwa finally closed. And I don’t think you can do that just by human capacity. It was definitely in my faith. It was definitely the encouragement that I got from Scripture. It was definitely the encouragement that I got that, you know, God can be trusted to keep his promises. If you said something, he will fulfill it. So it was definitely my faith that got me to where I am today. If I didn’t have my faith, I would have quit a long time because.

John Coleman: Well, and it is you know, I didn’t highlight this as part of the introduction, but you had a very institutional quality background, so to speak, with Jp morgan, with other firms. I mean, you’re obviously well-educated in demand. You had this remarkable career path before you if you chose it, and yet you chose to strike out on your own and start something new and build something as the leader. And even as you tell this story, to really emerge from something that didn’t work out exactly as you had planned. But to take an even bigger risk on yourself is so inspiring, I think. And, you know, you hear it with a lot of entrepreneurs in retrospect, where they bet on themselves and the mission that they were following. But that also takes a lot of courage. And it’s so fascinating to me to hear the role that faith played in you. Getting comfortable with that.

Adesuwa Rhodes: Yeah, I know it was very important, and I think if I didn’t have my faith, I would have quit. And, you know, when we announced the, you know, thankfully by the grace of God, we were able to announce that I was subscribed first because, you know, final close for Aruwa last year. And it was very important to me to make it known publicly that, you know, I give all the glory to God, because without him, I wouldn’t have stuck it out and I wouldn’t have, you know, had the faith, the courage, the confidence to keep going despite, you know, rejections, delays, you know, you know how fund raising is. It it takes a lot of no’s before you get the yes. So it was really my faith that that pushed me through it, for sure.

John Coleman: Yeah. Fundraising is one of those topics that’s not often talked about in our industry, but fundraising time or a second time fund is not for the faint of heart. It’s it’s in for investors. You know, it’s typically not what you’re best at, right? It’s, you know, I imagine you’re quite good at it Adesuwa. But people get into investing to invest, Right.

Adesuwa Rhodes: And this is not my favorite thing to do as well.

John Coleman: And you hear a lot of no’s before you hear yeses often. Right? Exactly. And even if you’re really good, I want to talk a little bit more about the way that you invest and maybe even dovetail that a bit with your faith story. Now, as I understand it, one of the lens is you use for investments at arua is the gender lens. So it’s not just you as an inspiring example, but you building businesses that actually in some way kind of partner with women in the community or uplift women. Can you talk to us a little bit more just about Aruwa and your investment strategy? And then if that’s correct, just how that dovetails with gender lens? And what does that mean in the context of an investment strategy?

Adesuwa Rhodes: Sure, sure. So at Aruwa, we are an early stage growth equity and gender lens investor. So we’re investing in businesses that have proven their business model, have existing demand for their product and service, but they’re just looking for that incremental, you know, scale up capital to pass that inflection point of growth. We are investing in necessities. So health care, fintech, access to power through renewable energy and also essential consumer goods. We’re focused on West Africa for now, so focus really on Nigeria and Ghana. I’m based in Lagos, so having that proximity to our investments is very important. But we have an overarching investment strategy, which is our gender lens investing strategy, which is we’re investing in businesses that are either led by women, you know, founded by women of co-founded by women, or businesses that have gender diverse senior management teams, or we are investing in businesses that may be led by men, but are providing an essential go to service that improves women’s lives in some way. So that is really all gender lens. We want to be able to impact women with our investments, either as founders, either as in management teams, because we believe that if we do that, it really trickles down to the entire value chain of the company where you can see gender diversity in the board, you can see gender diversity in the supply chain, you can see gender diversity in the customer base. So out of the nine investments we’ve made so far in Fund one, about 62% of those investments are led by women. And we’ve created about well, we’ve supported about 96,000 jobs, direct and indirect, and about 70% of those jobs are held by women. So we’re very, very excited about the fact that as we invest with this gender lens and being a women that’s allocating capital, we have this trickle down effect to gender diversity in our portfolio, which for us is not just charity or ticking a box. We see this actually as an arbitrage opportunity to enhance returns because very few funds are doing this, but also because of the role that women play in societies in Africa, where women are the backbone of families, they’re the backbone of communities, they’re typically the ones that are working, providing for their families. They’re able to reinvest about 90% of their income back into health care and education for their families. So it’s actually a significant multiplier effect in terms of social impact through the strategy as well. So we’re very, very excited about showcasing that intersection that you can have with strong financial returns and impact. We’re not sacrificing one for the other with the strategy. It comes really well together because of our gender that is investing strategy. So we’re excited to continue to showcase that.

John Coleman: So much awesome stuff to unpack there. And I want to circle back shortly to this idea of the role of women in West Africa and just get your perspective on where things stand. But before we do that, it might help listeners to understand the model that you’re discussing a bit more. If you were able to just tell us about a couple of the companies you’re invested in and the way that they achieve those goals that you’re discussing, I’d love to hear some stories.

Adesuwa Rhodes: Sure. Sure. So we invested in a company called Coolbox. They’re a provider of solar enabled refrigeration in Africa. So obviously we have a power problem. Over 700 million Africans lack access to electricity. So in off grid areas, we have market women that are selling frozen fish, frozen meat that because of the lack of access to power, they have to throw their products away. And you know, that impacts their livelihood, that impacts their income. What cookbox have been able to do is provide a solar enabled freezer refrigeration system where they can have access to power for up to four days in off grid areas as long as they have access to the sun. And this has been game changing. You know, we have seen sales of this business since we invested grow by more than three xs, about 75% of our customers that are using this product or women. We have so many testimonials from women that have said that, well, now that they have the coolbox they can provide for their family, they can send their children to school. We’re selling these units in 18 countries globally, so not just in Africa as well. So again, we’re seeing that multiplier effect of impact because as the impact of woman in Nigeria. You’re also impacting the women in Cote d’Ivoire or in Senegal or in Kenya. So that multiplier effect, it’s really, really strong. So this is a business that’s co-founded by women. It’s also impacting micro Assamese in off grid areas that are earned by women where not only are we seeing three xs in sales and seeing, you know, rapid growth and profitability, but we’re also seeing increase in the livelihoods and the incomes of these women that otherwise wouldn’t have a product to sell because of a lack of access to power. So that’s one that we’re really excited about and scaling up that impact across Africa. So that’s one business we’ve invested in. Another business we’ve invested in is a company called Omni Retail, their B2B e-commerce business that’s digitizing the informal trade. So we have a lot of informal mom and pop shops across Africa that, you know, have very fragmented access to logistics, very fragmented access to fulfillment. They don’t have technology to help them manage their stock or have insights into the prices of goods. So what omni retail is able to do is completely digitize their fulfillment process, provide them with, you know, inventory management systems, provide them with working capital. Omni retail right now is working with about 65,000 retailers across Africa. Over 55,000 of those retailers are women. And we’ve seen that these women are able to grow by over four x once they get this digitized solution and have this app where they can track their goods, track their inventory, track their fulfillment. So, again, this is another way where we’re seeing rapid growth on the business side. And this is a business that’s doing about $160 million of GMV. They’re doing about $50 million of net revenues, seven and a half percent gross margins. You know, probably the best in the industry. But on the other hand, we’re impacting growing the businesses of 55,000 women across Africa. So these are the types of businesses that really get me excited where we’re able to invest in really, really viable, attractive fundamentals, but also, you know, have enormous impact on women across the businesses that we invest in. So those are just two examples. We have more and I can keep talking forever, but it gives you a feel of, you know, the types of businesses where it’s whether it’s consumer goods, whether it’s renewable energy, where we can see this real impact on women.

John Coleman: That’s awesome. Adesuwa Those are great examples and it tees up nicely. This thing we wanted to circle back with, which is just the status and role of women in West Africa. I mean, the inclusion of women in the economy obviously is transparently very good for economic outcomes. Right. It’s such a key component that activation is a key component of economic growth at a macro level. But it’s also incredibly important for equality, for inclusion, for a number of other things. And it’s different in different parts of the world right now. And as you mentioned, Africa is a continent of 1.3 billion people with societies that are dramatically different from one another. I know you’re dominantly investing in West Africa, including in Nigeria, where I believe you’re based. Would you mind just giving us a window into what is the status of women’s rights, women’s inclusion, women’s economic activity in the countries in which you invest? And how is that changing over the last few years?

Adesuwa Rhodes: Yeah, no. So I think we still have a long way to go. But, you know, I think you’d be interested to know that Africa has the highest rates of female entrepreneurship in the world. Is that. Wow. Yes. Yes. Four times more than Europe. And this goes back to, you know, why impacting women is so critical and has that multiplier effect, that whole continent like Africa, because women are really the breadwinners. And people ask me, so why do women in Africa work so hard? And this is just my own theory. I don’t know if it’s right or not. But my theory is because women in in somewhere like Nigeria are having about five children on average. Right. They’re not waiting around for a man to come and feed their children. You know that maternal instinct, you go out and work to make sure that you provide for the children that you birth. Right. So I think that’s why we have such a high rates of female entrepreneurship, is because African women have a lot of children. And what we’ve seen in society is that that level of entrepreneurship and energy is not being matched with the level of opportunities and the level of capital that these women are able to access. So if we take last year, for example, only 4% of venture capital dollars went into female led businesses. It was 25 x less than the capital that went into the mail at businesses. And that just doesn’t sit right with me. In a continent and an economy where we know that women are driving access to basic goods and services for their children, for their communities. Right. So we still have a long way to go. You know, when I started Aruwa that number was less than 2%. So we’ve made some progress in the last three and a half years, but still, we still have a long way to go. I think what’s also interesting in a market like Nigeria is you have that on one side in terms of entrepreneurship. But if you think about female leadership and women in senior positions, we’re not doing too badly, actually. So there was a circular that was put out by the central bank. I would say probably seven years or eight years ago. Now that said that boards of the banks had to have at least 30% female leadership. So because of that kind of rule, we’ve seen a lot of drive to diversity across banks in Nigeria. And I think that’s something where, you know, that we’re proud of that. You know, we can say, okay, well, in senior leadership, in corporate, especially in financial institutions, we’ve seen, you know, inclusion of women. And I think that has kind of trickled down in society to make sure that we’re taking women seriously and senior corporate positions, not just in the financial industry. But when it comes to female entrepreneurship and giving women the same access to capital, the same access to whether it’s loans or equity, we still have a long way to go. And that’s why we’re excited about what we’re doing in Aruwa to make sure that we level the playing field for female entrepreneurs. That’s a really big part of our mission.

John Coleman: And what is the you know, you had mentioned how much faith had influenced the investing that you’re doing. Another question I had was just about what role faith plays in West Africa. In Nigeria right now, I know it’s a remarkably religiously diverse area, so it’s a pretty high numbers, especially relative to the west of people who are deeply religious, although that manifests in different ways. How does faith really manifest in the areas in which you’re investing right now?

Adesuwa Rhodes: So I think for us at Aruwa, you know, we I would say we’re a faith based organization, but we don’t have any sort of faith mandate that makes sense, you know, because of the construct of Nigeria and where we are. So we’re in the south. Most of the people in the south are Christian, more people in the north are Muslim. So just by the factor, even if we don’t have a mandate to only invest in Christians by de facto, I believe all of our portfolio company founders except for one, are Christians. So that kind of gives you that makeup in terms of how we are the area that we’re in, in terms of kind of the religious makeup. But I would say that faith for us, you know, I think it’s being able to pray with entrepreneurs, being able to, you know, support them in difficult moments. Yes, we’re investors, but, you know, treating them like human beings as well. I think the fact that we are all of the same phase where we can bump into each other in church, I think it puts a different dimension as well to the investing story and to the investing partnership. So I think for us, it’s great that we’re able to have kind of common faith with the people that we are investing in, but it’s not a prerequisite. And I would say that faith in our markets is a huge driver. You know, as you said, a lot of people are religious, whether that manifests as Muslim and Christian. But it’s a huge driver of what keeps us all sane and what can be sometimes, you know, challenging conditions. So, yes, I would say faith continues to play a role for all of us in this part of the world.

John Coleman: Yeah, it is such a fascinating place and I love to hear those stories and how it’s incorporated in the work that you do. You had kind of ended there by talking about how you are in a, let’s say, a dynamic part of the world right now where things change. And we’ve talked a lot about the gender lens investing, but haven’t talked a lot about investing in emerging markets yet. And I know many of our listeners are actually in emerging markets at Sovereign’s. We’ve done more in Southeast Asia, for example, than we have in Africa. But investing in emerging markets comes with its own opportunities. It comes with its own risks. Talk to us right now. Just about how you approach investing in the emerging markets you’re in and what different types of factors you have to pay attention to that a U.S. or a European investor, for example, might not. And what opportunities does that create that might not exist in the U.S. or Europe, for example?

