Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the faith driven investor. We’ve got a special edition here with Chuck Bentley, something that is really special for me. Chuck’s a great friend. He’s been a great encouragement to me for a long, long time. He is the leader of Crown Financial. He’s the leader of the Christian Economic Forum. He has a podcast he hosts himself with a really, really cool studio. Wish you could see if we had video up, you’d see why. I have great studio envy. He’s got something really set up because they’ve got incredible product. The Christian Economic Forum podcast is really, really, really, really good. And it really want to highly recommend that as I do what he does through the Christian Economic Forum. And so many more of you will know about his work at Crown Financial. I’m going to talk about all that today. So, Chuck, first off, thank you for being with us.

Chuck Bentley: Well, thank you, Henry. I enjoy being on the other side of the microphone today because I had the privilege of interviewing you just recently, and it was one of our top podcasts. I’m hoping I can live up to the bar that you set so high for us.

Henry Kaestner: You’re very kind. And apparently you don’t have any other guests. I might have been one of just one or two. And I know another one is competing against was my partner, Luke Roush. So it was a very low bar, but thank you anyway. So tell us all. As we get started. Want to hear a little bit about your background. But before we get into Christian Economic Forum, which I will ask you some questions on. Tell us about your background and tell us about Crown Financial.

Chuck Bentley: Well, just a quick background on myself, I grew up in business, I have a business degree from Baylor and went into the oil and gas business with my family. My father started the company years ago, and that’s primarily my background. I did a couple of other things before I got called in to do what I do today. I’ve walked both sides of the street of the for profit and not for profit world. I’m particularly drawn to Crown because we’re about teaching God’s principles of stewardship and stewardship is what I like to call the invisible power that changes everything. When you see good stewardship present, you know it. You feel it. You’re actually you’re at peace. You’re relaxed. It’s everything’s functioning the way it should. And when good stewardship is absent, everything is broken and in dire need. The scripture says that people groan and I think that’s an absence of stewardship. So at Crown, we perpetuate that and we use a lot of different means to do that. It was started by the late Larry Burkett, who wrote 70 books on the topic. And we now operate around the world helping people know how to be better stewards.

Henry Kaestner: 70 books. That’s awesome. So tell us about the Christian Economic Forum. It was born out of much of the work that you’d seen happen with Crown and people that had been gathered around. But tell us how it started. Tell us about the work and how it’s grown and why I think it’s so cool.

Chuck Bentley: One of the things that happened to me as I was traveling the world opening crown offices, that was my job for many years. So I’ve been to every continent except the cold ones, except the ones where they’re covered in tundra. And we were starting offices and the people that would greet me at the airport were invariably the top Christian leaders in those countries. And I could just go around the world and just point out who’s who of people who were the best Christian investors, the best Christian entrepreneurs, the best Christian stewards in their country. And I began to ask myself, why is that happening? I mean, I wasn’t networking to find these people. I wasn’t trying to find them. It just was a reoccurring theme. And then suddenly I realized two things were a common denominator. First of all, these guys were great stewards themselves. They understood the principles of stewardship. Their businesses were built on great principles of stewardship, and they had a heart to help the people in their community or their nation to flourish. And they knew those principles were going to be necessary to share what they knew was the invisible power of God, the power of being a good steward. And from that, I began to think, right, these guys aren’t working on their budget. They’re really managing a balance sheet. They have huge responsibilities. What would happen if I got them together and in an agenda-neutral environment and asked them just to start sharing and talk about issues that really matter at a macro level? These are very capable problem solvers. These are people that that’s how they’ve found success, is learning to find the core issue and get to quickly. And so I did it. I was the least likely person to be qualified to do it. The idea came when I was standing in the airport with my wife in Zurich, Switzerland, leaving a meeting where I’d met some of these great Christian leaders. The world was coming in to go to Davos, but I thought, we need something on par with that. That’s got the same professionalism, but allows people with the Christian world view to really share their hearts where they’re not going to be asked for money. They’re not going to be given a job to do, but they’re going to be able to share their knowledge and wisdom with other people. So that’s how we got started.

Henry Kaestner: Gotcha. OK, so one of the things that our listeners love, of course, everybody does, are stories. There’ve been some great stories that I’ve been a part of and that I’ve seen at the Christian Economic Forum. Tell us about some of your favorites.

Chuck Bentley: Well, I’ve got lots of favorite stories, Henry. One of them is the fact that the top Christian economist inside of China is a part of our forum. He was an atheist, sent to the United States to study the reason for our prosperity. He did an academic study. All of his research went back to China at the risk of his own life. And as an atheist said, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is I’ve discovered the secret of why America is more prosperous in China. The bad news is you’re not going to like the answer. Christianity. And he documented the fact that the Judeo-Christian ethic, the values and the operating principles of God’s economy are what accelerated us ahead of the rest of the world. And he defended that in a white paper that was read by 100 hundred million people at the risk of his own life. And through that research, he came to faith in Christ. And when I read the paper, I read it in The Wall Street Journal. And I said, you know, this guy is a kindred spirit with me. I believe that is the solution to the world’s economic problems is to know God’s principles. And so through a series of really miraculous events in my life, I ended up sitting at a conference next to the author of that whitepaper. We had never been introduced. And there we were side by side. I didn’t speak Chinese and he didn’t speak English. But through a translator, we met each other. And that began a lifelong friendship of two people who believe that we need to perpetuate the advancement of God’s financial principles to the whole world. And so he became somewhat of a partner, a silent partner in this endeavor. And he continues to help us to grow the forum and to spread that truth to every nation that we possibly can. That’s just one of them, Henry. Tell me your favorite story and that will stimulate some more of mine.

Henry Kaestner: Well, I think, you know, Craig Dealll and I think back to the Christian Economic Forum in California. I think that you had also address this in Singapore, one that I didn’t go to. But just what’s going on in racial reconciliation in Zimbabwe and massive forgiveness was really poignant having a black African or a white African on the stage together, hugging each other and talking about their shared passion for their Christian faith and ultimately their shared passion for each other, just amazingly powerful.

Chuck Bentley: That is powerful. In fact, that’s been one of my top podcasts, is telling his story through CEF of how God has used them personally, knows how to lose everything and still have joy and peace and contentment. Let me tell you one more that happened through the Christian Economic Forum, and I’d like to qualify this by saying I don’t wanna take credit for any of it. The forum has enabled some of these collaboration’s to happen, but I don’t think it’s because of us. I think they may not have happened without us, but I don’t want to beat our chests and say we’ve made this happen. But John Erwin is a friend of mine. We’ve been friends a long time and I invite him to come to the forum. And John’s a filmmaker and he came as a young guy and told his story. He was called on why I want to make films. And he said, because my generation will not read books, but they’ll watch films. And to really reach my generation, we’ve got to make non cheesy faith based films. And a couple of the guys that just resonated with them and unbeknownst to me, they met him out in the hallway and said, tell us your dream. What film are you trying to make? And he cast a little vision there. He was ready. You know, he had a little trailer, his mobile phone. Next thing you know, twenty five million dollars flowed into his organization that enabled them to have a breakout movie on in Hollywood.

Henry Kaestner: Which movie was that?

Chuck Bentley: Well, that one the one that those guys funded was Woodlawn. And it was a great movie. And then that went on from there to become Moms Night out. And then they did. I can only imagine. Yeah, of course. I can only imagine. Rung the bell. That one was a very big financial success for them, but I take great joy in that. Henry, I didn’t raise twenty five million dollars for John. He knows that. But I was able to put him in front of the people that helped him take the next step. And that does impact culture. That is one of the ways that our message gets out. And so I’m just so proud of that. And the stories go on and on.

Henry Kaestner: So this year, as can be the 10th anniversary of the Christian Economic Forum. You were gonna have it in Jerusalem. Obviously, that’s all changed. What’s this year looking like? And how do you anticipate the shaping future gatherings?

Henry Kaestner: I’d like to say that this crisis has helped us because it forced us into a corner. Many people think the Christian Economic Forum is just one event, one time a year. And that’s been our history. We really weren’t providing year round value to our members, but because we had to cancel Jerusalem, we kicked into high gear to say what can we do to share the principles and the knowledge among each other? And so we collected white papers. Those are starting to come out. They’re published every year. Then we began podcasting and we started a WhatsApp channel and started sharing information among our membership around the world. From that, we’ve seen great value being added to our members lives. There’s a couple that you know, that are in a real challenging time. They’re classified. They’re not in this country, but they’re classified as a business at great risk because all their customers are wiped out. Right now, they supply retailers. But through a prayer call that we hosted, they found a new customer. And that was just God at work, you know, and that’s going to help them keep more people employed and to grow their business. And so. We’re finding that God used the crisis to help us get better at what we’re trying to accomplish.

William Norvell: Thanks for walking us through that Chuck, William, here. So great to have you. And I’ve been fortunate to come to a few of the forums as well. And just so thankful for you responding to God’s leading and walking towards the path that he was opening up through some of these opportunities. And one of the things I know, and you mentioned it a little bit, as you get the opportunity to spend a lot of time with leaders and with people that are leading organizations, whether it’s for profit or nonprofit in all kinds of different countries around the world, you might be able to get a chance to interact with more people leading in different distinct environments than few others that we’re gonna have on this podcast. I’d love for you to share with our listeners a little bit about what it looks like to lead during these uncertain times. To timestamp this, we are doing this during the middle of the COVID crisis, we’re about six weeks in. What are you hearing out there and how are people thinking about what God is doing around the world and what their role is to lean in as a steward of the leadership that they’ve given that God has given them?

Chuck Bentley: I’ll give you two quick answers to that, William, because I think that’s been pretty thoroughly discussed on some of your podcasts that I’ve had the privilege to listen to. But I think I can add a few points. I think right now what I’m hearing among leaders is there’s a premium on wisdom. There’s not a premium on information because we’re overwhelmed with information, everybody’s got information overload and we’re almost saturated trying to keep up with what data to process, what data to throw out. So what’s risen to the top is how to respond with wisdom. And I think wisdom is being able to effectively apply truth to our lives. And we’re seeing God’s leaders who are filtering the headlines through God’s word. And those are the people making very, very wise decisions. That’s what the world needs right now. And that’s what God’s leaders are doing. They’re taking the data. They’re processing it. They’re checking it against scripture, and then they’re making really good decisions of how to apply that. I think, secondly is that people are moving more rapid than they would be otherwise. You’re seeing that I had one leader tell me I’m under a lot of pressure to make great decisions fast, and I’m concerned about that because I feel like I’ve got to be moving faster than I’ve been in the past. But when you curtail that pressure of quickness with the timeless, priceless wisdom of God, then you can move fast and know that you’re on sure footing. And I’m seeing that across the board. I’m seeing the leaders that I know and interact with being able to navigate this better than those who really don’t have a North Star, who don’t know how to process the data and make a wise decision.

William Norvell: And that’s a great transition. We didn’t spend a ton of time talking about what you did at Crown, but I don’t know if you would venture yourself an economist per say. You can answer that in a minute. I know you know a lot about the economy and you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what God thinks about the economy. And during uncertain times, I would love if you would take us a layer into the certainty of some of God’s economic principles. And I know you’ve written about this before, so I’d love our listeners be able to hear the framework with which you think about how the Bible and how God thinks about the underlying foundational economic principles that he has laid out for us to follow.

Chuck Bentley: Now, I want to run through a couple of those quickly. And thank you for that opportunity, William and Henry, because I am not an economist and I’m not an expert really at anything. I think the one thing that I would maybe if I could stake my claim as an expert at anything, I would like to believe that I know what the Bible says about money and economics as well as most anybody else. I really have dedicated myself to study in that for the past 20 years. And there are principles that are absolutely certain that we can rely on right now. I have a son that suffers with perpetual or chronic anxiety and he just has trouble turning it off. At times. It’s affected his sleep. It’s affected a lot of areas of his life. And one of the things when it’s really happening, that hamster wheel is spinning in his mind. I’ll sat down with him and this little technique has helped him so much. I’ll say, what do we know that’s certain? And let’s run to what is certain right now and we’ll just start ticking off what’s certain. OK. You’re well, you’re not in danger. You’ve got opportunities. You know, we just start listing everything we know to be true and it brings calm into his life. And I think when there’s economic uncertainty like this, this massive gap of the unknown, I mean, we don’t even know what data to rely on in some cases and who’s telling the truth and who’s promoting propaganda. We just need to pause and run to what certain and God’s principles are what we know are certain. You know, when I look at what God says, we’re not owners were stewards. Then that should bring us relief. That should bring us relief from the stress that we are temporarily managing on God’s behalf. And the requirement for a steward is not to be successful, but to be faithful. And the Bible says if you’re faithful with the little, you’ll be entrusted with much. So that’s a huge economic principles world ignores because money flows towards trust. Just like water runs downhill. Money will always flow towards trust. So what happens in an economic crisis? Money leaves environments that are high risk and untrustworthy and moved to those presumed to be trustworthy, Singapore, Switzerland or the United States in a crisis. Money doesn’t flow to corrupt nations. It flows out of those nations. And so for a business owner or an investor to position yourself as being a trustworthy steward, faithful in the crisis puts you in a position to attract more investment. We’re always attracted to trust. And that’s where money will always go. And that’s something we know we’ll be certain before the crisis, during the crisis and after the crisis. And then one that I really love. I think we miss sometimes it’s a principle of meekness. The Bible says that we’re all to be meek because in comparison to God, we are very weak creatures. But meekness doesn’t mean we can actually means power under control. I tell people I’m helping to manage their finances. Well, you should always have more in storage than you have that the public can view. And when you manage your finances with meekness, it affects your lifestyle choices. It affects your business policies, affects everything in your life. And you’re demonstrating that the ego of money is not in control, that there’s a deep sense of humility and dependency when you exercise meekness in all of your choices. And the Bible promises in Matthew five five that the meek shall inherit the earth. And if you think about that promise, that certain promise of God, it should make all of us as investors and God’s investors to want to pursue being meek, to be really careful about how we feel about our own acumen in business, how we feel about the decisions we make, and to guide even when we’ve been successful, to guide all of our decisions with a great deal of humility. And just a quick story, a guy and CFO that I met. He owns a factory that they built, the equipment that built the factory that creates the products that are sold to 200 nations. Thirty five hundred people working in the factory. Top top business success in his country. Just a super example. And when he invited me home to his house for dinner, I remember going into the home and thinking I can is this is far simpler than I ever imagined. I just didn’t think his lifestyle would be so humble. Because it doesn’t have to be. But it was a choice that he made. And in our conversation, I asked him what was his life verse? And he quoted Matthew 5:5 and I thought, you know, he’s living it out. This is a very meek person. So those are just a couple of them. Maybe I’d mention one more, William, if we’ve got time. I like the law of inverse prosperity. The prosperity gospel gets confused in the Christian world today. And I like to teach Jeremiah 29 because everybody knows verse eleven. Some people have it posted on their wall or they live by that. Now, I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord plans to prosper. You not harm me. Plan to give you hope in future. But verse seven, he tells you what the plan is. And God said in Jeremiah twenty nine and seven that you should seek the prosperity and the peace of the city where I’ve called you. And he says, if you will seek their prosperity, you too will prosper. And so he flips the prosperity gospel upside down. And he said the best business plan, even if you’re a refugee in Babylon, is to help other people prosper. And if you think about the best business models in the world, the ones that almost require no selling, you know, they’re the unicorn type growth. They’re the ones that help somebody else get better at what they’re doing. Their service or their product improves the life of other people. And there should be no secret to any of us. But it’s a secret in the sense that it’s God’s idea, not man’s idea. God told his people to live that way. And I met a guy that was doing it. And interestingly enough, he had been incarcerated, found Christ in the prison, and he knew how to do mechanics. He got a job as a mechanical mechanic repair in this very large fleet of vehicles that were service vehicles. And that’s what he did for a living. And going along just fine. And one day got an idea. He calculated and this guy used to be in prison. He started counting how long those trucks were in the shop and shut down for making money for the owner. And on average, three days. And so he went to the business owner and said, hey, I’ve got an idea. Why do we get a truck and we go to the field and service these big rigs instead of having them bring him in to shut him down for three days? And he said, how long you think you repair one in the field? He said, three hours. And so imagine that business proposition. You get your truck fixed in three days or in three hours. And so they partnered on this business the first year, did over a million dollars and billings on this mobile diesel mechanic repair business, cutting down the time from three days to three hours. So those are some of the principles that come to my mind way. And they’re not the ones that are sort of percolating to the top of most people’s radar. But I think those are great ones to remember during this crisis.

Henry Kaestner: Chuck, you’ve been around this movement for a long time by the movement, I’m talking you about the faith driven investor movement. You’ve been with people as a store of money, as you think about investments, as this movement grows, as people start to think more purposefully and more intentionally about how they stored not just their donation capital, but also their investment capital as well. What are some thoughts or encouragements or just hopes that you have for the development of this space as people become more and more intentional with how they invest their money?

Chuck Bentley: Well, I think a couple of things. I hope that there’s more collaboration. I’d really appreciate some of the terminology that you and Luke have introduced to the movement to try to thank you. Say to try to de-tower of Babel this thing is it.

Henry Kaestner: It is. And for our listeners, we’ve got the video going right now. And so Chuck can see this picture of the Tower of Babel is behind me on my wall. I continue to be fascinated by what does it look like when the body of Christ comes together to build something not for their glory, but for God’s glory? And how special might that be if, you know, Brueghel’s painting, you know, the intricacy and the detail and the scope of this tower that they are building that, of course, was doomed for failure because there are building for the wrong reasons. But Chuck is talking to of course is what does it look like for a bunch of us to come together.

Chuck Bentley: Well, I think if you look at the history of the impact Christian investors have had on the world, it’s enormous. We were the group that primarily built the schools. We built the hospitals, we built infrastructure. We built dams. We built all the systems that created wealth for the world. And that’s really one of God’s gift to individual believers. And it’s just been remarkable to track that throughout history we’ve influenced the prosperity and flourishing of the whole world. And we’ve done that in a diversified way. And diversification is a great thing. It provides safety and it’s a good thing. But when there’s a deep sense of trust and that’s what’s essential in a movement that’s going to collaborate together where there’s a deep sense of trust, it’s really obvious that we could do more together than individually. And I think when people have common operating system of stewardship as opposed owners, you can set aside some pride, you can set aside some of that hubris and some of the metrics where we tend to want credit for things that are achieved and really do more together. And I want to encourage people to begin to do those kind of things together in the movement and to take on the big task. To me, it’s a David and Goliath type scenario where the people who are really skilled and equipped, they surface during the battle and they may not look like they’re bigger than the giant that they’re face in culture or a problem that’s in economic systems. But I think we can be some of the people that bring those five stones to bear on the guise of economics and in our culture and really see them change. And I’d like to see that happen. That’s one of the things that I’m pulling for.

Chuck, as we have probably about five minutes before William asks he final question, which is going to be what is God teaching you through the Bible right now, through his word, knowing our audience and forget about the script. Anything else that you think that investors should know or should be concerned about or should find their identity in or trend that you’ve seen out there that you’ve been thinking about, that you think that people need to wrestle with more, anything? What do you think for five minutes? What do we riff on?

Chuck Bentley: You know, I’m very concerned about the shift in culture that is turning negative towards very basic things in investing like profit. Very basic things like building a large business, employing a lot of people. I had a social media exchange with a young person just recently. And I was a little bit stunned by how sour and almost bitter and antagonistic he was towards people who’ve been successful. And that’s a very dangerous thing. I think when you look at the Ten Commandments and you put that through the grid of faith driven investor, God actually set up the original laws to help investors succeed. And if you look at the Ten Commandments on a macro level, cultures that worship God Almighty in him alone, they do better economically than those who have a myriad of idols and outward manifestations of some false God. And he will bless those who honor him. Then you look at the very practical elements of the Ten Commandments, like don’t steal. Don’t murder. Don’t lie. Don’t commit adultery. Those destroy trust. And when trust is destroyed, economies are destroyed. And then lastly, he said, do not covet. And that’s the only one that’s internal to our heart. The others are external, invisible, and you make laws against them and enforce those laws. But only God, in his words, said to an investor, to a believer, do not cover something else, has hindered. What that allows us to do is to joyfully celebrate success. I don’t have to envy your success. I don’t have to be greedy to try to replicate it or compare myself to it. God said you swim in your own lane and then you can be joyful for how I bless other people or the jobs they create or the wealth that they’re called to manage. And I really think that we need to uphold those values as we get more and more collectively and individually successful. We need to say, let’s celebrate the goodness of God and give him the credit and let that overflow and generosity, but protect the movement of the core values. As a believer that it is OK to succeed. God himself created a meritocracy and his principles allow us to flourish. And those are good things for people create jobs. And those are great outcomes. And we need to be able to in a winsome way, defend that position as Christian investors.