Adesuwa Rhodes: Yeah, sure. So I think for us, we think obviously that there is tremendous opportunity investing in Africa and investing in the markets we invest in. We think that, you know, this is really the last frontier for growth. You know, a population of 1.3 billion. People. Africa will account for over half of the global population growth in the next 30 years. You know, we have, I think, the highest percentage of young people in the world. So we see this as really the last frontier for growth when it comes to, you know, how are you going to make attractive financial returns in the next, you know, decades to come? But as you said, it does have its challenges. You have to think about macroeconomic stability. So there are certain, you know, policies that may come in place that may, you know, alter macroeconomic slightly. They may be governments that come in place that change a policy that, you know, a business might have been profitable for them for a number of years. So I think the way that we think about it at Aruwa is how do we invest in defensible sectors. So I think in emerging markets, my view is you have to be a bit more focused. You can’t be a jack of all trades. Like maybe you can be in the U.S. where you’re a generalist and you’re investing in anything that’s exciting. I think you have to tailor your strategy to be able to withstand the shocks that come whether a macroeconomic shock or political shock that come in emerging markets. So how do we do that? We make sure that we’re investing in defensible sectors and necessities, things that the rapidly growing and urbanizing population will always need for the next 30 years. We’re always going to need health care. We’re always going to need access to financial services. We’re always going to need access to power. We’re always going to need essential consumer goods like food or, you know, other fast moving consumer goods. So I think that for us at Aruwa, we want to make sure and make it clear that to invest successfully in emerging markets, there has to be some element of focus, which is why, you know, we’re based here on the ground in Lagos. We’re investing in just Nigeria and Ghana because we’re based in Lagos. In Nigeria. We have that proximity to our investments. We have that proximity to entrepreneurs. So I think focus is very key. Another thing I would say is we believe that you also need to be a little bit more hands on in terms of not only corporate governance but also operationally as well. So we are very, very hands on with our entrepreneurs and helping them think through strategy and helping them, you know, implement finance, function upgrades, helping them think about the KPI they should be tracking. And we also sit on the boards of these businesses. So I would say that those are some of the nuances that are probably in our strategy because we’re investing in emerging markets that maybe if we are sitting in, you know, New York or city in London, we may not have those nuances. So I hope I answer the question. I kind of went off on a tangent.

John Coleman: No, you absolutely did. And, you know, I think, again, one of our partners, I think you met Henry Kastner. Africa is such a big focus of his right now, because I think what he sees and what many of us see is that it is the future in many ways. Right. I mean, you mentioned 1.3 billion people now, but it’s one of the few areas in the world. And again, I know it’s a diverse set of countries within the continent, So I’m painting with a broad brush. But I think it’s generally true that populations are growing. Right. Even Asian countries population growth has declined dramatically. China, for example, has a shrinking population right now. Japan does with the West, has obviously struggled to have fertility rates above replacement rate so that the economies aren’t growing organically. Africa is still booming. There is a lot of opportunity left through modernization because some of those countries have not yet fully developed and there’s a lot of focus on the area. And as you’re pointing out, there are these leverage points like working with women who are so central to the economy that can help you operate there. But it is important to have a local partner, we think, because understanding each of those countries, communities, areas in Africa, in Lagos, you know, in all these places is infinitely complex. And so having someone like you as a partner, someone who knows the area, is incredibly important, I think, for outsiders to just grasp that complexity.

Adesuwa Rhodes: Yes, I completely agree. And you’re absolutely right. You know, Nigeria is going to be the third largest population in the world in 30 years. So that’s somewhere you want to be investing and especially investing in necessities that that growing population will continue to need. So I completely agree. You know, we think it’s the last frontier of growth. We think that, you know, if you really want to make attractive returns, then Africa should be in your portofolio.

John Coleman: Can I ask you about one specific challenge of investing in emerging markets that we hear a lot and I know Nigeria has experienced recently, recently, which is currency fluctuation for non Nigerian investors, for example, for folks from Europe or the U.S. or somewhere else. Currency fluctuations can introduce a series of risks that they might not otherwise have to take. I know Nigeria’s currency has experienced some challenges recently. How do you think about that in the way that you invest?

Adesuwa Rhodes: Yeah, no currency risk is top of mind. You know, currency risk is one of the biggest risks to returns in emerging markets, as you rightly said. And in Nigeria, you know, we’ve seen the currency really devaluation over the last eight years with the previous administration. And what this administration has done is unified the exchange rate. So previously we had an official rate that was at around, you know, call it 460 naira to $1. And then we had a black market rate that is around, I call it 750 naira to $1. So that gap in the official black market rate obviously lend its hand to a lot of bad actors and obviously a lot of speculation and meant, you know, there was a lack of scarcity of dollars in the economy. What the new administration who have just come in in May have done is they’ve unified the exchange rate where we’re now seeing the naira kind of settle somewhere, kind of between 630 to 650. And yes, that’s going to hurt because, you know, a lot of people have been pegging their costs and, you know, their forecast to the official rate. But we believe that in the long term, because you’re able to drive out bad actors because of that wide spread that would actually encourage foreign direct investment into the country. So how we think about currency risk is because obviously we’re raising dollars from our institutional investors and investing dollars into these businesses is to make sure that a good portion of our portofolio are actually generating dollar revenues. So we have a company called Agro…… that exports superfoods to the US and to Mexico. 100% of their revenues are in dollars. We have a business called Remi Industries that manufactures eight different production lines of hygiene goods. They export their hygiene goods across West Africa and earn dollars. We have a business for tailor that is operational not just in Nigeria and Kenya. We have a business called Omni Retail that I mentioned is not just the operation in Nigeria, but also in Kenya and Ghana. So I think as we think of portfolio construction, we want to make sure that we’re investing in businesses that have export revenues in other currencies, for example, coolboxs, you know, selling, etc., maybe a refrigerator in 18 different countries across the world, Nigeria just being one of them. So you always have to have, you know, currency risk mitigation in place as you deploy capital in emerging markets. So either investing in businesses that have that natural hedge and it generates revenue in hard currency or another strategy we deploy is investing in import substitution. So as we invest in more local manufacturers, they’re actually shielded from a devaluation because they’re able to gain market share because a lot of importers are driven out of the market in that scenario. Or another thing we’re doing is also investing in very, very rapidly growing businesses between 2021 and 2022. Aggregate growth in our portfolio is about 70%. The average devaluation over the last five years has been about 18% a year. So we have different strategies to pull from as we kind of think of portfolio construction as a whole to make sure that, you know, you can kind of withstand some of the currency shocks and make sure that your portfolio is shielded from that. But over the last two decades in African private equity, that has, you know, currency has been the risk to return. So it’s very, very top of mind for us at Aruwa capital.

John Coleman: You know, I want to throw you a fun question and then end with some advice on Africa. And then we always ask the same question for our final one, which is just what are you learning through scripture? A fun question for you is you were a netball player at the University of Bristol and a couple of my my partners and I have had this discussion recently just about how well athletic leadership skills then translate into business, right? There are actually a lot of things you learn as an athlete, especially in a team sport, that then translate into good leadership later. First of all, what’s netball? And then secondly, what did you learn playing netball at university that you feel like is helpful to you today?

Adesuwa Rhodes: Yeah, so netball is kind of the English men’s basketball, I guess. So it’s like basketball, but you can’t move. So you grab the ball and you can’t move, you have to pass it. And the basket we have doesn’t have a backboard, so you have to. Learn how to swish Oh you goals there’s no backboard. Yeah so yeah I love netball I played netball in school. There was an opportunity for me to actually play professionally, but my parents said I had to stay in school. I couldn’t do that. So when I went to Bristol and I had the opportunity to play for the university team, I was really excited. But a lesson that I learned that was, you know, I was coming from school, you know, I was the captain of the netball team and I was kind of like, you know, quite good. But I came to Bristol and, you know, you’re in a bigger environment, you’re in the university setting, and there are other people there that are better than me, right? So I didn’t get into the first team, I got into the second team and I think that was a big lesson for me that rejection is okay. You know, there are moments in life where you may not always get what you want, but I had an amazing time over those three years in the second team where we actually won a lot of matches and it was a fun team to be in. So even though I was disappointed at the beginning that I didn’t get into the first team because obviously I was coming from a background where I was captained the netball team in school and you know, we had been quite successful. It taught me a lesson that God may sometimes place you in a place where you might think that you’ve been rejected, but it’s actually the right place for you. So I think that’s something that followed with me because there was another opportunity in my second year of uni where, you know, I really, really wanted this Goldman Sachs internship, but I didn’t get it. I got a Jp morgan internship. So I think God has been telling me every time that, you know, you may not always get your first choice, but trust me that I know what I’m doing. And, you know, wherever I place you where you’re meant to be. So that was a lesson that I learned. And I’m always learning that, you know, just trust God, even if you think that sort of thing that you want may feel like a failure or a rejection. You content and where you are and trust God that you’re in the right place. So that was what I learned from my netball days.

John Coleman: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So I want to ask two final questions and the first is just a parting shot for those looking to invest in Africa or in particular to countries within Africa. We’ve talked about a ton today, but is there any final advice that you would offer folks looking to get involved on the continent?

Adesuwa Rhodes: Yeah, I think you touched on it, John. I think it’s making sure that you partner with a local partner that’s on the ground, that understands the environment, understands the nuances of investing in this part of the world and, you know, being in partnership with them as we explore investment opportunities, whether that’s through a fund structure like Aruwa or through a co-investment structure where you’re making directs alongside them. But I think it’s very important to have partnerships with people on the ground because there are definitely nuances to investment in emerging markets and the best people to help you through those nuances, the people that are on the ground that understand the terrain, understand the risks, understand the opportunities, understand how to mitigate those risks. So, yeah, you know, I always say that if you don’t have Africa in your portfolio, you’re doing yourself an injustice. So, you know, I encourage people that are, you know, allocating capital or investing to be looking at Africa investments because it’s really the last frontier for growth. It’s really where you can have attractive financial returns. But also if you care about impact, you know, where also there are significant multiplier effects in terms of impact levels, job creation, poverty alleviation that are also possible here. And I just think you can’t achieve that in other parts of the world where you can do good financially, but you can also, you know, be impacting lives and having that intersection. I think it is pretty magical. And you can do that here in Africa. So please invest in Africa, but do so by partnering with a local partner.

John Coleman: Excellent advice. And we always close just by asking everyone what are you learning through Scripture right now that you think might be relevant to share with our listeners?

Adesuwa Rhodes: Yes, so. I’ve been reading a lot about Daniel recently and just kind of his story, so that’s kind of what I’m reading right now in my Bible study. And I think that what Daniel teaches me and what Daniel can teach everyone is just being very dogged in your beliefs and not letting society influence you. I don’t know if I’m getting too philosophical for this podcast, but I really love I really love how Daniel just didn’t give in, you know, to the King and to that what society was telling him to do. He was very, very focused on being contrarian. And I think sometimes to be a pioneer, you have to be contrarian. So I encourage entrepreneurs that are looking to start businesses or looking to, you know, bet on themselves, you know, looking to seek that promotion in the organization. Just believe in, be authentic to yourself. I would say don’t be influenced by society or, you know, don’t be influenced by what society may be telling you to think. Be confident in your beliefs and, you know, bet on yourself based on your beliefs. That’s what I’m learning from Daniel at the moment, so I’m getting encouragement from Daniel to continue to be contrarian and continue to, you know, pursue this gender lens investing strategy, even though sometimes people look at me like a crazy. So yeah, that’s the encouragement I’m getting from Daniel.

John Coleman: That is a great word to end on. You definitively are not crazy Adesuwa. You are doing amazing work, again. This is Adesuwa Rhodes, the founder and managing partner of Aruwa Capital Management, investing in West Africa, primarily Ghana and Nigeria and Adesuwa. We’ve been so privileged to have you on today and hopefully we’ll get to do this again in the future. Thank you so much for coming on.

Adesuwa Rhodes: Thank you so much, John. I really enjoyed our chat. Hope to speak soon.

Tim Macready: When we look at the new heavens and the Earth, we look at the new creation in Revelation, it’s not new in the sense of destruction and recreation, it’s new in the sense of purification and refinement, in the same way that I, as a human being made in God’s image, will be renewed and restored and given a body that is unlike anything I could imagine and yet has obvious links back to me, present day to Macready on Earth. I think the new creation will be a purification, a restoration, a renewal of what God created in Genesis.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. I’m here with Luke Roush Sovereign’s Capital in the house from his remote studio in Durham, North Carolina. Luke, welcome.

Luke Roush: It’s great to be here sitting in Durham Bulls ballpark

Henry Kaestner: that I love. I love Durham. Are you getting back to Duke? Are you getting back to your alma mater on this trip?

Luke Roush: We did and got a great walk around this campus with none other than Jake Thompson last night. It’s really wonderful to win.

Henry Kaestner: That’s a win. I wish I was there. We’ve got one of our favorite people on the planet on the podcast with us today. This is something we’ve been looking forward to a lot. When you’re last here. You’re working for Christian silver, but things have changed recently. Now you’re with bright light, which is very, very similar and yet a little bit different. So talk about that a bit. And then what led you to the transition for your current role?

Tim Macready: So, as you mentioned, Henry has spent the last 15 years working on what it looks like to faithfully apply Christian values in the context of diversified institutional scale pension funds, investment portfolio, which is an immense privilege, an opportunity to get to think through how our faith applies across every public private growth defensive and how we do that in the context of an organization that was investing one and a half billion dollars on behalf of thirty thousand people. What we saw as we did that was an opportunity to take that approach much broader. And so as I and some of the others, the Christian said, it reflected on personal calling and sensed God’s movement within faith based investing and saw some of the things that were happening in this movement more broadly. We saw an opportunity to take the work that we had done at Christian support and serve a whole range of other faith based and values based investors with the same type of work so that not just Christian Super, but more and more people might be able to align. And so we launched it like we launched it out of Christians before we took a number of the team that had worked together to build a Faith Driven Investor BAM portfolio there. And we launched them into an organization that was going to be able to help others. Christians, super wonderful organization. Pension funding constraints to being a pension fund is an organization that has been more so we can help all sorts of investors all around the world. And so we work with clients across Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the United States. We’re hoping to add more countries to that list. And we do a bunch of work all around this idea of aligning portfolios with values. So we support on screening activities. We help identify managers who are going to be able to deliver values, the portfolios in listed equities, for example. And then a bunch of the work that we do is on the faith driven side, helping institutional investors, registered investment advisors and others to think through personal conviction and application on Faith Driven Investor portfolios. And so sometimes that looks like outsourcing services. Sometimes that looks like one of diligence on a Faith Driven Investor. But I’ve found whose operating strategy that they’re not familiar with. And so we come in and do a research report, due diligence on them and make recommendations. But it’s been a real blessing as we’ve built this out over the last four years now and launched it out from Christian Super into the broader world of faith and values driven.

Henry Kaestner: So there are some number of people that are talking about values investing and have been for some time. What makes you all unique is the faith driven part of it. When Luke and I started Faith Driven Investor and several years back, we remarked the fact that as investors, it was very ironic for us to get involved in a market in which there wasn’t any real supply nor any real demand. And yet we see both of those increased. And I’m going to presume that you’ve seen the same as you’ve gone ahead and started to launch Bright Light. What are you seeing in terms of the demand for people saying, I don’t want to just necessarily just have values based investing, but also on the faith side, are you saying that the demand is picking up there?

Tim Macready: Yeah, absolutely. In the secular world, impact investing is taking off and we’ve seen that grow and the rise of ESG strategies, environmental, social and governance oriented strategies. But in the faith driven world, we’re seeing significant interest in Faith Driven Investor in applying our faith into our investment portfolios. Luke, you’ve spoken before about the analogy of a supermarket that has the customers in the doors and the products on the shelves think well and truly past that. There’s lots of products on the shelves. There’s still gaps in the aisles where products need to fit the certain types of products that as consumers we might want to buy that aren’t out there yet. But the shelves, the feeling and the customers are starting to come into the store. And then what’s happening around that is this ecosystem is springing up of people who support buyers and sellers, intermediaries who might help you to know what sorts of products you want to buy so that you can cook up. If we’re going to stretch the analogy so that you can cook up a delicious meal that is Faith Driven Investor.

Henry Kaestner: So for any listeners that might be new to the show or just new this conversation, some amount of them are thinking that, OK, this is a recipe for lower return. OK, invest according my values. I can just go ahead and just. Off six or seven hundred basis points of return right off the bat, and yet you haven’t seen that. Exactly. Can you speak to that?

Tim Macready: A bit of our experience has been that you can apply these sorts of strategies across the portfolio without damaging return, in some instances, maybe even seeing a return enhancement from the sorts of strategies that we’ve adopted. We can demonstrate that in certain points in the market cycle, our exclusions add value and they certainly don’t detract value in the Faith Driven Investor we’ve invested in Faith Driven Athlete and values the line assets across public and private markets, across real estate, private equity, private debt, infrastructure. And we’ve found that the returns from those investments have been as good, if not better, than the returns that we get from similar investments in other asset classes. We don’t think this is about giving up or sacrificing return in order to live out values. In fact, one of the things that we think all Faith Driven Investor is a call to is excellence and achieving the best that they can with what God has entrusted to them. There are certainly parts of the market where concessional returns are being offered and taken in order to catalyze certain impacts. And we do have some clients who want to be cavaletti and sacrifice for them. But most of the people we work with are looking for market rate returns with their values, large portfolios.

Luke Roush: So there’s a bunch of Christians and we’re talking about social, spiritual and financial returns with how they steward capital. But there’s another word that oftentimes comes up in that same list that you’re keen to focus on, and that’s environmental. So why do you think, Tim, believers have tended to overlook that as part of the conversation?

Tim Macready: I think there’s a whole bunch of reasons. It’s a really complex question. And I think some of those reasons are actually theologically, I think our focus should be primarily on the way that our business affects people of all creation. We humanity are uniquely made in God’s image. All of creation is God’s fingerprints, but we uniquely and solely his image bearers and God’s word contains constant exhortations for us to trade his image bearers with dignity and respect and care to work towards reconciliation of relationships between God and people or between people and each other. And even when we look at the reconciling work of Christ, I think it’s first and foremost about restoring the relationship between us and God. And so I think when it comes to Faith Driven Investor, we have rightly focused on firstly on the way that our investments reflect the creatures that are made in God’s image as a foremost priority. But I think what that has meant is a lot of people have stopped there and there’s been perhaps some not so great reasons why we’ve shied away from investing for environmental water theologically. I think there’s many Christians today who consciously or unconsciously see the world in a dualistic sense. What I mean is they see the physical world as corrupted and decaying and they see the spiritual world as holy and being redeemed. But I don’t think that’s how the Bible describes the world. Yes, the physical world has been subject to the effects of sin. And yet at the same time, the whole creation groans for its liberation from the effects of sin longs for restoration. I think when we talk about reconciled relationships, it’s not just between us and God. It’s between us and each other and between us and the rest of creation. I also think we may have misunderstood what Revelation teaches us about the new creation. I will be the first to admit that I struggle to understand revelation and that channel has been doing at the Village Church a great series on this over the last four or four months, which has been really helpful for me. But I think what we have from Revelation is this idea that the whole earth is going to be destroyed and so are not going to burn and pillage it and just take its resources now because the whole thing is going to be destroyed and recreated. And I think that when we look at the new heavens and the earth, we look at the new creation in Revelation. It’s not new in the sense of destruction and recreation. It’s new in the sense of purification and refinement, in the same way that I, as a human being made in God’s image, will be renewed and restored and given a body that is unlike anything I could imagine and yet has obvious links back to me, present day to McCrady on Earth. I think the new creation will be a purification, a restoration, a renewal of what God created in Genesis.

Luke Roush: Yeah, channelers. Great on that. And I think and right, right on some of that too is surprised by him.

Tim Macready: Yeah. Fantastic book wasn’t what I thought it was going to be about, but amazing. A book called Surprise. I hope it was all about death, but it was all about death and in the context of the new creation. And then I think there’s other reasons we’ve shied away from it as well. Relationally, we’ve often associated care for the environment with a particular worldview that rejects God and idolizes creation, that treats humanity as just another animal, not as unique image bearers of God. And we all have that tendency as humans to judge ideas and concepts based on people we hear them from rather than the merits of the idea. And so the. We reject a lot of that world view that idolizes creation, we rightly reject that worldview. Unfortunately, we throw out parts of the world that are actually scripturally based around K4 creation. I think it’s also practically very difficult. Understanding the role I have to play in showing love to my neighbor is quite concrete. It’s quite tangible. Understanding my role as a steward of creation is much more difficult. It’s less tangible. It’s hard to understand what affect my personal actions are having on God’s creation. It’s hard to understand what sacrifices I might need to make. But the reality of our present situation is quite clearly that we are consuming the natural resources that God has given us at a faster rate than they are able to be replenished. And I’m not saying it’s impossible that we could continue that our current right and that human ingenuity will find ways of being more effective and being more efficient and managing creation better. And of course, Jesus could come back tomorrow and restore and redeem the whole of creation. But I think if we continue at that pace of consumption without rethinking the way that we approach using the planet’s resources, we will cause significant harm to our planet’s ability to sustain human flourishing, which is one of the things that you’ve heard me say before, love human flourishing. I think C.S. Lewis and Tolkien both got this. Think about the world that they created. I find it fascinating that both of them created this fantasy world where evil destroyed the creation. When you’re talking about Middle Earth or Narnia, evil trees creation as a set of resources to be used and exploited for its own ends. And both Lewis and Tolkien created this world in which humanity, the men, the people in the story, the women and the people in the story has agency and dominion. The fates of Narnia and Middle Earth depend on the actions of the human actors in those worlds, in those stories, in overcoming evil. But both of them created worlds in which nature is a force in itself. And nature is this force that works alongside the humans and the good team, so to speak, in those universes to rescue the world. The trees in both Narnia and Middle Earth as support actors to the protagonists to help them on their quest. I think you find in both writers these profound reflections on the relationship between environment people and underlying spiritual realities and the mission that we’ve been given as people to advance God’s cause in the world so good.

Luke Roush: So I want to get just tactical because I think that that kind of over ERG of both why it is oftentimes neglected, because people are focused on the human human interactions rather than sort of human and God’s creation interactions. I think that’s really helpful, just as a construct and also why it’s important. And I think that the Narnia and Middle Earth tie ins are really, really good. I want to get tactical, though, and just have you talk about one of the creative or several of the creative investments that you guys are looking at now in the environmental care space. And why should our listeners be excited about what God has shown you now?

Tim Macready: It’s not just stuff going on, which is really cool. We’re seeing traditional things, renewable energy that provides power that’s not harming the planet. And it’s often cheaper than the power that we are able to get from burning forms of fuel to produce energy with any bunch of innovations in clean technology. And with that comes innovation in using the resources that God’s given us better. And this is a really interesting example of where I think the financial and the creation care aspects of pooling work really nicely together, because of course, when you find ways of reusing or reducing the amount of inputs that you need to produce a certain output, that’s not just good for the planet and for God’s creation, it’s good for the bottom line as well. Similarly, as I’ve alluded to, we’re finding that in many parts of the world, renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuel based forms of energy. That doesn’t mean that all the problems have been solved. There are still challenges in many parts of the world with using renewable energies as a baseload power source. The sun shines during the day. The wind only blows on windy days. Hydro is completely stable most of the time until you get a drought. So I don’t want to shy away from the challenges here. But certainly more and more of our energy needs globally is coming from sources that are doing less harm to the planet. And then we’re seeing some fascinating stuff in more thoughtful approaches to creation care in other areas sustainable agriculture, sustainable forestry, even things like sustainable tourism and thinking about the way that we use the natural beauty of the creation in ways that cause reflection and awe and enjoyment of God’s creation rather than simply just taking it and using it. I think one of the amazing things about creation is it reflects the beauty of the creator. Look at the mountains, the rivers, the valleys. Imagine who made them and how awesome and majestic is. Imagine the creativity of the creator. Who created rhythms of days, of seasons, of months of years, and when we find ways of enabling people to contemplate and reflect on God’s creation. My personal experience has been a deep sense of growing closer to the creator, to our father in heaven, as I reflect on his creation of being amazed by what he’s created and being drawn to him through his creation. And so we’re finding, as I said, sustainable tourism, thinking about land and the environment in ways that are financially profitable through being amazed that God’s creation, rather than just taking the resources he’s given us and using them to produce more widgets.

Henry Kaestner: So I’m fascinated by this and I’m fascinated because I’m trying to figure out, do I find myself more drawn to creation care because of revelation or am I more focused on the original job of us to tend the garden? But what I’d like you to comment on, actually, before we bring it back into the field of investing, my partner will bring us back into this. But for you to comment on what might otherwise be an obstacle to people to come to faith. So the inverse way of talking about what you mentioned, which is people that would otherwise be seen by CROSSFIREs, is just worshiping the creation rather than the creator. It would seem that if Christ followers are known for a not necessarily the state of creation care or maybe an apathy toward it, that that might be an obstacle for folks that might say, well, I’d be more inclined to investigate the Christian faith, but this is what they stand for and what they don’t stand for. And so I thought I’d brought to Romans, which is the evidence of God’s creation bears witness and testimony to God. And so maybe they’re seeing something in creation and the beauty of it worth preserving that maybe even Christ followers don’t really get. Can you talk a little bit about what you’d like to see, maybe theologically and maybe in just in terms of how Christians lean into that as a way to be able to make the Christian faith to seem more attractive and winsome? Because I don’t think people talk about that that much. I hadn’t expected to ask you this question because it’s not exactly with regards to investing, but my sense is that you’re thoughtful about this, too. What would you say as this being an obstacle or a hindrance for people otherwise they come to faith.