William Norvell: Chuck, thank you so much for diving into some of the principles and walking us through this. As I think about a listener, my guess is they might be really identifying with these and say, you know, but what does it look like in practice? You know, how do I take the first step? How do I go forward with that initial step towards putting some of these into work? And if you could give us an example of a person or two that in your life has really taken that first step in and built something that’d be great. So please do that for us, if you would mind.

Chuck Bentley: One of the things that I’ve seen investors trip up over is what really motivates the investor. Obviously, we have to have good returns and we have to have very sound investment principles. But when you strip all that back, what’s really motivating them? And I find that oftentimes they think cannot be motivated by something other than, you know, the desire to win or even greed, because a lot of times there’s nothing else that’s been proposed to fill that void. And what I’ve seen people do that have been successful in the investing side and not greedy and not driven by coveting or comparison, are just trying to build something bigger than the next guy. These people are driven by love. Love is a tremendous motivator. You know, when you say, I love my family and I’m gonna go out and bring something home for them to eat tonight. That’s OK. That’s, in fact, a good thing. It’s showing tangible expressions of love for your family when you really love the people you work with and you want to be sure they have job security, that’s OK to be motivated by that. When you want to see problems of the world saw where you can bring the blessings of God and human flourishing in this common grace to the rest of the world. And you really do love God and love people. That’s a great thing to do, Henry, and to make it tangible. A friend of mine named David Snyder, and he’d probably super embarrassed if I called him out on this. But David thought he might go to the mission field, you know, because he loved God. And that’s what you see a lot of Christians wrestle with. And he said, no, this is not my gift. He’s much more analytical, much more tactical. And so he said he was in college. He said, I think I’ll just figure out a way to help this guy who’s going in the mission field and needs support. So he bought a duplex and he lived in one side of it. Any place, 100 percent of the revenue from the other side, that duplex, while he was a college student to his friend who went to the mission field, and he was his primary launch into the world of serving on the mission field. And David got so excited about that. He thought, what if I buy another apartment and out of love for God and love for missions and love for people on the field? He bought another one, you know. And that core motivation of love for God, love for people led him to be a phenomenal investor. At one point in his career, his owned like 15,000 individual apartment units. And he loves the people in those units. He loves having chaplains onboard. He likes getting crown materials to teach them how to be better stewards. He takes care of them where they’ve got the covid virus. He had about 15 of his employees and tenants injured in the great tragedy of the mass shooting in Las Vegas, because he has a lot of units there and he just responded with such love and grace and kindness. He’s a picture of what a faith driven investor looks like to me, Henry.

Henry Kaestner: That’s a great example. I know, David. You couldn’t have picked any better. And he’s done very, very, very well financially. His investment returns have been outstanding.

Chuck Bentley: And love is a good motivation, Henry. And it also applies to that other problem that I have angst with. Is the world’s pushing back against people making profit, growing big companies employing a lot of people. You know, that’s not a bad thing. And if we can be a group that shows the love of God to the rest of the world, what a beautiful picture to have good financial returns, good business practices, very strong high levels of professionalism and integrity in show loved all the people around us.

William Norvell: Chuck, as we come to a close, we always love to see how our listeners and our guest are connected through God’s word. And that’s just an amazing time for us. We love getting notes in from people of just seeing what God’s word does through this medium. And so if you would mind sharing with us. Where does God have you today in his word or during the season, something that you might be meditating on that he might be taking you through?

Chuck Bentley: William, I’ve read through the word of God many times, and it’s a practice that I enjoy. That’s what I do as I try to just read straight through the word of God. Year after year.

But this year I’m doing something different. I’m listening to the word of God. So I have a Bible app that I really like reading it and how it’s done. And I get up in the mornings and I listen through it and it causes me to listen differently. And it’s had a great impact on me. I’m enjoying it so much. I literally look forward every morning to getting up for my time to just plug in the earphones and listen to it. But I got to part the other day in Jeremiah, where Jeremiah was complaining to God.

And there’s not many places recorded in the scripture, and I’m glad my name isn’t recorded in the scripture, as one who complained to God. I mean, if I were in the Bible, I would be embarrassed at some of the things that would be revealed about me. But Jeremiah, it’s revealed that he’s asking God questions and he’s not happy. And one of the questions he asked in Jeremiah 12 is how long? You know, he’s upset. He’s just really anxious. And I think for where we are right now, we can all relate to that question is how long, how long is this gonna go on? Seems like it’s going on forever. And I’m tired of it. And so God answers him. And I was just fascinated by his answer. He, as he typically does, ask you a question in return, just the way it did with Job. And so he says to Jeremiah. Jeremiah, if you’ve been running with men and you’re already weary, how are you going to keep up with horses? And he just reset the whole perspective for Jeremiah. And he pointed out to him that this has a purpose. You know, this waiting, this learning and growing in character in patience is to prepare you for another challenge and a challenge maybe you haven’t even imagined. And I feel like somehow right now we’re running with men and we’re complaining and getting weary.

But there’s going to be a day that God wants us to run even more difficult gantlet, a difficult challenge, and to use this time to be prepared for what lies ahead. I’m encouraged by that, William and Henry and I think that God’s people need to be those who can meet these challenges head on. Be patient. Wait on the Lord. Trust in him and then be ready for running with horses whenever that challenge hits us.

William Norvell: Amen. Thank you so much, sir. Thanks for joining us and spending time with us.

Chuck Bentley: Thank you, William. Thank you, Henry. I just admire all the work that you do. I look up and you guys have just been everywhere having a huge impact on this space, whether it’s the entrepreneurs, the athletes, the investors. I’m just so proud of the work you’re doing. And I’m just blessed to call you friend.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the faith driven entrepreneur podcast, William we’re here with our guest, James Cham in the house, a fellow Californian. But you are broadcasting this in from Washington, D.C., where you’re going to talk about the subject matter that we’ve brought you to talk about. And this is building, William, on some work we’ve done recently about artificial intelligence. And two nights ago we did an event for Inklings. Inklings. As a group, we get together every month, month and a half out here. James Cham has been added a bunch of folks talking about Christians in Web3. What is it looks like for Christians in blockchain? What does it look like for Christians in artificial intelligence obviously with chatGPT there’s a lot of talk to it. But William, correct me if I’m wrong, but the precipitating event for today, but the origination, the genesis for today’s podcast comes from a panel you heard James talk at at the Praxis event. Tell us more about that.

William Norvell: Yeah. So Praxis, another great friend of the movement, as everyone knows, had their redemptive Imagination summit that they call it up in Napa, California, a few weeks ago. And you know, this year there was a shocking lack of cryptocurrency panels and a shocking increase in AI panels. I mean, I’m if I could set people up to stick around for the next 40 minutes, I leaned over. I was actually sitting next to our other fearless leader Justin Forman. I said, We’re going to get this on the podcast fast. This is like the most at the moment forward thinking on not only where AI was going to go, but what should we be thinking about as believers? What shouldn’t we be thinking about? What should we be thinking about with our children? What should we be scared of with our children? Our Some of our children may be different and some should lean in to learning about this now, and some maybe should be held back from that first season. So I think it spanned just an incredible view of what God would have for this space, how we should thoughtfully think about it, and how, of course, we shouldn’t be scared of a revolution that’s coming. And thoughtful Christians need to be a part of it, or we’re going to lose the battle by abandoned the playing field. So with that, James, welcome.

James Cham: It’s good to see you guys.

Henry Kaestner: So, James, I want to ask you what is motivating the urgency and excitement around AI? Why is everybody talking about it now? And we’ll talk more about why Christians should care, but why is this all the rage now? Why are there so many panels and everybody is talking about AI, the space you’ve been in for a long time, What makes everybody focus on it now?

James Cham: You know, the great A.I. demos have always been with us since like the sixties. There’s was great demonstrations in which it’ll do this thing or that thing and even, you know, sort of as recently as like five years ago or two years ago, I’d show some amazing demo of some amazing product that will do this sort of that magical thing. And then someone would say to me, Hey, can I use this? Can I try this? I say, Well, give me a few moments. I need to prep the data. I need to do this and that. I need to change this, you know, and then give me a couple of weeks and you’ll be able actually try this out. And it might or might not work. And what’s different about now is that in the last year and then in the last six months, there have been a series of investment bets the actually paid off such that now we’re at a point where like everyone and anyone is able to use the most advanced large language models in a way that like used to be cloistered inside Google or clustered inside Facebook where only the smartest people in the world, we’re able to play with it and fiddle with it. And now, in part because of a series of both business decisions and technical advancements, this is available to anyone. And that suddenly means that these things that were theoretical questions became real opportunities. And that has implications not just for business, but also for the way that we think about faith.

Henry Kaestner: So what are some of those large language models that have now made their way out into the public? Just give an overview. I sense that a number of our listeners know what they are. Some of them might not. What is that? How is that accessible now for everybody?

James Cham: So right now it’s most accessible either through a set of services from Google or Microsoft or from Openai. And let me just take a step back to describe sort of like one version of the history of AI, which is what is AI. AI is a dream, AI is a dream that the computers will be able to do things that humans will be able to do in terms of thinking. And what’s interesting about that dream is that along the way, over the last since like basically the sixties, we’ve started to be able to do things with computers that like humans that would be difficult. And each step along the way we’ve said, Oh, this is not quite A.I., this is not quite A.I.. You know, the fact that you can beat someone in chess, that’s impressive, but it’s not quite AI. And then we’re at this point now where these large language models are flexible enough and open ended enough that for the first time, a lot of even the best practitioners are saying to themselves, Oh my goodness, this might mean that we’re close to true artificial intelligience. And this only happens because of a series of slightly crazy technical miracles. And let me just describe a few of them. Right? So one of the first ones is this idea that we’re able to represent ideas in sort of super high dimensional space that you can sort of like get some idea and the set of statistical techniques that don’t really matter right now. You’re able to represented as math, right? And that idea that you can represent as math and then do math against it suddenly meant that you can manipulate them in interesting ways. So that’s the first miracle. So that’s like one miracle. The other miracle that sort of has been surprising to everyone is then you’re able to take like sort of, you know, all of the Web, compress it down into these models and then you’re able to like, do a whole series of queries and chats against them. And then the surprising thing about that is that that will actually end up creating coherent results. So that’s the first thing you saw, but that didn’t really work that well. The thing that worked really well was when you asked the models to explain their thinking step by step, and suddenly it meant that like, you know, sort of you ask it some physics problem and it wouldn’t answer correctly, and then you’d say, to it. Okay, answer this physics problem and describe it step by step. And suddenly, like for the first time, it would start answering things much more precisely. And this was sort of shocking and confusing to a bunch of sort of people in the industry because all of their historical work around thinking about natural language processing and how people talk like that was thrown out the window by just saying, we’re going to process a bunch of text compressor down. Are we getting too technical? I feel like I’m taking you down the wrong.