Tim Macready: What I look at the world, at what God has created, I see the work of an artist and at the same time simultaneously the work of an engineer, I’m immensely thankful that over the last several hundred years we have developed plumbing and hot water and logistic systems that can bring to me the produce of the land from all over the world that I might enjoy. And I think we’re right to see creation that way as the resources God’s given us to sustain human flourishing and catalyze human ingenuity. And yet, as I said, I also see this work of an artist. And I think if we as God’s children look at his creation as merely a set of resources to be exploited for our own benefit, we ignore the artistic value of what he’s created. And in doing so, I think we say to the world that watches that we don’t care about the artistic ness of the creator. Imagine walking into a museum and seeing a beautiful Van Gogh, not for the beauty of the painting, but for the resources that can be extracted from the paint. Imagine looking at it and saying I could take this frame and cut it up and use it to fuel my fire at home. And I could take this canvas and I could repurpose it as a shelter. It just completely misses the point of what Van Gogh created in the first place, but only looking at the raw materials rather than the artistic value of the creation. And I think when we as Christians ignore the beauty of creation, we say to the watching world that we don’t value God’s artistic creativeness. We say that we don’t value creation for the creativity and beauty that it clearly has. Theologically, I go into Genesis one where God created man and woman and gives them dominion over everything that he has created, not so that they might conquer it or exercise power over it, so that they might manage his creation in a way that reflects him, that reflects his creativity, his beauty. It’s about tending the garden. It’s even about tenderness. God, through the sounds that Thomas writes of God’s continued care for his creation, sending the rain, sending the seasons, changing the ground, looking after what he’s created. And to me, this is exciting by the creation mandate is not just a mandate to maintain, but to create and to cultivate, to take what God has given and to steward in ways that are creative and beautiful, to take what he’s given us. We can’t create from nothing the way that God did. But we can use what he gave us to create objects of function. And remember that creation still testifies to its creator remains a creation, right, in your expectation for our revelation as the children of God, Colossians one, not just in Jesus, everything was created not just through him, everything was created, but for him, everything was created. Not just people that might be restored to relationship with him, but an entire creation live in harmony, in relationship. And I’m reminded of a book that I read often to my children, Yunos Garden, which depicts this emergence of human civilization and nature in harmony, in parallel, flourishing together, and compares it to this idea of the factory city where there’s plenty of economic profit, but human flourishing suffers because we’ve polluted the air, we’ve destroyed the rivers, and we’re not able to look out and see the trees and the beauty of God’s creation. It fascinates me that the opening and closing images of God’s word, the garden we have the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve live in perfect harmony with the rest of God’s creation. And we have the Garden City where the fullness of what God has created is revealed. Man has tended to and cultivated and developed this civilization, this city. And yet it’s not just a city, it’s a Garden City water flowing from the tree of life, trees that bear fruit in every season, the throne of God. Above all of that, it’s an image of harmony between the creator, the human beings made in his image and the rest of his creation. That, to me, is the profoundly exciting vision to look forward to.

Luke Roush: And that’s powerful. So if you can’t see the vision. So let’s continue on that theme. And just trying to borrow and learn from what scripture tells us next five or ten years, what would you want to see Faith Driven Investor doing in this space and what could environmentally conscious investments look like in the world? We talked about some of those for you guys that you’re seeing, but just cast a vision maybe for the broader community.

Tim Macready: There’s so much stuff I’d love to see. First thing I’d love to see is wrestling with our responsibility as stewards. And cultivators of creation more, I think I’m really excited that as Faith Driven Investor as a movement, we are waking up, we have woken up to the influence that our investments can have on human flourishing, on training people with dignity and respect. And I think is a powerful message when we do that as Christian investors, when we invest in ways that are financially excellent, but also show that we value people, we testify to what we believe. We testify to the fact that every human is made in God’s image, equally worthy of dignity and respect. And we testify to a world that’s watching to the beauty of God’s way, of looking at the world. And I see so much potential with the way that we look at investing and creation as well, that as we embrace this idea that we are not just users and consumers of creation, but cultivars and stewards of it because of its beauty and because of the importance of creation in sustaining and preserving human life and human flourishing, we testify to the awesomeness of God as the creator. And so the first thing I want to see is us just wrestling with what creation care looks like and not doing it in a way that idolizes the creation. Doing it in a way that remembers that man is made in God’s image and that we have been given a mandate to use the resources of creation for the benefit and flourishing of human thought at the extremes of the environmentalist movement. Start to talk about the human extinction and this hope that one day humans won’t live on the planet because in their view, we’re bad for the planet. We’re destroying it. Well, that’s not the picture that God paints, paints a picture of. Mankind is good for his creation as causing it to flourish, as shooting it well. And then in a real practical sense, I’d love to see Christians at the forefront of environmental innovation in the way that we’ve been at the forefront of social innovation, I think as Christians, as exciting ways in which we could be at the forefront of innovation in ways that promote human flourishing and creation care simultaneously. Imagine what cheap, clean energy can do for millions of low and middle income people, billions of low and middle income people in Southeast Asia and in Latin America and in Africa. Instead of seeing this as constraints of how we won’t produce energy, let’s take the opportunity to be creative about how we do produce energy. Let’s think about how we use water and air and the resources that God’s given us in ways that absolutely relentlessly pursue human flourishing and creation simultaneously. And I think that’s something, as Christians that we can bring to the debate, not that we idolize creation, but that we value it as made to reflect God’s beauty and support human beings made in his image.

Luke Roush: I think it’s compelling. I think that oftentimes people kind of come back to Genesis one twenty eight on what does it mean to subdue the Earth. But I just as you were talking, I kind of reread it, God bless them, and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number. So we’re not intended to actually like, you know, the problem isn’t more people fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in the sea. The birds in the sky are for every living creature that moves on the ground, which establishes man’s primacy within God’s creation. But within this space, he wants us to be the rulers and administrators. But it’s not exploit the fish in the sea and the birds in this kind of exploit. It’s actually rule over. What does it mean to rule over to me that kind of governance, which is something different than exploitation. So I’m kind of just rereading something that I’ve heard quoted by maybe folks that might disagree and just trying to understand what did God really intend.

Tim Macready: I think people are not the problem here. People are the solution. This idea that we do with God’s creation by reducing the human population by voluntary human extinction, that’s not God’s picture. But the picture is of people exercising stewardship, governing God’s creation in ways that are mutually beneficial for humanity and for everything else that God created.

Henry Kaestner: Tim, you’ve made a better theological case than anybody that I’ve heard thus far. I’m interested in the Matt Chandler podcast series, the sermon series you mentioned, but you’ve made a very good case about the overall the pragmatic make it a little bit more granular for us. Are there some specific innovations, technologies that you have seen that have required investment capital along the way that give you some excitement about, you know, this is super cool, bunch of people focused on maintaining the engineer, the artistry, the beauty of God’s creation. And with these different technologies, I’m encouraged that we’re going to be able to maintain this beautiful tapestry that’s all around us.

Tim Macready: And one of the things I found really neat is when we find ways of using the resources that God has given us, when we find new uses of products and resources that were previously just kind of negative, I think about tobacco. Does abundant evidence that the way that we’ve been using tobacco to smokers is severely detrimental to human flourishing? And yet God gave us the results of tobacco. And in the last decade, we’ve discovered other uses of tobacco as an alternative fuel substitute through crop based fuels that are actually using what God has given us in a way that Stuart’s creation will and doesn’t cause severe damage to human flourishing. I find it really neat and cool the way that alternative meat substitutes are being developed. And I say this to someone who, when I saw this coming out, was persuaded about the potential environmental benefits of them. The environmental impact of the scale of industrial meat farming that we have in the world today is quite significant. And I have friends who are vegetarian for that reason. I think God in Genesis and then again in the New Testament gives us animals as food. But I think the scale at which we’re consuming them is potentially problematic. And so I get excited. I was someone who when these alternative meats started coming out, I thought, that’s not viable. There’s just something too good about cutting into it and enjoying the beauty of God’s creation in a state. And yet I find myself choosing these not infrequently, these alternative meats because they are good for me and they taste good and they feel like meat. And I find that kind of stuff really cool. And so I’m looking forward to the days when we can find ways of using things that are potentially right now damaging God’s creation in ways that actually enhance it. Because I think when we look at what God has created and what God has given to us to use for our joy and for his glory, we see that so often the problem comes not because God gave us a bad gift, because, of course, as Jesus is a heavenly father doesn’t give us bad gifts, but because we found ways of using that gifts that are damaging to us and to his creation. And I find it really cool when we rediscover ways of using God’s gifts that support human flourishing and creation care.

Henry Kaestner: Tim, as we get ready to close out and Luke, we’ll do that for us here in a second. I want to ask you a question that’s been on my mind in the minds of our listeners a lot recently as we’ve started exploring this concept of faith driven giving as well alongside Faith Driven Entrepreneur and Faith Driven Investor. Is there a cause? And it could be very much within creation care. We can stay on that topic if you like, but is there a cause that you and I enjoy giving to where you see God at work and just become more alive? Because your ability to give to a particular ministry or charity

Tim Macready: one of the ministries that God has brought us into contact with recently, and this is very specific to Australia, is a group called Common Grace. And Common Grace is a I mean, the term comes from this idea that came out of the Reformation that God’s good gifts are given to everyone. They are given to the people who recognize God’s generosity, and they give in to the people who don’t recognize God causes the rain to fall on both the righteous and the Praxis. And there’s a movement in astronautical Congress that is it’s about pursuing Jesus and justice. And so they work for reconciliation. Australia has a significant challenge in that when Western settlers came to Australia, they displaced quite violently Australia’s indigenous people and caused a centuries long rift between indigenous Australians and Australians who have arrived and lost two hundred and forty years. And the common grace pursues reconciliation between indigenous Australians and the Australians who’ve come more recently. They pursue justice for indigenous people who have died in custody, but they also. Pursue action to steward God’s creation. Well, I want to touch you on an issue that I know is going to be controversial, and I know you might cut this out. And that’s OK. I want to talk about climate, because if the consensus scientific projections are accurate and I accept that from many of our listeners, that is a big if. But if they are accurate, then the changes to our planet are going to be very damaging. And Henry, people like you and I can sell our houses and move to higher ground. We can build more tornado proof basements. We can protect ourselves from the damaging effects of climate change if it happens. But the vast majority of the world’s poor cannot. If sea levels rise, there are tens of millions of people in Bangladesh who will be displaced if hurricanes and typhoons increase in intensity. There are hundreds of millions of people in Southeast Asia in low lying areas of Southeast Asia, in low lying Pacific islands and in coastal areas of Africa and Latin America, who cannot just move to a new house, whose lives will be thrown upside down. And I think we need to take that seriously. I think the consequences for the people who are made in God’s image if we are wrong about climate change in the wrong direction, and I think we need to wrestle with that, I realize that there’s significant ways in which the debate and the argument around climate change is being shaped by forces whose worldview is not our own and is being significantly driven by an agenda that we would not support. But I think we’ve got to ask the question of what the implications are if we get this wrong. And so back to your question about one of the areas in which we give one of the things I love about human rights. This organization that we’ve started to support recently is that it weaves together justice for people and care of creation in a way that I really resonate with. It weaves together this idea of proclaiming the gospel in word and proclaiming the gospel. Indeed. I’m really excited to come across as Australia’s first Christian organization working in this area that’s actually led by an indigenous Australia. And that to me is really cool. And so that’s the cause that we support. And at the same time, I’m passionate about global mission. We’ve got missionaries we support in France in different parts of Africa, in Papua New Guinea. I’m passionate about the work of Christians here in Australia, in working against homelessness and working against domestic violence. And there’s a whole bunch of things that I’m passionate about. But the one that ties into what we’ve spoken about today is this common grace movement, which I just encourage our listeners to look up. It’s unique to Australia, but I think the way that they’re approaching reconciliation really points to this idea that God’s work, that Jesus work on the cross was about restoring relationships between people and God, between people and each other and between people and the rest of God’s creation.

Luke Roush: That’s a good closing quote. We also like to close each episode by hearing what God is teaching you right now. So, Tim, what have you found in God’s word that has stuck out to you recently?