William Norvell: Yeah, well, I love it. I think we needed to go there. And now. Yeah, let’s take a step back up. Right. And so I think one of the things that was really intriguing is you talked about how and no point in human history, for the most part, has a technology, this advance been able to be utilized by so many people so quickly? Right. And how that’s going to have I mean, I mean, you can just go on Twitter or LinkedIn. I mean, there are Hindu A.I. companies born a day that can build you a PowerPoint, build your website. I mean, people are taking this technology and building on it. You know, like a developer tools, right? Like, it’s amazing. And so I’m curious as you look out, I mean, I’m sure it’ll be in the interim, But, you know, let’s bring it into this conversation. You’re an investor for a living, right? You invest in venture capital. So how do you think about the space from Bloomberg Beta perspective and where you think, you know, let’s do now, you know, soon and later? Right. What do you feel like the most impressive uses are now? What do you think’s coming soon and what do you think? Hey, people are getting ahead of themselves. That’s still a ways out before that type of technology is going to be able to exist.

James Cham: Mm hmm. Okay. So the thing that is now is that most machine learning used to be built for very purpose built reasons. Right? That a lot of cases you just have to do a lot of work to get it trained to answer a question. Exactly right. And now for the first time, it’s extraordinarily flexible, and that’s disorienting to most people. And so that flexibility means that you can now ask relatively open ended questions and sort of discover sort of what the model knows or doesn’t know. And then now in terms of like short term, what’s available to it, you know, I think there are a lot of startups that are making a lot of money very quickly because they found a specific niche, right, that they figured out, oh, I can create text for this thing or that thing and I can sell it for 20 bucks and it cost me two bucks to generate and sort of like that sort of opportunities right here, right now. There’s also a whole set of like opportunities around wrapping these models with agency where they can actually then affect the world. Right. And then that sort of thing, which basically now you’ve got these models going around and sort of like browsing a website or touching this or that. Like that’s clearly the next thing. Right after having chatGPT, the next natural thing everyone wants, right, is that ability to have these things actually do something. And that part, it’s a little less clear, right? It’s a little less clear what it’s good at and bad at. And that’s sort of the thing that’s happening right now in real time that out in Silicon Valley right now, you’ve got like 50 different people, 50 different teams trying to figure out exactly when does this model work and when doesn’t it work, when it tries to click on a website or browse this or solve this problem. But that interaction with first the digital world and then that interaction to the rest of the world, that’s clearly the thing that’s just out there. And to be honest, a little scary.

William Norvell: In this would be thinking about a practical example that may not be a sexy example. This would be like me go to ChatGPT saying, Hey, I need to take a flight to Dallas. Right? I’ve got an off site in Dallas coming up in a few weeks and I need to book an Airbnb, booked dinner reservations on Monday and Tuesday, booked my flights and send the itinerary to so-and-so. And is that a query that’s going to be possible here in the near future? Words like, Oh yeah, that be taken care of.

James Cham: That’s the sort of thing that feels like it’s right around the corner and right now works very well in demos and almost works well enough that people are going to roll out. And so this is the other part of it, which is like it is a information diffusion of knowledge story where we live in a world where everything is so connected that, you know, people are able to play all over the world and thus try these technologies out and see what works and doesn’t work and then tweet about it like in the afternoon. And that cycle of innovation and try things is like both really exciting and terrifying, right? Because it does mean that there’s much more room for mischief now than there was before. And sort of our old illusions of being able to control the technology sort of thrown out the window.

Henry Kaestner: Tell us more about that. Tell us more to the some of the things that you’re it’s like, oh, my goodness, you know, this could happen in I mean, in some of this stuff. I got to tell you, as a dad or just a human being, I get really worried about what this means for the adult entertainment business and just, you know, what this ends up being in terms of just taking people down, just really, really bad places. But what are some of the other things that you look at and say, wow, the emergence of this is going to be this is the type of mischief that can happen or maybe just riff on that a little bit.

James Cham: Yeah, I mean, I think here are a couple interesting angles. So in part because these models are so flexible and because their programs are so consistent, they can be much more polite on a consistent basis or much more persuasive on a consistent basis than say, I will if I didn’t have enough coffee in the morning. And so that creates a full set of interesting opportunities. And in part because they’re cheaper to run than like, let’s say talking to me, you can end up replacing humans in conversation in all sorts of interesting, both good and bad ways. And now what’s interesting, though, is that one way to think about it is to think about it from the point of view of a consumer in which the consumer maybe gets fooled into having a relationship with what is essentially just a big bunch of numbers. Right? So that’s one side. But the flip side, which I think is much more relevant to entrepreneurs and much more relevant to people building stuff is like the actual danger of these models and of AI right now is it gives you a chance to pretend that you’re not responsible, that you could build this system that does great mischief, and then you will say, Oh no, it wasn’t me, it was the model that did it right. And I think that that sort of like avoidance of responsibility is actually going to be the big, big temptation for entrepreneurs. And that is the place where I think Christians have a lot of wisdom, right, where Christians will be able to say a lot of smart things about the responsibility we have when we create something and both for good and for evil.

William Norvell: Yeah, it’s fascinating. It reminds me. So my wife and I went back and started watching the show called Person of Interest. I don’t think I ever heard of it. Jim Caviezel was the star who, of course, played Jesus in The Passion as well. And it’s ten years ago. But it goes through the whole concept of the show is this brilliant engineer built in artificial intelligence that, of course, national security wanted to buy. Right? Because they could predict national security threats and it would pop out who’s relevant. And they’re a threat to national security. And the show takes a turn because turns out there’s irrelevant numbers as well. The system also finds people that are going to get mugged on the street, and that’s what the show goes off. And guys, But in the context of that, they talk deeply about the decisions he made while building the system. And for instance, one of the big decisions he made is ten years old. Sorry if I’m ruining it is it erased its memory every night and how that had to be true, or else it would learn at a speed that eventually, like he couldn’t control it anymore. Right. But they go so deep into these deep. And then there’s a competing A.I., of course, that comes along. That’s evil. And that’s a fun story. I think You talked a little bit about national security last time I heard you talk, and I was curious for you to take that direction and say, you know, as an example, you could build something great that can be good, that can be used for very much not good things.

James Cham: I mean, I think so. These models, right, are going to be extremely flexible, extremely persistent. And they will do things that we will consider thinking. They will have ideas that are going to be similar to consciousness. And why does that happen or how does that happen? We’re not totally sure. But one way to think about it is that they’re able to find structure and analogies that our brains sort of like implicitly do, and it’s now doing that explicitly through math. And so in that case, it might be able to do things that look creative, right? And it might also be able to do things that end up becoming very, very. But because they’re machines, they’re much more persistent than we will be. And so, for example, your ability to hack into some system, you know, like, I don’t know, I might know 15 techniques to hack into some system. I might get bored because I kind of want to read Twitter or there’s a basketball game going on. I get distracted. But these models will be very persistent and they will go through every single possible security hole and find every single possible vulnerability and take advantage of that in a way that no human will and those sorts of sort of little angles and opportunities I think are quite scary. And I think there’s a good reason why a lot of the government and governments all over the world are concerned about this. But I’d say that the hard part there is like and my thinking has evolved on this. I used to think that the solution might be some newfangled regulation. I now think that in some ways the right solution are very, very old principles around What are you responsible for? You benefit. Are you responsible for like the upside and downside of something? You know, sort of who’s liable and all those questions. And some of these are super old and super straightforward. So that’s one piece. And I think the other piece that’s interesting about this is that I think a lot of regulators and a lot of people are pursuing A.I. because they’re hopeful and optimistic, are utopian in their thinking. And I think it’s very, very clear from, you know, all of history and certainly in the Bible, right, that sort of tools are flawed. And part especially tools are created in our image because we are flawed, right. Because of original sin. And I think that realizing that these models will never be perfect, that these models will always be tragically, flawed, the same way that we are, like, that’s going to be an important truth and something that we’ll always have to think about. And that’s a wisdom that we as Christians and a perspective that we as Christians to provide that I think is unique and helpful.

William Norvell: And so where is that? So where? So as you think about a believer investing in the space, coming to the space and talking to entrepreneurs who may be thinking about building in the space, I mean, I think that is yes, I mean, these models, I assume, were always going to be a factor of us, right? I mean, since you’re in DC, you know, there was a political one, right, where it’s like ChatGPT basically won’t say any nice things about Trump, but will say nice things about Biden. Basically, like if you asked it, like, tell me, like great qualities and like, well, you know, there’s people that built this thing, right? There is bias built in right to whoever. And, you know, there could be bias built in the other way where somebody wouldn’t say anything nice about Biden either. Right. But I’m just curious where and how should a Christian think about, you know, do you need to build something new? Does it need to be on its own? Can you influence from inside a large organization that’s already working on this? And just what is the posture to make it a biblical worldview or.

James Cham: Yeah, there are a couple of angles I think built into that. One of them is the sense that as these models get bigger, they do seem like they get smarter and more interesting. But the other part about it is that there’s a bit of a power law, right? That to build the next version, sometimes it’s going to be like 10 to 100 X more expensive. And so that math around it does end up meaning that it’s critical that Christians are in some of the biggest companies in the world to influence and think through what this actually might mean. So I think that’s one part. The second part is that you notice that as you talked about chatgpt, and I think this is a little bit of a marketing thing, there is a temptation to treat it as if it is the God model, right? As is. Oh, you know, if only we can influence our great God chatgpt, then our lives would be better. And I think that’s the other temptation, right? That’s the temptation of treating it like an idol. And I think that’s one of the sort of there’s one temptation, which is to say, let’s ignore it and run away from it like a […]. And then there’s the other temptation was to say, you know what? Actually this thing is God, right? Rather than a sub creation made by humans. And the moment we treat it like God, then we have a whole set of other problems.