Tim Macready: So I’ve been really wrestling in God’s word with what pursuing first and foremost a relationship with him looks like. I understood many years ago, through God’s word, through some great mentors, through other readings that I was doing, that my work was not found in what I do, but in who I am. And I understood that. And I tried to live that. And I struggle as someone who is very passionate about the movement of Faith Driven Investor. And I see the work that we’re doing here as so important to capturing hearts and showing how winsome the gospel is. And so I work passionately, and yet I need to find my purpose and my identity not in what I do is part of this movement or any other movement, but in doing as meaning God’s image. But over the last 12 months, I’ve been reflecting in God’s word and in my readings more deeply on what it just means to rest in him, to accept that the role that I have to play in this movement and in the other parts of God’s work that I’m involved with is not because God needs me, but because one of God’s many gifts to me is the privilege of being involved in the work that he’s doing in the world. And it’s just changing the way that I think about it. It’s giving me more patience because I know that this is his work, not my work. And it’s giving me more appreciation for the privilege of being involved in his ministry. And I would always have said it’s a blessing to be involved. It’s a privilege to be involved in God’s work. I would always have said God doesn’t need me to do his work. But as I’ve wrestled with a bunch of things personally, questions about where God wants us living, questions about what loving my family looks like, questions about what investing into my kids looks like at this point in their lives. I’ve just come to a deeper sense of peace and patience about the work that God is doing and just the immense privilege that needs to be involved in that. To have conversations like this, God could just as easily be using twenty fifty one hundred thousand other people to do this work. And yet he lets me be part of the work that he’s done and that causes me to slow down. It causes me to reflect with joyfulness on the beauty and the generosity of African.

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Richard Cunningham: You’re listening to Fate Driven Investor, a podcast that highlights voices from a growing movement of Christ following investors who believe that God owns it all and cares deeply about the heart posture behind our stewardship. Thanks for listening.

Rusty Rueff: Hey everyone! All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed, and this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization. Thanks for listening.

Richard Cunningham: Welcome to another episode of the Faith Driven Investor podcast. Grateful to have you with us from wherever and whenever you are tuning in to this episode. I’m Richard Cunningham and super excited about today’s episode is we’re doing something a little bit different. You’re actually going to get to hear from our man behind the scenes, our executive producer Joey Honescko, today as he walks you through the powerful narrative story of a wonderful, faith driven investor and faith driven entrepreneur out of Singapore. Sam Rhee, now Sam, was formerly a CEO and co-CEO, global head of Asia at Morgan Stanley. So this is a behemoth asset manager and a gentleman who ran a significant portion of such a large operation and recently has gone on to found Endowus, Endowus is a wealth tech platform serving Asian markets. That is all the way up to $5 billion in assets under management. And recently also as a fintech platform, has gone on to raise $95 million in outside capital and an environment that has been unbelievably difficult to raise outside capital. And as many entrepreneurs can likely attest to. And what you’re going to hear today is this powerful story of Sam and his kind of testimony in the I sacrifice, we win type mentality that he truly adopted, that our friends at Praxis embrace and talk about. So thrilled that you’re going to get to tune in for this. It is a moving story and let’s dive in.

Sam Rhee: I think that act of giving up what is your right is actually what defines us as Christians.

Joseph Honescko: That’s Sam, and he’s the co-founder, chairman and chief investment officer at Endowus, a tech enabled tool that helps democratize money management for everyone. But before we get into the founding of that company, I want to give us a bit of context. We’re going to do a little bit of time traveling, go through Sam’s history to see what led him to this company. In the Gospel of John. Jesus tells his disciples that they are in the world, but not of it. And all of God’s people can relate to this feeling of being stuck between two worlds. But Sam’s experience has given him a unique perspective on this reality.

Sam Rhee: I’ve been what’s called a third culture kid, a multicultural background, and I fit in really well, but I also don’t always belong anywhere.

Joseph Honescko: You’ll see throughout this episode that the spiritual metaphor isn’t lost on Sam, and in fact, his life displays this tension quite well.

Sam Rhee: As a Christian, that really kind of, you know, in a nutshell expresses who we are as in this is my identity and this is not my true home. And, you know, my home is in another place, and I’m here temporarily for a reason. And I’m placed here by God for a reason.

Joseph Honescko: Sam’s desire to discover the reason that God put him on earth is something he’s going to wrestle with for most of his life. And it started even as a young kid, because he grew up in the home of a pastor. But he’s quick to point out that he’s not your stereotypical pastor’s kid.

Sam Rhee: Yeah, so when I was young, everybody assumes that a pastor’s kid should be a pastor or a missionary. But because my father was quite different in the way he lived out his life, when I was a teenager, I approached my dad and I seriously was thinking whether I should go into full time ministry. What does it mean to have that calling to go into full time ministry? And he wisely at the time said that he loves the full time ministry. But what the world needs is not more pastors and not another pastor who’s going to build another church, but he wants us as his children to also do what his ministry is, which is raising leaders, lay leaders. So I think from that young age, he had instilled that in me. He kind of like really put that desire in my heart that I should be a good lay leader and not be going into full time ministry. But it’s a struggle. I always like, you know, think maybe I should go back into full time ministry, but God always brought me back into the workplace and the marketplace. And so it’s been a constant thing that God wanted me to be here.

Joseph Honescko: Did you catch that theme again? The tension between identities. A person living between two worlds. Ministry in the marketplace. His dad did help him see how the marketplace could be a place for ministry. But still it didn’t quite click at that young age. It was one of those classic head versus heart situations where he had heard the truth, but still had a hard time actually believing it and living it out. When you start asking around, you find that most faith driven entrepreneurs go through the same thing. We all at various times might know something to be true, but we find ourselves struggling to live in that reality. That was true for Sam, especially as he started out in his career in finance.

Sam Rhee: Well, going into finance was a fluke. I was a social science guy more interested in like international relationships and, you know, economics and stuff like that. So I wasn’t really looking to go into finance, but a family friend recommended me an internship in Korea and I thought, hey, summer break. You know, I can go there earn some pocket money, practice my Korean and brush it up and I’ll come back. But at the end of the internship, they said, why don’t you stay? And that was it. That was my career in finance. That’s how it began.

Joseph Honescko: As Sam’s career progressed, he found himself at the investment bank Morgan Stanley with a desire to move up in the world. And through that, he started to see his faith become less and less of a priority at work.

Sam Rhee: There was a part of me when I was younger where I think I was kind of enamored with the worldly things like, you know, chasing after the same things bigger bonus and promotions and the work faith integration wasn’t really happening.

Joseph Honescko: Sam again found himself stuck between two worlds the world of finance and the world of faith. And to be clear, it wasn’t like he was out there rejecting God. It was just faith became a lower priority.

Sam Rhee: You know, yes, I was doing the things in the work place, meaning I would lay my hands on the chest of my colleagues and pray for them. I’d like, you know, do Bible study in the workplace, but it wasn’t like fully integrated into the day to day investment space, I think, and you get caught up by a lot of this, you know, game that people play.

Joseph Honescko: Anyone who works in professional settings has experienced the same thing Sam has at different levels. We start to be taught that these are the certain things you’re supposed to go after, and whatever it is, we’re shaped by these stories that say, this is what your desire ought to be. So I don’t think it will shock anyone listening to hear that. For Sam, the thing he was told to desire was his own success above anyone else’s. To look out for himself and to do what it took to get to the top.

Steve Son: Finance has been one of those industries where it’s always had a bit of a challenge.

Joseph Honescko: That’s Steve Son, a former colleague of Sam’s from back in the day at Morgan Stanley.

Steve Son: How do you think would you.

Steve Son: Lead personally into your day to day work? Because you have whether you are investing as are businesses or trading, whatever else it is? You know, part of my goal is just to make money.

Joseph Honescko: Perhaps the biggest issue for anyone who’s trying to integrate their faith into the work is that our work can easily become who we are. For Sam, a lot of his identity became tied to a specific role in Morgan Stanley. Everything he worked towards revolved around getting a specific title.

Sam Rhee: One of the most important things that you need to get if you’re in an investment bank or a large company like Morgan Stanley is, you need to get to managing director, the MD. That’s the partner level. That’s the ultimate goal in life, basically.

Joseph Honescko: Act two finding a better identity. The first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, recited by Christians for generations, is what is the chief end of man? The Catechism proposes the answer to love God and enjoy him forever. And I think it’s fair to say that most Christians would generally agree with this statement. But how often do we really live this out? It’s so easy to get caught up in the ways of the world. We, like Sam in the story, might even find ourselves thinking a certain position, or an acquisition or a funding amount, or whatever it is is the ultimate goal in life. Those kinds of things can quickly become our chief ends. And for Sam, he actually had a chance to arrive at his chief end. All that effort he had put in. All the drive was about to pay off until something unexpected happened.

Sam Rhee: So I was out for promotion together with another colleague. So we were going to step up as the Co-heads of Asia. And you know, the promotion was almost guaranteed in our minds.

Joseph Honescko: You can put yourself in their shoes and feel the weight of this meeting. They’re going into this conversation they’ve been waiting their whole careers for. There’s excitement, probably a healthy sense of accomplishment. And there’s also that sense of contained professionalism. Like you don’t want to show all your eagerness too much. So they all sit down together and hear the boss say something neither of them ever saw coming.

Sam Rhee: Sat us down and said, hey, I only have space for one for most of this year.

Joseph Honescko: Even now, you can practically feel the energy drained from the room. Like when it’s so silent, you can hear your own heartbeat. And then something even more unpredictable happened.

Sam Rhee: What was really weird was that he said he can’t decide. So why don’t you guys talk it over and you guys decide?

Joseph Honescko: Keep in mind, too, that these aren’t longtime rivals in the company. They were friends and colleagues and partners in many ways.

Sam Rhee: We built the career of, you know, 15, 20 years to get to this level. And we’re the same age we are, you know, managing good books. We’re going to be the co-head of Asia. So we wanted to build this team together. And one of us becoming promoted first as an MD was going to potentially wreck this kind of relationship of trust.

Joseph Honescko: The decision they had to make didn’t just affect their position in the company. It affected their relationship too. So you can imagine the weight they felt when they were given a bit of time to think it over. Sam was entered back into that situation where he was stuck between two worlds. On one hand, he didn’t want to overstep his colleague, but at the same time, he had worked hard his whole life for this moment. He did deserve the promotion, so it would have been easy to do what most people would do in this situation and come up with the big plan on why he deserved it and why he should go first. It wouldn’t be personal, right? Just business. But that’s what makes Sam’s eventual choice so remarkable.

Sam Rhee: I went home and I spoke to my wife. We decided to pray together and when we prayed, God kind of impressed upon us that this was a Genesis 13 moment.

Joseph Honescko: All right, so now let’s take our time machine and go even further back in history. Because if it’s been a bit since you’ve read Genesis 13, that’s okay. For a lot of folks, it’s one of those small, strange stories that we may not fully grasp right away, but it’s also essentially the story we’re told at the beginning of this episode. Abraham and Lot have just left Egypt, where Abraham was given an extraordinary amount of wealth, and now he’s settling into the land that God has given him. He and Lot decide to split up the land, and when they look out, half of it is all green and beautiful. It’s [….], it’s perfect for agriculture and development. And the other side is, we’ll just say, not as promising. So even though Abraham has every right to make the first choice, he instead lets Lot choose. As you might imagine, Lot chooses the good land. It’s nothing personal, right? Just business. So Abraham made the choice to lay down the best option for the sake of someone else. He sacrificed so another person might win. And at this point, you might start to see where this is connected to Sam’s story.

Sam Rhee: That Abraham and Lot story really resonated with us, and God convicted us on that verse. And so next day I went back to the office. I sat down with my colleague and I told him that, hey, these are the reasons, you know, we have to build this company together. We have to trust each other. And if you really want it, I’m willing to let you go first.

Joseph Honescko: Everything Sam ever wanted in his career. He was willing to give up. Now what prompts someone to do something like this? Because if you’re sharing the story and you feel like it’s a little crazy or even over the top, that would make sense. It is a bit of a crazy thing to do, but Sam saw that the Christian faith called him not to a life of taking, but a life of giving.

Sam Rhee: The language of the world is to take, is to take what’s rightfully mine and take more, whereas Christ is. And Christians are about giving and giving more. And if you go back to like Philippians and Jesus and how he was in the form of God, but did not think equality with God, something that he should be grasping that defines what Jesus did, he came to this world as human being even though he was. God gave up his right, gave up everything, his claim, and he lived a life to set an example to us all. And that life of giving is what Christ wanted us to live. As Christians.