William Norvell: Okay, So let’s go a layer deeper into that. So, you know, I remember we had Frank Chin on a while ago, and I remember he talked about some of that. It’s like, hey, some things humans weren’t made to do. It’s part of the toil. I mean, I think we were talking about autonomous driving at the time, and he said, you know, look, all the truck drivers are upset, but like, think about that job. That’s not a human flourishing job. You’re away from your family, you’re driving all day. It’s stressful on your body like this is a good thing for humanity, actually. Now we need to help those people find new jobs and retrain them. But that job in and of itself, Frank was arguing, is. Not a human flourishing job. And so I’m curious, from an artificial intelligence standpoint, are there certain task? Is the people scared, of course, that we can talk about the doomsday Terminator two scenario at some point, but is this actually a thing we should embrace because it’s going to make us more human? Is there an argument for that that we get more humanity out of this?

James Cham: Hmm. You know, this goes back in some ways to praxis, which is that there are a set of decisions that we can make about the kinds of businesses that we want to support and the kinds of businesses that could flourish. So that’s the first part, which is it is a decision made by people around what kind of businesses we’re going to allow. That’s the first part. But the second part is like I will admit that like I have an essentially tragic view of work and of humanity, which is that it’s flawed. We’re all post fall. We try the best we can. I think that there are a whole set of jobs that are actually I actually honor truck drivers. I think it’s a great job. I think it’s really important. I think it will fulfill a bunch of important things for people. And, you know, like, I don’t know, I compare this to sort of my ancestors who were either toiling in the field, some rice field, or sometimes maybe like running money from one place to another, right. Doing things that were like. And so I feel like our question of like what is a good, fulfilling job is so contextual, right? And is so much based on like sort of our current conception. I don’t know. My great grandfather, you know, was away for like nine months out of the year in order to like, go from one place to another. Right? And that was still seen as a good job. So that’s one piece, right? But is just to say that, like, I think jobs are going to be tough and it’s super contextual. And then the other part that I’d say is like it is also important to be very, very cold hearted as we think about these models right now and the economic moment we sit in, which is to say that like if you thought about like the last big policy decision the United States made around globalization, the promise that we made to like citizens was globalized. Things will be cheaper. And by the way, you will benefit from the fact that things are cheaper and we will take care of you. And be honest, both Republicans and Democrats have not done that, in part because there was a moment where workers had a chance to influence sort of a whole set of decisions and in part because maybe you trust the Democrats a little too much, or maybe you trusted your labor union leaders a little too much. That promise was not fulfilled. And we are actually right now in a very, very similar moment where there is a lot of everyone smells the benefit and all the great things that these models can do. And at the same time, there’s a great bargain to be made between sort of all the folks who are working in sort of a bunch of jobs that might be displaced. And I think like that bargain is an entirely political thing that needs to be coldhearted rather than utopian or blinded by sort of my various startup dreams.

William Norvell: So let’s get a practical questions here. If you were an ex job, you would be wildly scared of this technology taking over your job because that’s something and all the headlines, of course, always come out with, you know, technology is always going to take all the jobs, right? Just different versions of it. I’m curious from your perspective, if you were. So let’s talk about kids in college. Henry’s got two boys in college and one coming up soon. What should or shouldn’t they study? Right? Yeah.

James Cham: White collar jobs that require people to be polite actually are at great risk that, you know, sort of there was a time ten, 20 years ago where everyone said, oh, the truck driver is going to be in trouble, or like the guy who the farmer’s going to be in trouble. That’s not really the risk here. The really the real risk and all these sort of these sort of folks like me playing with spreadsheets and emails and trying to be polite to people and talk to them and persuade them in some consistent way. And so there’s a whole set of white collar jobs that are going to be different. So I’m giving a presentation in a few minutes to like some congressional staffers. And I have this one slide of this huge floor of an insurance building. It comes out of like the movie The Apartment from the Sixties, and you had desks of people who would like have a little calculator, a little hand calculator, crank some number out, take the slip, pass it over to another desk. And what’s interesting about that work, which was like entire floors of buildings, is like that’s basically a spreadsheet that those hundreds of people on the floor were replaced by a single spreadsheet. And that’s on the one hand, terrifying, right? And it means great dislocation. But on the other hand, it’s also true that we’ve been okay, that if you look at sort of like life from the fifties on to the nineties, it turned out that like those dislocations end up being okay and being managed. But that’s like entirely, I think, a political question and less like a fit of the world question.

Henry Kaestner: So I want to take this in a slightly different direction. I just am fascinated by this and it’s less around how we invest and it’s less maybe around some of the innovations that come from entrepreneurs in the business, which is so much of our audience. But it’s more. But the one thing that unites most listen to the podcast, and that is our belief that there is a truth, that there is absolute truth. It’s not relative. You can point back to God’s Word as immutable. And, you know, as you get ready to talk to his congressional staffers, I mean, this is a nation under God. I wonder if there’s an opportunity for there to be this kind of operating. Well, it’s an operating system of which all of a brain of all AI sits on, which is every type of answer that comes out of this query that I might have of a chatGPT has some sort of biblical foundation to it. And so that I am like, for instance, you know, we invest in faith driven entrerpreneur, faith driven entrepreneur is the common element of this podcast, and there’s some sort of this belief that the thing that unites us all is to realize that there’s there real mistakes made in Second Chronicles, where the Good Kings of Judah didn’t see God out. And there’s real problems with sin in this area and pride and what the wisdom that comes from proverbs and psalms, etc., Can any you that like a coded in to this operating system in the chatGPT. So the answers you come out are actually informed by two or 3000 years of truth. Now somebody might say, well, gosh, that’s too myopic. It’s just Christian and or we take one nation under God. It wasn’t just a Christian, God, whatever, but 99% of Americans believe in God. It’s only 1% that are really atheistic. And the general concept that there is a God and that America is unique and is one nation under God is still believed in by the majority of the people in the marketplace. Is it possible that there could be one type of truth? There kind of is kind of coded in to all of these things so we can then say, Well, I actually can’t go that far off the rails because at the root code of all of this comes from Scripture.

James Cham: I think that’s partly a commercial question, right? I think it’s important not to confuse chatGPT and the work that open AI to all the really impressive good work that open AI is doing and building their own model with all the models that are potentially available. Right. It’s possible that we live in a world where opening AI end up being the only people who are able to build advanced models. But if that happened, that only really happened because of regulation. Because the truth is right now there are enough people chasing them, enough people building their own versions of models using the same set of techniques. And so my guess is that, you know, we’ll live in a world where there are a number of providers of very big models, and then your ability to either fine tune it or wrap around it, questions like, Oh, here’s your answer now. Like how does this reflect various biblical values? And then we answer this question around how it answers various biblical values like that could be done right? Sort of the other weird miracle around like these large language models is that they’re very good at self-reflection, that you can give it. You can say to it, hey, you know, answer this question, and then you can ask it, Hey, is this question biblical? Is this answer biblical? And then you could ask again, Hey, was this answer really biblical? And AI actually come up with a better answer, right? So those sorts of things you can do and they aren’t necessarily bounded into like one specific model.

Henry Kaestner: That’s interesting, so like there’s the web, and I don’t know as much about this as I speak to it, but there’s the web and then there’s the dark web. And I wonder if there’s like the chatGPT that’s informed by the world’s great religions, of which are commonalities. And so that any answer, any query, any type of pontification or reflection or theory or opinion that’s expressed by the chatGPT, undergirded by the world’s great religions comes out with something. And then anything that would be sinister, not based on these commonly accepted things would be part of like the darkGPT. And people would kind of know like, Hey, this is the origination and it this AI is a part of this overall code that has this kind of underbelly. And so it could never, ever convince me to kill somebody or it can never encourage me to lie, bear false witness. It can never encourage me to do any type of activity that would have to do with adultery or whatever, things like that.

James Cham: And so let me make one really important distinction, which is chatGPT is an application that is built by Openai. So it’s like one very specific application that’s built on top of a very big model that openai I spent a bunch of money in order to get it to work right? But there’ll be other people who spent a bunch of money to build models. And also the other slightly crazy thing about like these models is, you know, what are they really? Are they really answering the question or are they just trying to imitate what other people have done, what other people have written? And so in some ways, you know, they. Really are just trying the best they can to like generate text that matches something you tell it to do. And so you I think folks apply. Try this. One of the crazy things you can do is you can say, Hey, pretend that you are a Christian who lives in San Diego, who really likes baseball, and then answer the question in this way. Or you can say, pretend that you are a Christian who really likes socialism and answer the question this way include references to the Bible. And so these models will try the best they can in order to fulfill the sort of setup that you gave it. And so in some ways, that sort of thing is available right now, and it’s more a question of commercial adoption and sort of the economics of it than it is a question of whether it’s technically doable.

Henry Kaestner: So is it right to encourage and challenged the listeners this podcast about how might you innovate on top of open air with a biblical strain so that a consumer, you know, parents of three children and say, I’m actually going to go ahead and I’m going to buy into and pay a subscription so that my kids have questions about life’s big problems or about history or something like that, that it’s done through a biblical worldview, that AI becomes part of their teacher. And when they ask these questions that I can answer at home about evolution or any type of chemistry or anything like that, that I can have the screen that everything they ever ask of this thing is informed by a biblical worldview because that’s actually programed in the system. Kind of like what I have seen guys or any one of a number of different types of pay for services that have been screen out negative stuff. This could actually be a service that do there’s a positive screen.

James Cham: I mean, you could do that right now. And like the hard part with it is you could basically sprinkle that in the beginning of any query, the chatGPT and it’ll do a pretty good job. And then whether you wanted to make that a separate application or a separate business, that’s a good question. But you can literally go to chatGPT right now and say, pretend that you are a very thoughtful sort of evangelist who takes the Bible seriously and, you know, just went to Africa and is based in Silicon Valley, you know, and then answer this question and it’ll do an okay job. And then what even crazier is like, you can provide lots and lots of answers that, you know, that person gave and they use that as examples that it can then use to generate, you know, possible future answers.

William Norvell: It’s not going to test out. I’m going to see chatGPT 2021, but we got enough podcast out there. I’m going to see if I can train somebody to answer questions like Henry or Rusty. I think we should try that.

Henry Kaestner: Okay. Well, that’s absolutely a thought that based on what James just said and the interplay that we’ve had thus far, there are infinitely better questions that I could have asked along the way that a chatGPT is like, okay, James Cham just said this on the podcast. What should I ask as a follow up? I’m sure Chat GPT right now could come up with 100 better questions than the ones that I asked.

James Cham: And I think the opportunity. So on the one hand, like that’s going to be magical and it’ll seem so different from anything we’ve ever seen before. But in other ways it’s not different at all. Remember that sort of relationship with the Henry Bot in some ways is very similar to like your relationship to Billy Graham or David Letterman, which is say it is a relationship not with the actual person but with an image of the person. Right? And those are the things in sociology would be called parasocial relationships. And they can be very, very helpful. And they do great good until they become idolatrous. and then that sort of temptation is as old as the Bible, right? That the chance for us to treat something that is a parasocial relationship or relationship with a king who doesn’t really know us and worship him or our ability to sort of like have a relationship with like some mountain and then worship the mountain. Right? That temptation is going to be the thing that we’re going to struggle with a lot more in new and interesting ways.

William Norvell: Yeah, that’s good because that’s real. You know, we just did obviously a tribute podcast to Tim Keller, and I feel like that, you know, he’s had a big influence on my life and I’ve probably shaken his hand twice. Right. But the amount of like, did I answer questions? You know, here’s kind of what Tim Keller would say about that, right? Even though I don’t really have a personal relationship with him, like, yeah, that’s been around for a while. You read enough books by someone and you watching it. I mean, I’ve listened to a hundred sermons from him and read 20 of his books. Like, I can kind of like, here’s kind of what he would say to that.

James Cham: That’s right. And then the interesting thing then as Christians is to have a distinction between those parasocial relationships and sort of the relationship with someone who seems like would be distant and seems like it would be all powerful and all knowing and yet actually has a relationship with us, right? Because our relationship with Tim Keller might be parasocial, but our relationship with Jesus is actually social, right? That actually, like we actually have a relationship with him and an understanding. That distinction I think, gives us room to think about these questions in a way that ends up being a little bit easier than it is for non-Christians because we’ve got a model like not a machine learning model, but so we have an example of what it’s like to have an actual relationship with someone versus having that sort of Parasocial relationship was important and again, beneficial, but very different than. Having a relationship with Jesus.

William Norvell: James is a company in here. You know, we get along, foreigners listening. I’m one of them. I’m curious to hear your answer here. What should we be folding into our business? How should we be taking some of these tools, if at all? Right. I assume the answer is yes to some degree. Like, what should I be doing? I’m going to pitch you in 12 months. Right? Like, what if I haven’t done X? Are you going to be like, wow. Like, man, you got to, like, get with the times. Like, you got to. And is that statement even true? Does everyone need to be using some of these tools in their business? Is that advantageous to build a better growing business?

James Cham: You know, there are some point in maybe 1997 when people started building web applications and they didn’t have names for it yet. Right. They didn’t really know how to describe it. Everyone sort of thought Yahoo! Was the dominant thing and maybe those like we thought we’d all buy Oracle applications that were served through some Web server. And we’re sort of at that point, we’re sort of at the point where it’s clear something’s working and exactly how it’s going to work or exactly what’s to be the dominant business model. All of those questions are unclear. And so if I’m you I’m trying to figure that out right now that there’s a little bit of a race right now to figure out what are these models really, really good at and what’s going to be the thing that, as it turns out, to be really, really valuable. So if we use our web example from like the late nineties, early 2000, you know, you talked to some senior executive Yahoo! Who was the dominant company at that point. And if you told them, the most important asset you have is shared address books. They’d be like, That’s dumb. Address books is like a feature. And if you told them that, like that part that would search through the web turned out to be the most valuable part. They’d be like, That’s dumb. That’s just a feature of our portal. But of course, it turned out that Google, which indexed the web and then became like the stopping point for everyone else, turned out to be incredibly valuable. And that shared contact list is basically social. Right. And it turned out that like that turned out to be the really, really valuable thing. And so we’re still at a point where we don’t really know what’s going to be the durably valuable thing. And so we’re all playing around right now. And so if I’m an entrepreneur, I’m at least devoting, you know, sort of a few hours a day just trying to figure out the outlines of what’s possible right now.

William Norvell: That’s good. That’s good

Henry Kaestner: Wow, that’s awesome. So that is a great takeaway. Spending some concerted time thinking through this, reading up on it, because it does feel like this is a marketplace changing type of event and it’s a big deal. There’s going to be opportunities for great innovation, for inclusion in your business. And we need to be able to have answers about how this impacts our life. And so many of us are parents and we need to be thinking through this. And as we do that, I think that there’s going to be some great innovations and Lord willing, we’ll figure out what this means for translating the Bible and contextualizing the Bible into different languages and our languages, an infinite number of great applications, because it feels like this is a technology like so many others that could be used for good or for bad. And so Christ followers need to not bury their heads in the sand and just like, wow, this is this scares me. So we’re going to go away and we’re just going to be real conservative and we’re to, you know, go back and live on farms and not use phones. But we actually need to lean into this and get involved and get engaged and be serious because everybody else’s.

James Cham: Yeah, I think there are a few angles on that. So one is, you know, the biggest bargain in the world right now is 20 bucks a month to subscribe to chatGPT plus like I make no money, I have no financial interest in open AI. But I would do that. And you know how you said this is the time to read about it? This is probably the time to read about it. This is part time to read it and try it. Because the weird thing about now is that you literally can go on right now and you could get the capabilities that used to only be available to the smartest, smallest set of people inside Google. Right? And you suddenly now can play with these things and figure it out faster than they can what’s possible. So that’s one piece. I think the question that you asked about kids is just so, so important. And in some ways, we are really, really lucky because we’ve already experienced what the phone transition looks like, Right. And there’s a way in which we as parents can have a proper amount of skepticism about what works and doesn’t work. Right. That like if you were to go to 2010 and sort of think about like the phone and how your kids should think about the phone, right. You might have thought, well, this is so different from the web. It’s so different. But now we actually have specific examples, our head about what happens when these things become super, super accessible and what it means for folks to go astray and what it means for someone to be totally consumed by something. Right. And all those examples we can think about because they happened to us, right? And then we could be wiser about how we end up thinking about this for our kids.

William Norvell: It’s so good. You’ve been here before, so you know, we’re. We’re going to close. We would love to hear where God’s speaking to you today and whether that’s about AI or not. There’s a lot of other fun things he talks to us about. Where in his world are you today? And you know, what’s he telling you from his scripture and what’s coming alive to you in a new way?

James Cham: You know, the thing that has stuck with me for the last few years is this idea of old men dreaming dreams of revival. And I think that that continues to animate me and excite me, that I think that we’re at a time of great uncertainty, both from a technology point of view, but also from like be honest, like our position in the world as Americans. And I think it’s at those times of uncertainty where there’s the best chance of revival because suddenly we can’t rely on all the normal answers. Right? The things that have worked for us since, at least like, I don’t know, the mid eighties, they’re not working anymore. Right. And so this means that there’s a whole set of folks who are open to like God working in surprising ways. And I find that really encouraging. And so that’s the thing that I pray for and sort of try to dream these dreams and hope that young men and women do amazing things. And and that’s probably what excites me the most right now.

William Norvell: Amen.

Henry Kaestner: Amen, indeed. Fascinating.

William Norvell: Wait, I got something we’re going to finish with. I got something to finish with, so I just want to chatGPT while you’re here. And I told him to pretend that he’s Henry Kaestner, the host of faith driven entrepreneur podcast, co-founder of bandwith.com and Elder of the PCA church. I’d like to ask you some business questions. What are the three most important things to do as you build your business? According to Henry Kaestner AI, one faith integration pastor is a strong advocate for peace driven entrepreneurship. He believes one’s faith should not be separated from the work, but rather integrated into every aspect of it. People and culture employees are the backbone of any business, and Kaestner emphasized the importance of treating employees while fostering a positive company culture and investing in term and growth. Happy, motivated employees are more likely to deliver their best work, sustainable and ethical business practices. Number three Kaestner encourages entrepreneurs to focus on long term sustainable growth for short term gains and to make business decisions that are ethical in line with their faith and their values. Wow. We think. What do we think?

James Cham: You’re tearing up? You’re tearing up.

Henry Kaestner: While I get this stupid and I put it around my eyes. And fortunately, this isn’t a video podcast, but but yes, I am tearing up. But it doesn’t have to do with that. It’s fascinating and scary because what it doesn’t do is it doesn’t point to it talks about generally about faith as if that just kind of like a character attribute without a relationship with a living God who as sinful as I am, died for me. And our response and joy and gratitude of the gift of life now and eternal, that I can then just return to the altar with all that I am is the aroma of Christ to be a blessing and of others, and balancing the joy in the gratitude with the faithfulness and the obedience, and something as multidimensional and just spiritual in the aroma of Christ. So I would answer as a human being, I would answer those questions differently. Now, all of those things can glean different topics on the web, and yet it feels like it’s looked at it through an academic exercise versus a spiritual life, heart transformation one.

James Cham: So I would not anchor myself too much on the idea that that won’t change. And I did a bad job of explaining this earlier. But these models are just based on what people have said, right? And these models are just trying to the best they can to guess what would be the next word based on the first set of words that you gave it to. And then what’s interesting is, like as we progress and provided with more words, the more data or certain types of words and certain kinds of data, then the models will say something different. And so I bet you that if it recorded everything that Henry said on a daily basis and you sort of asked that question again, it would come up with a different answer. And so the super uncomfortable, weird, like I think what’s going to be uncomfortable for us is how good these things are at like feeling human, right? And that’s going to be both a great salve for us. It’ll like make life is a lot better and it’ll also be a great temptation.

Henry Kaestner: Well, yeah. Okay.

William Norvell: Fascinating.