Joseph Honescko: You’re probably catching on that Sam sacrifice wasn’t just financial or professional, it was also a sacrifice of his own identity. Dave Gibbons, who’s an advisor and author and activist, has known Sam for years, and this is what he says about the identity shift that he saw happen when Sam turned down this promotion.

Dave Gibbons: Well in Asia. A lot of times you may not be referred to by your name. You’re referred to by your title. And so your titles, everything. You know, it shows where you are in the pecking order. And so a person who’s offered like a top position, of course you take it, you may offer some type of humble resignation like, oh, I really don’t want it. But yeah, you’d go after it. So for someone like Sam to turn it down, I know how hard it must have been for him.

Sam Rhee: I was still struggling. You know, I say God convicted me and gave us a verse. But that, like, giving that up was probably the most painful thing that I’ve done.

Joseph Honescko: Sam didn’t have some super power or some extra special line to God. He just had the same tools that are available to all of us. Prayer, Scripture, community, the spiritual disciplines that allow us to seek the wisdom of God Almighty. And it might be tempting to hear Sam’s story, or even the story of Abraham and Lot and say, yep, that’s what it’s like to follow God. Give up everything you’ve ever wanted, and then you just wait around. But Christians aren’t just called to die to ourselves, even though that is a big part of our faith. We’re also promised resurrection life. We do see victory. Sometimes it just looks different than we might expect. Here’s how Dave describes it.

Dave Gibbons: I think a lot of times the moves of God in today’s world is really countercultural, like with Sam. It’s like in an upside down way of thinking. But if you look at really who Jesus is, that’s what he was about. He said he came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. He chose not to take the royal, pathway to be the king of the land, but he chose to be the suffering servant who would choose that path. I think many times that’s the path of following Jesus is a path of death, you know, that has the promise of resurrection.

Joseph Honescko: We can see that resurrection promise in the chapters that follow Genesis 13. God honors Abraham’s choice, while Lot drifts towards the ways of the world and further away from God. But Abraham’s faithfulness ends up being a beacon of hope for Lot. His radical, upside down way of living made a difference to the person he sacrificed for. And that same thing happened with Sam.

Sam Rhee: I went back to his office and told him that, hey, I told the boss. You go first. You deserve it. So congratulations. And I thought he was going to be, like, really happy. But he was really serious. And I said, are you okay? What’s wrong? And he said, you know, throughout my life, I thought that I could do anything that others can do because, you know, he’s tall, is athletic, he’s intelligent. You probably could do most things that other people can do. And so he said that and he was like, but today I realized that there’s something that you’re doing that I just cannot get myself to do. And I was wondering why. And I realized that it was because you have your God and I don’t.

Joseph Honescko: Sam’s decision to sacrifice became a testimony to a nonbeliever, but it also affected his own way of looking at work for the rest of his career. From that moment on, everything was different.

Sam Rhee: It just hit me right there and then that, you know, I’d been a pastor’s kid. A good kid had lived what most people would say, a good Christian life. And I always talked about glorifying God, doing things for his glory or for his kingdom, or pretty much everything that I done was for my own glory. And when I finally gave up, something gave up my right. Then God was glorified. I mean, this title is not important to me anymore because I had done something finally for God and that encouraged me a lot.

Joseph Honescko: Act three. Building out of sacrifice. So here we’ve got a guy who grows up between worlds. His multinational upbringing. He’s never sure where he fits in. He goes into investment banking and begins to find his identity in his successes, while trying to balance that with his life of faith. But then he finally realizes that his significance is found not in his successes, but in his sacrifice. So for a while, he continues working at Morgan Stanley. He does eventually become the managing director, but it doesn’t carry that same weight anymore. He’s proud of his work, but he also knows it’s not his identity. And that’s when he feels God calling him to something brand new.

Sam Rhee: So God place that desire in my heart to solve some of the bigger problems in finance with technology. And the one that I’m most passionate about is the problem of global pension and the retirement adequacy retirement preparedness.

Joseph Honescko: If you’re not familiar with this problem, it essentially comes down to the fact that people who retire are unable to sustain themselves.

Sam Rhee: Imagine people working all their lives, retiring and not having enough saved up.

Joseph Honescko: Some have to drastically cut back their quality of life, and others even end up in poverty. But the bigger issue is that this problem is growing in the world.

Sam Rhee: People are living longer so that, you know, horrible reality is going to be a reality for much longer than people think. And people have not been taught, whether it’s at the school or at home or even in the workplace, how to manage their personal finances well, how to prepare for their retirement. Well.

Joseph Honescko: While this is a global problem, Sam says there are particular concerns within the Asian population.

Sam Rhee: Unlike the developed markets, I think that Asia has aged much more rapidly without becoming rich. So China India doesn’t even have a proper social safety net. And it’s a massive, massive problem for the biggest population in the world. And so I felt that there was something that we could do.

Joseph Honescko: That last line is the kicker there. The core conviction, the magic phrase. I felt like there was something I could do about it. This is the call of every faith driven entrepreneur who has completely trusted God with their life, with their talent and their resources. Here is where God uniquely placed Sam to make a difference in the world through his company Endowus.

Sam Rhee: Endowus is a digital world platform that allows you to invest your private wealth and public pension. Basically, we’re trying to empower individuals and educate them and advise them and guide them towards a better future.

Gregory Van: So there is a wrong that we are trying to solve in the way financial services delivered.

Joseph Honescko: That’s the voice of Gregory Van, the co-founder and CEO of Endowus.

Gregory Van: My real hope is that we leave our mark, our longer term mark on the entire industry so that they all need to work to serve the client best, not just squeeze as much margin as they can along the way, which is what we see a lot of the time today. And if Endowus is successful. The world will be a better place because people will invest better. They’ll manage their money better, therefore be able to live easier today knowing that they prepared for their future and therefore live better.

Sam Rhee: I think that’s been a passion for me to seek justice and righteousness in the space of finance, because that’s the space where I think the rubber meets the road, where this God and mammon fight is most intense, and God has placed me here for that reason, I think.

Joseph Honescko: So that’s the full circle moment of this story. Sam, like so many of us, spent the early parts of his life trying to figure out his reason, his purpose, his calling. Along the way, he drifted in the ways of the world, believing a promotion was the ultimate goal in life. But once he laid all that down, once he gave away what he thought he earned and what he deserved, he began to experience the freedom of life in Christ. But first, he had to stop chasing Mammon.

Sam Rhee: The Bible says you cannot serve God and mammon. It’s because money has power. It’s more than just an inanimate object. And so we have to submit it to God. And the only way to really deep mammon is through radical giving. Because the world is all about taking more, having more. Hoarding more of this money. And so radical giving. Giving up your right to own more. Giving up your right to having more money. Giving up your right. That is the only way we can defeat Mammon and submit money and finance to God. I think that act of giving up what is your right is actually fundamentally what defines us as Christians.

Richard Cunningham: That act of giving up. What is, you’re right, is actually fundamentally what defines us as Christians. Wow, what a good word from Sam Rhee. What a powerful story and testimony and friends. That’s the calling all of us as faith driven investors to dethrone Mammon in our lives, not to be caught up in the worries of the world and the deceitfulness of riches. Thanks for listening today. Know that if you are ever processing through working through some of these exact threads that Sam talks about, the faith driven investor community wants to serve you. There are groups to process and journey alongside. Love having you here and we will catch you in a couple of weeks. Thanks, friends.

You’re listening to Faith Driven Investor, a podcast that highlights voices from a growing movement of Christ, following investors who believe that God owns it all and cares deeply about the heart posture behind our stewardship. Thanks for listening. Hey everyone. All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Hosted guests may maintain positions in the companies of securities discussed, and this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization. Thanks for listening.

Richard Cunningham Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Faith Driven podcast. And I say faith driven without entrepreneur or investor on the back end, specifically, as Justin Forman, executive director and president of Faith Driven Movements, is in the podcast studio. We’re doing something fun today and unique where we zoom in on one of the solving the World’s greatest problem themes, and we do it on our FDE and FDI podcast as we’re going to bring in marketplace leaders, entrepreneurs, investors alike talking about this particular problem. And we’ll introduce our guests here shortly. But Justin, big episode today, a tough topic as the particular problem we’re highlighting. It’s a heavy one. And I want to give you kind of some time to give context of this episode and then we’ll introduce our guests.

Justin Forman Yeah, big episode. And when we talk about solving the world’s greatest problems, we don’t have to look far to see how dark it is out there and to see how dark some of these things. And certainly this is one of those it’s one of the darkest places that you might look in terms of solving the world’s greatest problems. But as the world gets darker, I think we get more encouraged when we see light breaking through and we see entrepreneurs and investors doing things and pulling on solutions and levers that haven’t been pulled on before. And, you know, I’m I don’t know about you, Richard, but often times I feel my heart break. And I think of oftentimes the survivors, the people that are been hurt and they have been wounded. And what encourages me most about this group and so many others in solving the world’s greatest problems is the people that are getting upstream and thinking about what is that other lever and what is that other issue upon. And I think with today’s friends, as they share about what’s happening here, there’s an economic lever to some of these solutions. And oftentimes we don’t see these. We see our humanity, our brokenness, the morality. But we don’t know that there’s like really an economic problem to solve that if you can disrupt the economics, if you can disrupt some things for good, that some of the downstream things get that much more turned around. And so I think it’s a fun way where we get to see entrepreneurs and investors really stepping in to solve some of these big problems.

Richard Cunningham Today, the adult entertainment industry is a technologically advanced and high strategic engine. It knows how to prey on the most innocent, the most susceptible and the most unsuspecting among us. And their strategy is working. The average age of someone’s first exposure to pornography is 12 years old, and that initial dose of unsolicited supply creates an avalanche of demand. Porn sites receive more monthly traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. That’s all the movies watched on Netflix, all the shows streamed on Amazon and all the tweets. All of them combined received less traffic and attention than pornography. 28,258 users are watching pornography every second. Over $3,000 is spent on porn every second on the Internet. 35% of all Internet downloads are related to pornography. 40 million Americans regularly visit porn sites. 4.6 billion with a B. Hours are spent watching pornography videos on a single site in just one year. But what does that even mean? These are statistics. You’ve probably heard versions of them before. And while they’re wildly unsettling, it’s hard to know just what to do with. The truth is that according to the Journal of Sex Research, 64% of men and 30% of women are viewing pornography. And 100% of those people don’t want to listen to a podcast about the damage caused by porn. Let’s be honest. If you’re in the group that doesn’t view pornography, you don’t really want to hear about it either. It’s a problem that has long existed as part of the underbelly of society. It once lived in the fringes of our psyche like a shadow you’d occasionally see out of the corner of your eye. And while there’s a very real temptation to keep treating it like that as something that is someone else’s problem or not something that affects me. The reality is that it isn’t someone else’s problem, and if it doesn’t already affect you, it’s going to. This is a problem that if Christians don’t start taking it seriously, is going to continue to have massive downstream implications. There were only beginning to understand. So if your opinion of pornography is simply that it’s a moral wrong and something an Internet filter can solve. Buckle up. The reality of this problem is worse than you think. And then even worse than that. But if you clicked on this podcast, you already know we aren’t hoping to solve the easy problems. We’re staring the world’s toughest challenges straight in the face, and we’re talking to the people who are tackling them head on. Amen, indeed. Well, we’ve got Dr. Lisa Stroman in the podcast studio, clinical psychologist, author, recent author of Digital The Stress Growing Up Online, a specific focus on children and young people in this kind of issue of sexual brokenness. And then West Lyons, an accomplished venture capitalist, a very well-respected investor in this broader faith and investing movement of equal venture fund friends. Welcome on to the podcast. Before I go much further and don’t give an intro that nearly warrants how impressive you both are. Lisa, we’ll start with you and let’s get some kind of background on who you are and a little bit of your stories and then we’ll get going.

Dr. Lisa Strohman Sure. Thanks for having me. I am a psychologist, an attorney. I went to a joint program from undergrad to go into policy work and at that time was offered a position to work as an honors intern with the FBI, which was a super cool experience. And I worked in Quantico with the profiling team to classes at BSU and then was invited to become a visiting scholar based on that internship. And they sponsored my dissertation. So I ended up being with the Bureau for 6 or 7 years in total, depending on if you count the AP. And it was an incredible opportunity for me. I learned a ton and I was there when unfortunately Columbine happened. So I was shoved into this world of online safety and what kids were going to do with technology even before social media was launched. So I just remember pivoting and saying, you know, wanting to be a guardian ad litem was kind of my dream in that joint degree. But shifting over and just saying like, somebody needs to really look into and shepherd through the psychology of technology. And so I’ve spent a career doing that. So 25 years in that space.

Richard Cunningham And that’s so powerful.

Wes Lyons Wes Lyons thankful to be here? Thanks for hosting us. I get to work at Eagle Venture Fund, where we get to use venture capital to try to solve some of the world’s greatest problems. And one of the ones that we’re getting to work on under the banner of the Eagle Freedom Fund is investing in technologies that fight human trafficking. A huge chunk of that is online, a safe Internet for kids. Companies like Lisa’s Game Safe, where we’re trying to create scalable solutions to the sexual brokenness, to human trafficking. And it’s a really dark subject, but it’s also incredibly exciting to work with entrepreneurs who have scalable vision for change that bring hope.

Justin Forman Now, guys, I’m very grateful that you guys will both join us here today. It’s been a gift to spend time with you guys here recently filming different pieces of this story. And I think it’s important as we start this off to recognize this story has many different faces and has many different angles when we talk about brokenness. We can look around the world and it’s all encompassing in so many different facets, but specifically this issue. There’s exploitation, there’s trafficking, there’s sexual brokenness, there’s different angles to that. And so I think it’s important that as we start this conversation, we recognize that there’s different angles, but also to recognize one of the reasons why we do this podcast, as Richard and I team up for this, we want to highlight some of the things in the conversation that’s happening already in solving the World’s Greatest Problems initiative. And so if you’re not familiar with the website, if you’ve been paying attention to Faith Driven Entrepreneur and Faith Driven Investor, it’s a new initiative in a site that has been designed to say, how do we start having these conversations? How do we make what feels otherwise overwhelming and complex and make it accessible so that we can begin to process, to have these conversations, to feel how we might be called into this space as entrepreneurs, investors and giving whatever that might look like. So there’s a full episode where we work through some of the stories, we work through some of the conversation into that, and there’s going to be other pieces that you’re going to find there to include an incredible story that we’re filming with these guys and just what’s happening through Freedom Fund and Eagle Venture. So be sure to check that out. But I wanted to make sure that we start with that framework because a lot of people that are going to enter this conversation are coming from different places and going to think, Man, you’re only tackling a piece of the puzzle. And that’s right. There’s no way we’re going to able to round all the bases in this kind of conversation. But what I want to start with is I think oftentimes when we think about evil, we think about evil is this thing that we always slip into, and it’s this evil that maybe it’s like, man, we have a moment of weakness. There’s a moment of brokenness. And while that’s true and there’s responsibility, we all have to take for that actions. There’s a sinister intentionality that I think is on the other side of maybe the screening, the other side of this equation that we need to look at. And we said that was one of the things that struck me when we spent time together. And you just talked about the way that people are being targeted, the CEO, the way that people are trying to get people into this area of brokenness, specifically in this area of pornography from a young age. Can you speak into some of the things of what you guys have found in that journey?

Dr. Lisa Strohman Sure. You know, it’s interesting. I think that a lot of times when you look at the rates of exposure. Or to pornography or exposure into these kind of dark worlds. It’s happening sub10 at this point in our country. And so what we look at and obviously we’re not going to do causative studies in the U.S. because you can’t do experimental studies where you’re putting children into cohorts where they’re going to be have, you know, harms placed upon them. But you can do correlational studies and you can look at what’s happening. And so the average in the United States of where children are first being exposed is typically around second grade, where they’re given their first research assignment, which means that they’re mandated to go into this Internet world and research things that are tethered with ads and things like that that pop up on them innocently. But it’s almost like you can’t unwind that. And so what I’m seeing is that those children that have unfettered access or even monitored access, the parents think that they’re doing the right thing, are fundamentally different kids. And so in my practice, when I see if I go into, say, a speaking engagement in a school or I go to a town hall, I can tell you which of those children have been exposed because they’re hypersexualized even at like nine, ten and 11. You can just tell the way they dress, the way they present themselves, versus those children that don’t have that exposure, that are more innocent and natural. So we have to think through of like the technology is being a portal to these things that are industry moneymakers. And so when you’re going into a very high billion dollar industry where you’re you’re going in and getting children at such a young age, you’re getting ten plus years earlier than you can get them as active consumers legitimately. So that’s what we see and that’s what we fight against.

Justin Forman Yeah, the intentionality of that evil. In some ways it’s surprising. In some ways it’s not when you think about so much of like TV and media demographics and you talk about advertisers and they talk about the value of the younger audience, if you can get them engaged, of course, in a business, we understand there’s more of that. I hate to say it this way, but the tragic view of like a lifetime value and what you’re exploit, what you’re talking about bringing to light there is that, yes, they’re targeting people from a young age. You know, my wife and I, obviously, we have three kiddos and it was eye opening for us years ago when we would hear that the average age of exposure was above ten. I think it was first told to us like it was 12 and it was, you know, probably the picture that you would have would be the the bus ride home from school. And one of the kids has a cell phone and it’s unfiltered and it kind of goes from some of those things. But what you’re talking about under ten years old at that young age with that intentionality, it’s startling. And it’s it’s. It’s crushing. It’s almost kind of crossed a threshold where as parents, we are just it’s no longer that you can hide from it. You have to be prepared to kind of teach people how to deal with it. And, you know, one of the other things that I want to kind of bring into is they experience it in the unexpected ways. And, you know, after our time together, I cringed as a parent to think at how young of an age we had our kids in games, specifically things like Roblox and other things that you speak of that I mean, there’s just so much happening on these platforms that we don’t know about. Can you shed light on the game side of things and just what’s missing there?

Dr. Lisa Strohman Sure. I think that in gaming, what we see is parents want their kids to experience just fun. They want them to go out and they want them to connect. And that’s what we all should want. We want our kids to have those experiences. But what we’re seeing in gaming is that there’s no kind of line between adults and children in the gaming worlds. So some of these games like Roblox or Minecraft that you think about farm life like you think of, these are kid games. Well, imagine yourself if you’re a predator. And we know from David Erb, he’s the whistleblower from Metta that there’s tens of millions of predators online on a given day. And imagine if you’re looking for a child today and you’re going into a neighborhood with a van. It’s very unlikely that you’re going to see a child. But what they can do is they can go into these kids facing games and go into those very innocently with a totally innocuous avatar or pretend that they’re a child and they can have conversations and start to groom those children without that child even knowing, without the parent even knowing. And so the gaming community hasn’t figured out a strong stop on that. They don’t know what they’re doing or what they’re not doing. Right. And so they’re kind of clumsily trying to come in and fix that. And right now, when you look at kind of roadblocks as an example, they’re coming in like if we see anybody that is inappropriate online, we kick them off of our platform. Okay. Well, that’s fantastic. Now all they have to do is create a different avatar, a different sign on and come back on and do exactly the same thing. And they’re not notifying the parent. They’re not notifying anyone that the child may have been exposed to some sort of sexual deviancy or any of those things. So the child now holds that and is shameful and hurt and curious and not sure what to do with that information. And we’re not protecting our family unit by giving them the right or the ability to do that. And and that’s why I was so excited to join Game Safe. As they’re doing that, they’re giving contemporaneous reporting to the parent and allowing us to understand and see exactly what our children are being exposed to.

Justin Forman You know, one of the things I love about this podcast is that in the solving world’s greatest problems side of things, we get to deep dive on some of the statistics, the issues we tell, some of the stories in that episode. There’s incredible parts that we’re telling the story from the brokenness side of things, the therapy side of things, the statistics side of things. But one of the stories that our audience is particularly drawn to is that of Layla’s story of saying, What does it look like to take down and to bankrupt Pornhub? And we’re seeing that some of the solutions are not necessarily just saying how do we prevent how do we take away some of these things, but how do we really go at the very business model side of things? And where one of the things that you said when we spent time together is that this is sometimes more of an economic issue, more than it is anything else. Can you explain what are you guys finding out when you see the economic issue and how we can follow that?

Wes Lyons One of the key questions when you’re looking for a really scalable solution to an issue this hard is trying to figure out who has. It’s this magic pairing of the pain and ability to pay for a massively scalable solution. And in this case, you actually have to add that the parents feel the pain. And when they realize that their kid is in danger. And that’s what Game Save is primarily tapping into in the direct to consumer is parents want to protect their kids. And the ability to hand them the easy button, you can protect your kid. But then what we’re seeing here in the last even in the last ten days, as we’ve seen short sellers on Roblox actually buying big short positions and then publicizing, there’s incredibly high numbers of predatory activity happening there. Dr. Allison, just for sharing about. And that’s actually destroyed $2 billion of market cap in Roblox in the last ten days, kind of highlighting that there is very real economic consequences for not solving this problem. And it helps validate the thesis that we’ve been preaching that this is actually a business problem, if that makes sense, and that we can use business to some extent. Business or capitalism got us into the problem because Roblox has not put any brakes on this because they just wanted as many users as possible. If we’re very simple about it, and then we’ve been making the case that there is an economic model to scale really large solutions to this. So on both cases, you have pain in ability to pay. What would you add to that?

Dr. Lisa Strohman Lisa I think that that’s perfectly said in that respect because I think that we don’t ever take a second to understand the mechanism of what financial is driving the market for the gaming. Kids just want to play. Parents just want to have a safe place to let their kids go. But we don’t really think about it because they’re kind of free services. You can go on and you don’t have to pay anything initially. And so, you know, my work that I do with kids is really to educate them that they are no longer a consumer, but they in fact, are the product in a lot of these situations. And whether it’s the porn industry or whether it’s the gaming industry, they’re the product that is being sold and used to make money.

Justin Forman I want you to push into that one more before Richard. And we push into like the solution and the legal venture side of things in the work that’s being done. Lisa One of the things that was both fascinating and scary as you talked about, how the algorithm it’s this mysterious thing. It’s a mysterious piece of the conversation. We know it’s been a part of probably first introduced to us in our Google search and then our social feeds. And we kind of think of this, but it’s this mysterious thing. And yet to kids at an early age, it’s not actually so mysterious. And sometimes it gets to know them more ways than a parent can. And your analogy of kind of breaking that down of like what this algorithm is to kids at a young age, can you talk about kind of what is it, when do we first encounter it and what are we competing against as parents?

Dr. Lisa Strohman Wow. I mean, that’s a big question. You the algorithm start way into the very, very early games where the kids are doing, you know, say, ABC Mouse or some of the educational tools that parents will use. Any time that you’re putting a child in an interface that is online, you have to assume that there’s an algorithm that is leading them through that process, and it’s learning from that to better their product in the end and to better the connection and the drive for the child to return to it. What that does for a child is it’s training them. And I’ve argued this point. I’m very good friends with Dr. Drew Pinsky, who works in addiction. And he and I have talked through the fact that we’re really priming children to become addicts in other spaces by doing these very early introductions that are algorithmically keeping them hooked into these games. So, you know, it can be as simple as, like, understanding a child. I’ll take ABC Mouse because my children were on it. And the minute I saw that, it wasn’t about drawing the letter appropriately, but it was really more about getting the coin so they could buy the sticker to put on to the landscape. And you can see it happen if you’re looking for it, if parents are trained to look for it. And when that happens, it shifts. So my work in elementary school, I think, is the most vital work that I do because we have children that are open to learning and we’re open and not as exposed as they are by the time you get to middle school or high school. But in that elementary school age of very example, I would say is that many of them by sixth grade, I would say the schools that I’ve gone into in the last three years, almost 75 to 80% of those kids are truly looking at wanting to be as a career, an influencer or a YouTuber. And so for them to see those words has to have some modicum of understanding that it’s about following in. It’s about getting the likes and it’s about doing things that create that algorithm to give them more attention. And so I think that our consumerism of the children is being overlooked. You know, we’re looking at the parents or we’re looking at the schools, but the kids themselves, in my opinion, is the biggest solution that we can like dive into and support.

Richard Cunningham Well, I mean, this has been powerful to listen in on. Lisa gave us some kind of phenomenal context on her passion and motivation for this work and where it all started. Wes, you’re a venture capitalist and you are looking specifically at Eagle Venture Fund and within your Freedom Fund for solutions to human trafficking and kind of this issue of sexual brokenness. What was some of the original motivation for this investment thesis? And then after that, I want to get into some of those portfolio companies and kind of some of those redemptive stories of solution providers.

Wes Lyons Yeah, the origin story for me started on the battlefield in the Philippines, where I saw ISIS using children in combat. And that just wrecked me. I was actually already in the finance world and was mobilized as a reservist. So I was already thinking with the world of finance, when I encountered the really tough experience of spending the day hunting for kids, trying to save them before the unthinkable happens, and coming home and processing through the grief of what I was doing there. But also through the years of of processing and understanding how big this problem is. When you look at the breadth of a $345 billion industry of buying and selling people. It’s breathtaking. But also as faith driven investors meeting more and more and more entrepreneurs, you have these really exciting, scalable solutions has also grown our hope that we can be part of something that the large is doing that’s much bigger than ourselves.