Henry Kaestner: That is fascinating. James. Thank you, brother. Thank you for your friendship, for your partnership. And thank you for spending time. And may the Lord bless you as you get ready to make this presentation in Washington and excited to see how God will go through you and and may He lead all of his people to being able to be participants in the new technology and lean into it and just maybe protect us all. In Jesus name, Amen.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the failure of an investor podcast. I’m here with William, my co-host. William, how are you?

William Norvell: I’m doing fantastic. Gets a little hot out here in California, which is rare for an Alabama guy to say, but we’re hanging in there.

Henry Kaestner: Well, I know that you’re in a house that doesn’t have air conditioning and you’d ordinarily open the windows. But we’ve got wildfires and that’s thrown a little bit of a wrench into things.

William Norvell: You’ve got you’ve got ash raining down end times, ash over there. Right.

Henry Kaestner: It’s crazy. It really is crazy. So today we’ve got an amazing guest. And this is a big deal for me. For those who you know a little bit about my background coming out of bandwidth as we start up Sovereign’s capital, we wanted to focus on Southeast Asia. We had some good relationships in Indonesia and Singapore. And through the grace of God, we’ve made about a dozen investments have gone really, really well in investing in Faith driven entrepreneurs in Indonesia and Singapore. But increasingly, God has put Africa on my heart. And I went with my family this month. Last year I’m recording this right now in August 20, 20, August to 2019. I went back to East Africa for the first time since 1984. I’ve been in South Africa a number of times in that time. But I went back to East Africa for the first time and obviously a long, long time, you know, so incredibly impressed by the amount of advancement and just how the marketplace was just thriving. And I guess anywhere around the world, there isn’t a lot of change over the course of 35 or 40 years. But definitely in East Africa. And as we have had this ministry of Faith Driven Entrepreneur, which preceded Fater of an investor, I thought, gosh, was it look like to bring together faith driven entrepreneurs and faith driven investors to understand what’s going on the marketplace? So we had a couple of Faith Driven Entrepreneur events. One was just this kind of impromptu meet up where we had 200 faith driven entrepreneurs getting together. Nairobi went back in February to try to understand where were investors, local Kenyan Christians investing and just met? No, really just motivating great godly people in government and in industry and then again in church and then among the entrepreneurial class and just felt completely drawn into their stories, just really encouraged and just really encouraged by the way that these astronauts were able to minister to me about how they had this heartfelt mission about loving on their communities in a way that was just it was just awesome. So I’m on an Africa kick and I’ve been on one. I don’t think I’m ever going to get off it. And I came across a book, I guess it just bought in the airport. And I’m reading through this new book called The Prosperity Paradox by Clayton Christensen, and Efosa Ojomo. And I’m reading through it and just amazed by it. And it’s making the case for investing in Africa. And as I’m reading it, I knew a little bit about Clayton Christensen’s faith background. And it comes from a Mormon faith and just very vocal about how faith influences the way that he thinks about his work and unfortunate and also known that he had just passed away. And I’m reading this and seeing the contributions from his coauthor, Efosa Ojomo. I wonder if Efosa has a faith foundation as well. Wouldn’t it be incredible if he has also committed Christ Fowler and that informed his work? And so then I’m like, OK, I’m going to look for this guy. I’m going to find this author because I wonder if he is. And if he is, he might help us unlock as a group of faith driven investors, how to go about investing. And so we track him down. And as it turns out, he is a committed Christ father. He did coauthor the book. And he is also on today’s episode of Faith Driven Investor. You can’t make this stuff up. Efosa, welcome to the program.

Efosa Ojomo: Thank you. Thank you so much, Henry and William. It’s really an honor to be here. Wow. Thank you.

Henry Kaestner: Super cool to have you. So we start every episode by, we’re going to get into the book, but we get to the things that guy has taught you in your life and the hopes that you’ve got for Africa. And together, mostly you. To be clear, that burns mostly on you. We’re gonna make this case for investing in Africa that you can actually do well, that you can help involved in lifting a continent out. And there’s some big deals to be done and there’s some really compelling opportunities. But before we do that, we’d like to interview each one of our guests and understand a little bit of their background. Who are you? Where do you come from?

Efosa Ojomo: Yeah. Thank you. So I’m originally from Nigeria and I was born and raised there till I was 16, where I moved to the States for college. I was born into a really loving family. I’ve got three siblings. We’re all thankfully Christ followers. There was one of those things where at an early age can’t really describe it. But I just had this awareness of God’s love for me and for all of us.

And so, you know, I would say my parents were what you would call a good people. They were nice people. They taught us to be kind, humble, caring, generous.

But, you know, they didn’t quite introduce the gospel to us, like we weren’t going to attend a Sunday school, that kind of thing. But I was nine years old and went to boarding school. Somehow I just was aware that there was a God that loved me, and that was when I decided to commit my life to him.

Now, since then, it’s been a journey, as any Christ follow would tell you. Ups and downs. But I would say that’s when the journey started for me. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that sort of explains my background upbringing. The connection to the US, though, is quite interesting because it also connects to the work I do today. When I was 16, I was fortunate to get a scholarship to come to college in the U.S. I bought a one way ticket. No intentions of ever going back to Nigeria. Sort of typical immigrant story. You know, you’re gonna come to America, embraced the American dream, and life was going to be good. And I got to tell you, I was there. I mean, I got a job as an engineer. I was working and bought a house, bought a car, even bought an SUV, you know, big gas guzzling SUV. And I was I was all about America. But then my life changed after I began reading about poverty, development and economics. And we can go into details as we talk.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. Yeah. So Nigeria’s this country. And maybe I’ll just talk about the elephant in the room. Many of our listeners have been in contact with people from Nigeria before that have invited them to participate in different things. And your family, too was brought into some of the challenges that are part of Nigerian. We’re going to be clear. This is episode about talking about the very good things going on in Nigeria and Africa. And yet many of us have this experience of interacting with people in Nigeria and there’s some amount of corruption. And that impacted your family, I think, with your sister.

Efosa Ojomo: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So the thing about, you know, growing up in Nigeria and Nigeria, especially perhaps, I mean, other emerging economies, but Nigeria is this idea of poverty, which is connected to corruption, very connected to corruption, becomes normalized. All right. And that’s a big difference between, say, growing up in Nigeria and the US, you know, poverty and corruption and normalized. And so the experience you’re talking about is one that I talked about in my TED talk where my sister got her office broken into. Someone stole some stuff. She went to the police station and they essentially the folks at a police station essentially asking her for a bribe to pay a little something for them to be able to do their jobs. And for her, she was just confused, like I just got robbed. You are the police. You’re supposed to help and you’re asking me to commit another crime. And it just didn’t make sense. But that is not an anomaly. Right. That’s just one example of how corruption shows itself in the country. The problem is that gets normalized. And the idea that we can never develop until we fix everything was really ingrained in me. It was ingrained in my sister, in many people in Africa, which I think is one of the biggest issues in terms of thinking about how the country and the continent can develop.

Henry Kaestner: OK, so let’s tackle that corruption a little bit, just even at the outset. Let’s get right into it. How do you remove corruption from a society? How do you deal normalize that as a way of life? What’s that look like?

Efosa Ojomo: Yeah. So, I mean, there are a couple of ways to tackle this, right? One is we tackle this as a moral cultural problem. Right. So corruption is bad. We all know it’s bad. You need to stop it. If you don’t stop it, nothing can happen. And that, I think, is the dominant way. Corruption is often discussed and it’s often handled. You know, we have the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. We have ease of doing business indices. We have, you know, world governance indices. These are, you know, these indices that show us how does a country rank in governance and corruption and so on. Right. That’s one way to handle it. If you country moves up, you know, the idea is you can get some extra investment. But then the other approach, which is the approach we take in our research, which is the approach that has worked for many prosperous countries today, is to handle it more scientifically and to do that. What we have to do is to lean into this idea of corruption and ask the question, why are people engaged in corruption? Right. Why do people engage in corruption, seem to engage in corruption in this country? Maybe not so much in this other country. Did people in rich countries today ever engage in corruption at a similar scale or level? What types of corruption are there? Right.

Are all corruption or forms of corruption created equal? And when you lean into those questions with some humility, with the understanding that you know. Maybe the folks engaging in this kind of corruption are not just all evil and terrible and there’s no hope. Maybe I need to understand the circumstance better. You begin to uncover some truly amazing insights. And that’s the approach we’ve taken. And in doing that, what we find is the vast majority of people who engage in corruption are doing that to solve a problem.

They’re doing that to typically increase incomes so they can afford a place to live so they can pay for health care so they can get justice. Like my sister. Imagine if she paid that bribe. She didn’t. Just to be clear. But if she did, it wasn’t like she wanted to choke up on whatever day she was robbed and said, I want to pay this. I want to just go be corrupt.

You know, it would be that she had to engage in it so she could get justice. And when we begin to unpack why people engage in it and the different forms, we begin to see the role, the critical role, innovation, entrepreneurship and increase in investment can actually play in helping people and communities mitigate incidences of corruption.

Henry Kaestner: So if I’m following you’re talking about the concept that development and wealth creation has this inverse relationship with corruption. So as an economy gets stronger and there’s more innovation, it feels a little bit like a chicken and egg thing. Right? Some people say, well, but I get that. But I’m I can invest any money until I see corruption go down. Are you asking people in are their stories of success in investing in places like Nigeria where investors have gone in and said, you know what? I know there’s corruption. And yet I still see opportunities and that type of investment and development has paid off for the investor while decreasing corruption? Or do I have it backwards?