Richard Cunningham And maybe a few examples of portfolio companies early on that you guys are extremely passionate about in the ways they’re attacking a problem.

Wes Lyons Well, Game Safe is a great example where they’re helping parents protect kids online. We’ve got to be part of tackling this journey where Texas is a phone that doesn’t have any exposure to the Internet or kind of any social media at all, or helping people have the best of an online phone experience. But actually none of the addictive elements to it, which is really been inspiring. And then another good example would be Darkwatch. There’s about 32,000 brothels operating in the United States run by 200 crime organizations, and they’ve mapped those cartels and actually coming to businesses and saying, Would you like to know if you’re doing business with the cartels? And in many cases, what people don’t understand is if you look at this $345 billion industry, that’s kind of like the revenue line on that. Overall, the business of human trafficking, the expense line, much of that expense line on the 345 billion is flowing through legitimate businesses. It’s flowing through rideshare companies, through hotels, through cryptocurrency exchanges, through banks. And most of the brands that we know and love passionately don’t want to do business with the cartels. And so if you can bring them that solution and there’s more than 40 hotel brands in court over literally human trafficking allegations right now. So when we see the short sellers losing $2 billion, when we see JPMorgan getting hit for $290 million, when we see these major flairs of what effectively are pain for corporations, that just brings out a treasure trove of opportunities to build scalable solutions that faith driven entrepreneurs who are hunting for ways to express the Kingdom of God are more than excited to step into.

Justin Forman So I want you to hit on that. Like if you weren’t paying attention, if you’re on a run and you missed those numbers on that scale, how many brothels, how many crime organizations?

Wes Lyons 32,000 brothels trafficking about a million people run by 200 crime organizations.

Justin Forman And $345 billion.

Wes Lyons There’s a little bit. So 345 would be a global number. And that 32,000 is a US number. So I don’t want to overly mix those.

Justin Forman But when you look at that and then you hear statistics of like there is more consumption than on Netflix and Amazon and X combined, we talking about a serious issue. What I love is the subtlety that you hit on is that the way that you can disrupt this is like where does all of those other operations pass through? And that you can attack kind of some of those things because as you’re pointing out to companies are thinking more about that because there’s a real price if they don’t pay attention to that. There’s a real price if they don’t have that, because the consumer, us as we’re buying and purchasing, we want to know that we’re purchasing for something responsible. Can you talk about that? Westlake, where some of the places where companies have taken note said, my goodness, we didn’t realize something was happening and maybe you don’t need to get specific on a company, but when you talk about an industry, what are some of those places where that whether it’s ridesharing or some other thing, where are those places where people are taking note of what’s. Happening.

Wes Lyons I think the hospitality industry as a whole has created a number of nonprofits and done a lot of training. So where we’re at in the movement, in the hospitality, about 80% of the trafficking in the US, if you just look at calls into the trafficking hotline, are happening in hotels. So they’ve done a lot of good groundwork where they’ve rallied into organizations and done training. What we’re trying to do is say, Hey, that’s amazing, all the ground that we’ve made. Now let’s apply a ton of tools like Deja Vu AI, who’s able to take an advertisement for a traffic person and actually do location work on where did that picture come from, or other tools where we can start bringing scalable solutions? Because if you imagine if you work in a hotel and you got training and are waking up and going, Wait, there is human trafficking happening, you can’t actually call the police because you felt weird about like that looked a little off. It’s just not at all appropriate to call the police to say she looked a little young or she looked a little scared, like, you can’t do that. But if you start creating the systems to say, hey, I’m just going to put this into the app, there’s something funny or I won’t say explicitly the things that you might clean up in a hotel room after 12 customers, but you can imagine what would be cleaned up. Those types of things are not things that you would call the police about. But if you start keeping track of those in a technology solution that’s also doing facial recognition. You can imagine we can decimate human trafficking domestically in the next few years.

Justin Forman So you talk about the economic equation, and I think what you talked about is like in sometimes you’re trying to raise the expense line item. Like can you talk about like the theory of change here and behind it, like, how do you defeat this? It’s not that you can probably eradicate all of it, but you can really attack it from a certain economic angle. Explain what you mean by that.

Wes Lyons Yeah, no, Thomas from Darkwatch really taught me to think about these cartels as entrepreneurs who have a revenue line on one side and an expense line on the other. And if you can drive down demand through a whole litany of making it more scary to go buy sex, any ways that you drive down that revenue line and then pushing up the expense line, there are fewer and fewer hotels where it’s safe to operate, fewer and fewer banks where it’s safe to operate. If you can get the expense line to cross the revenue line, that business breaks like we decimate trafficking. So it’s really it’s powerful to change our thinking from, hey, we have to catch everyone or like kind of we tend to think about it in the one off rape type of mechanism. That makes sense. You’ve got to catch the bad guy. But if you think of how to break a business, you just have to make expenses higher than revenue in the business breaks.

Justin Forman Yeah. Powerful thought. Before we go back, I want you to explain this idea of just why is for profit solutions so needed in this space? A lot of times our heart is a church feature and entrepreneurs, investors listening to this, we break and we think of like the survivor and we think of like, how can we help? But when you think about the other side of things and the for profit, why is for profit solutions needed so much in this equation?

Wes Lyons It’s a really good question and we had to wrestle with that too, as we started grappling with the gravity and magnitude of the issue. I would submit it’s just the sheer scale of the issue. And in our lifetime, we’ve watched a billion people come out of dollar a day, poverty primarily through capitalism. And it’s just it’s what capitalism is good at. Like, for better or for worse, it scales things. When we look at roadblocks as scaled it creative experience a little bit further than it should have. And that makes sense. For better or for worse, capitalism just takes things in. It scales them. And that same mechanism that seen a billion people come out of dollar day poverty. If we can aim those mechanisms redemptive at seeing millions of people come out of slavery, it just seems like one of the most exciting ways to grow capital on the planet.

Richard Cunningham Lisa, let’s go back to you for a moment. One of the things that’s been top of mind, this entire podcast as we’ve been just going over this, is I can’t stop thinking about social media. I mean Tik-tok, Facebook, Instagram, X, but then also the rise of artificial intelligence and deepfakes. And you’ve run into some situations there where technology is being used for brokenness. And I think you’ve got a pretty powerful story around A.I. and deepfakes as well. So what comments and thoughts do you have there?

Dr. Lisa Strohman I think that now that we have AI consumer ready, right? So there’s apps that you can go to the App Store or Google Play and you can download these apps that allow now any individual consumer to more for face, more for body like create videos. So when we talk about deepfakes, there’s all these different variations of it. But what I’m seeing happening now is that you’re starting to see kids experiment like they should, right? They’re curious and now they have what on the App Store allows a four year old to download four plus in many of these. Where you’re allowed to go in and create deepfakes on video or pictures or those kind of things. And so one of the cases that we’ve had recently was a school had just come into session. They’d been there for a couple of weeks. I get a call. The principal had been flagged as posting or having a video posted of himself that he was talking to a female student and the female student was asking for grades to be changed to all A’s. And the principal said that they would do that with a sexual favor in return. And so none of that was actually true. You know, two students had filmed this talking as a narrative had gone in, taken a picture of this principal and morphed his body into that video. But the consequence of that was now the FBI showing up at a school system. Right now, we have police officers involved for criminal action on the student. The family is now impacted because there’s suspensions and an impact there in terms of like schooling, choice of where they’re going to be and whether or not the school is going to let them back in. But more so, too, is the victimized principal that is really, truly dedicating his life to support these kids and to be in to talk to them and now trying to figure out how does he manage that? Does he privately press charges? Does he allow the school system to manage that himself? And so you’ve got this conflict of like just kind of very rape. And that’s one system or one example in a system that where I’ve already had at least two dozen calls on this issue. I think that in the App Store there was an app that I highlighted in a presentation I had recently that you have to be nine in order to notify someone, you know. So you’ve got, you know, these open source abilities for children to go in and do very, very awful things. And the teachers and the administrators are having to deal with it.

Justin Forman Yeah. And while I don’t even know what to do with some of those things of what you’re just mentioning, like we often talk about how money can be a tool for good, and business can be a tool for good, but it can be a source of brokenness. And in the same way, we’re seeing technology play itself out in that same manner where so much redemptive and great things can come from it. And yet we haven’t even like fathom the depths of intentionality of brokenness and how these same tools are being manipulated in the opposite direction. What I’d love to do is we’re kind of coming to a close here in this episode and we’re just scratching the surface of this, but what are the things that give each of you guys hope? What are the things that you’re seeing that you’re saying, Man, here’s the win. Here’s something, here’s the progress. Hey, it’s a dark world. It can sound like the sky is falling. But what are the things from each of you guys perspective that you’re seeing that gives you that hope? Well, let’s start with you.

Wes Lyons I mean, it’s so dark that you’ve got to lift your eyes to Jesus fast or else, like, no entrepreneur can give me true hope. But as we’re scanning out, we do get to spend most of our day working on solutions, and many of them are incredibly exciting. And getting to see entrepreneurs working together is also really, really powerful. Where entrepreneurs in the UK are working with entrepreneurs in the US and people working on policy start to cross, collaborate with those that are creating companies or even some of the people that are involved in the court cases trying to highlight what’s actually been this toward solutions. When we start seeing that cross collaboration happening, the body of Christ is standing up and saying, Let’s work together in a way that is deeply exciting.

Dr. Lisa Strohman You know, for me, I’ll use a personal example because I have multiple examples over the years. But recently I went to Wyoming and I was in a conference, probably 250 people there. The host of the conference, the prevention specialist, brought her daughter, who was 12 years old and was really fighting with her mom about wanting to have social media and all of the things. And I went up and gave my presentation and I talked about all of the different things that the industry does in order to take advantage of kids. And I talked about some of the things that it impacts their brains, their neurochemistry, their neurobiology, the structural aspects of their brains. And I talked about how it’s winnable when we stop and start to educate and we understand and give this power to the kids. And at the end of my speech, the woman came over and she said, My daughter would like to talk to you. And she came up to me and she had tears in her eyes and she gave me a big hug and she said, I just deleted everything on my phone. And she said, And I’d really be honored if I could be your team lead for your mentoring program in my school. And so I gifted it to her on site. And then we prayed and I told her it was going to be okay. And I know that that’s the answer, right? Scaling that and getting those kids to be the voice is light. They will do this. They will do the work because when they hear it and they know it, they will do it for us.

Justin Forman Such powerful things. You know, I think oftentimes we talk about solving the world’s greatest problems. And sometimes we say that solving the world’s greatest problems, we are oftentimes the world’s greatest problem. It’s us. It’s our sin, it’s our brokenness. And this is an issue that as parents, as ourselves in different places, we all find the church is certainly not been immune from it. This has been a big issue of our generation. And as you said, it’s an individual conversation. I think one of the things that I take away from this conversation with you guys is just a hope that this is also what a beautiful opportunities for the body of Christ to help the hurting to come along. For those that are surviving, they’re walking out of some of these brokenness or walking out of some of these painful situations and also to engage the economic side, the business side, and to say, hey, there is an economic equation that if we can disrupt, we’re never going to again eradicate sin from this world. That much we know, but we can really see some of this disruption happening for good. And so when I when I hear about why the story of Pornhub, when I hear about some of the different ventures and Evil Freedom Fund, when I hear about this economic model of what we’re going at, man, it makes you proud of the home team, makes you proud of the church. It’s like, man, we figured out how to take this upstream, how to take this to a different playing field and really kind of evaluate it in that way. And guys are just so grateful for you, grateful for the work of what you guys are doing, grateful for the way the Eagle and the freedom and just thinking about this in a different way. And as you said, bringing resources to bear that are needed for an issue of such skills. They’re so, so grateful for you guys. Thanks for joining us. Thrilled to have you guys here on the podcast. For those listening to this and want to push more into the issue in the conversation. Be sure to check out that Solving the World’s Greatest Problems website for the Faith Driven Investor is for the Faith driven entrepreneurs. That is a place where we’re going to dive into the issue. You’re going to hear some of the stories there, but you’re also going to hear specific ways that you might build and invest and give differently when you hear issues like this. And so some of the same companies that you heard West talk about some of the same ministries and that you might be able to give to, you can find a best list of those there and not sit on the sidelines, but find ways that you, your family or your business might get in the game here. So great being with you guys. Thank you for joining us.

Wes Lyons Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Strohman Thanks for having us.

Richard Cunningham Thanks for listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Our ministry exists to equip and resource entrepreneurs just like you. With content and community, we know entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, but it doesn’t have to be. We’ve got groups that meet in churches, coffee shops, living rooms and boardrooms around the world. Find one in your area or volunteer to lead one and bring this global movement to your own backyard. There’s no cost, no catch, just connection. Find out more at Faith Driven Entrepreneur or talk.