Efosa Ojomo: Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. It is this notion of chicken and egg. In fact, one of the things that I said in the TED talk I gave was societies don’t develop because they’ve reduced corruption. They’re able to reduce corruption because they’ve developed. And then when you just think about how we fight, corruption requires a lot of resources and many low and middle income countries don’t have the mechanisms, the money to actually fight corruption. But to your question about other opportunities and so on. Absolutely. There are so many opportunities. The minute we begin to see things differently. Right. So one quick example is, is one that we highlight. I highlight this. A lot of my research in our book and even in the TED talk is the story of Mo Ibrahim. You know, so about 20 years ago, 22, to be more precise. He looks at the continent of Africa. No joke. And he says, I want to go and build mobile telecommunications infrastructure on the continent and get cell phones to the average African. Now, for many of your listeners who know when they hear the word Africa, the continent, I mean, what comes to mind? Poverty, corruption, malaria, destitution. I mean, it’s often bad words that are associated with the continent. Twenty two years ago, it was a lot worse. And that was you know, The Economist wrote an article, The Dark Continent essentially is saying where Africa is a hopeless continent. And the idea of mobile phones was still new. It was still new even in rich countries. So it wasn’t like it was widespread and every single person had it. Right. But he looks and says, I think I can create value if we give the average person access to this phone. Talk to a lot of his colleagues at the time, they thought he was crazy. There’s no way this continent would absorb this technology. There’s no way that people can’t eat. How could they possibly afford this? Well, it turns out that he sets up cell tell mobile telecommunications company in the midst of an Africa that poor, you know, corrupt and so on. And he is able to, in the span of seven years, create a market for mobile telecommunication services. Right. Inexpensive cell phones, mobile minutes for more than five million customers generates revenues of more than half a billion dollars a year, net income of a little over one hundred million a year and sells his company right, sells his company in seven years, 1998 to 2000 and five, four three point four billion dollars. Now, Mo Ibrahim is sitting on the list of one of the world’s richest men today. But, you know, the question is, how did he mitigate corruption? How did he fight this? Well, you have to have a strategy to deal with whatever obstacles come your way when you decide to invest somewhere. And so for him, he said we’re going to have a zero tolerance policy on corruption. And so when they went into a country, they made sure they began building relationships with top. Level government officials that were not corrupt. I mean, there’s this idea that every single person on the continent is corrupt. That’s really not the case. So he built relationships there. Then he set policies within his organization that if you’re going to cut a check for anything over thirty thousand dollars, you have to get board approval. We have to make sure we understand why we’re cutting the check and so on. Now, at the onset, this is inefficient. This is no way to run a business. But it’s important to understand some of these policies will not last forever. Right. These are ways that you can mitigate some of the issues and obstacles in doing business in emerging economies. Once he was able to do this and built a business model that made the cell phone affordable and accessible.

I mean, millions of people flooded into the markets. And today what we have is a continent with close to a billion mobile phone subscriptions, over 100 telecommunications companies all across the continent generating taxes of 15 to 20 billion dollars a year for African governments. So that, again, they can improve their governance, build infrastructure and so on. And that industry is now worth close to 200 billion dollars on the continent. If he waited for Africa to root out corruption and build out its infrastructure. Have a governance structure similar to, you know, richer countries. He’d still be waiting today. But it’s this beautiful evolutionary process of the role of innovation and how it helps develop society that we really want to share in the work we do.

William Norvell: Efosa, William here. Thank you for going into that. I might get to the book. Next, I want to ask one question, though, while you’re going down this path of corruption. So it sounds like they put a very tolerant policy. But as a Christ follower, I remember a conversation business go around this. And I was all high and mighty saying how great I was and how morally superior I was to people. And one of my friends from the Middle East in a really winsome way said, you know, if you want to do business like that is what it is. And that’s just the way the economy works. And he said, hey, if you call it a facilitating payment, maybe you’ll sleep better at night. And he had a really, like, core thesis that, you know, this is just part of bottom line net income. And this is the way you get a building permit. And it is what it is. And to be fair, I have another experience in life where I built a building in Chicago where I noticed some line items missing. And I asked a senior executive and he said some version of the same thing is that if you’re going to build a building in Chicago, you’re gonna have a line item there. I don’t know if you want to know what’s in it or not. And he was dead serious. And so my question is, as a Christ-follower, how do you think about that? Are there places where, you know, corruption is a big word? Facilitating payments a smaller word, bribe is a bigger word, means some version of the same thing. Is that business? I mean, do you think he really and I’m not saying he didn’t build a three point four billion dollar company without ever paying anything that was not, you know, right down the middle of the fairway. And how have you seen that play out in other investments there?

Efosa Ojomo: Yeah. Yeah. So I don’t know I don’t know the answer to that question. I believe him when he says, look, this is how we built this and I haven’t heard otherwise. Right. And if you’re going to build something that big. I think people would say, oh, you’re a hypocrite. Look at what you did. Look what you did. The question, though, is critical. So one of the things that I think Christ following investors. Right. Investors who just are not about I want to make as much money as I can, but really want to be a force for good and a force for God in the world. Should understand is this notion that C.S. Lewis talks about in his book where he says, Christ, little Christians all over the place should be like good infection. It’s like we should go to a place. And because of the way we are, we should infect the place as sort of like little Christ’s running around. And over time, we’ll see how that place changes. One of the best ways you can do this is through business. Now, what this means is we need to lean into places that seem overtly corrupt and figure out how to do business there. But in terms of how you navigate around it, I would recommend another book, which, by the way, everyone I am. She’s a professor out of University of Michigan. The name of the book is called China’s Gilded Age The Paradox of Economic Boom. And I think it’s vast corruption. And what she describes is this idea that not all corruption is created equal. This notion that there are really four types of corruption. Right. That’s petty theft. So the stuff that my sister was experiencing and as grand theft and embezzlement. Right. So when you hear Senator has embezzled 10 million dollars or Westminister, that’s grand theft. And then there’s. Access, money and access. Money is a lot of times and no different from, you know, what we lobbying. Right now, we might have good justification for it and say, I want to help the lawmakers write the law. I know more about the issues. But, you know, typically access money. It’s sort of, you know, lobbying. We just call it lobbying. And it’s not corruption. It’s transparent and so on. And the last one is speed. Money, right. So you want a new driver’s license. So you want something new permit or something. And then you pay money and it speed things up when you begin to categorize corruption that way. What you find is we have all seen them falling short of the glory of God. Right. And so it’s really hard for me to think of a society where there isn’t one or more forms of this corruption going on. It doesn’t condone it. And I think as Christ followers, we have to lead lives of utmost integrity and then we have to also make decisions on where we go. So Mo Ibrahim, for instance. Right. He did not set up shop in Nigeria.

I mean, most populous country in Africa that would have given him a lot of, you know, economic prosperity. Now, I don’t know why he didn’t, but my guess is he tried and he’s like, I can’t play ball the way these guys want me to play ball. And so he didn’t set up shop there, set up shop in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Uganda, much smaller economies still did really well. And so I think as a Christ follower, we will be convicted in one way or another and we will have to make decisions on where we go, how we invest. But sort of the high level broad. Oh, I can’t go here because there’s corruption and I’m a Christian. I’m not even gonna lean into it. I don’t think that’s the way we should think about it.

William Norvell: Oh, it’s fantastic. Thank you for taking us down the detour. I love that for framework of kind of thinking through it. And I think that’s super helpful. OK. We’re gonna shift back to this ownership back of the book Prosperity Paradox. We talked about a little bit. I want to give you a chance. Give us the core thesis of the book and what you’re really trying to draw out and writing it.

Efosa Ojomo: Yeah. Quick, quick story on that. In 2008, I read a book about poverty and economic development. The author of the book, William Easterly a professor out of NYU. He dedicated the book to a 10 year old Ethiopian girl who had to wake up every morning at three a.m., fetch firewood, walk miles and sell so she could take care of a family. Right. I’m in my room. February Wisconsin crying. I’m crying uncontrollably. I’m not really a big crier, but I couldn’t help myself because I thought there are hundreds of millions of people, young children in the world that are struggling like this. And I could not connect, sort of reconcile my faith, the story I was reading and how I was lead in my life. I remember earlier I talked about I embrace the American dream wholeheartedly and I just wanted a lot of nice things. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I think I was just really convicted. And that year I started going back home to Nigeria every year to do some poverty alleviation work. Now, in the process, I started an organization called Poverty Stops Here. We built a bunch of wells in different communities and virtually all the wells broke down and hit me that something is wrong with this process. Right? Because what we did was we looked at poverty as a lack of resource problem. And the solution, therefore, is you provide the resource. You go to a community, you don’t have water, schools, wells, hospitals, you provide the resource and you fix the problem. Unfortunately, that way of solving the problem is not sustainable. So that’s a big lesson that I learned. And that’s the paradigm shift we want to happen for people that read the book. The core thesis is you don’t fix poverty by trying to fix poverty. Instead, you fix poverty by trying to create prosperity. Right. And when you try to create prosperity, you realize that you can’t do it without focusing on entrepreneurship, innovation, and more specifically, what we describe as market creating innovations. And these are innovations like the one more Ibraheem built where you make a product that’s really expensive, complicated, you make it simple and affordable. So many more people can afford it. And when you do that, what ultimately happens is you generate a lot of wealth. So Mo Ibrahim and a lot of wealth, you create a lot of jobs that can help people earn much more income. You generate tax revenues, like I described earlier, about the mobile telecommunications industry and the tax revenues that they’re now generating. And perhaps the most important thing is you begin to foster a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship so other people see this new market you’re creating. They want to take part in it. Investors come in, entrepreneur. Nurse come in and you begin to innovate and develop newer and newer products. And that’s what we realized and that’s the core thesis in the book. The more market creating innovations we develop, the more societies can prosper.

William Norvell: Efosa, we’ve talked a little bit and I think this is common. You end up talking a little bit, unfortunately, when you talk about an investing in Africa, some of the negative connotations that come along with it. But obviously, there are just incredible assets that are unique and only to Africa. And even that Sennett’s I’m one of those people that, you know, when you say Africa, I can’t even name all the countries. Right. And I know they’re there. But in my mind, it’s like one big place and I can’t get out of it just to confess that and ask for forgiveness that I have not done my research. But so tell me and our listeners a little more about the uniqueness of investing in that continent.

Efosa Ojomo: Yeah. So, I mean, I could talk for an hour. I will focus on three things here. Number one, it’s the youngest continent. And when we talk about that in economic development talk, we talk about this idea of a demographic dividend. Right. It’s essentially when the people working outnumber people in retirement. And so this a nation or a region has this demographic dividend. Many other parts of the world are growing much older. Africa is very young and the median age is about 18 or 19 years old. Now, what that does or what that means is if an investor can create a market on the continent, you’re going to have customers for a very, very long time. Right. So that’s one thing that’s unique to the continent. The second thing is, at this stage, the continent, not only is it young, but it’s very susceptible to technology. Right. So when you look at the proliferation of technology on the continent, what you find is the continent can actually leapfrog a lot of traditional technologies. And so just look at the way mobile telephony spread all across the continent. Internet and data is next. And that also is going to spread. And so begin to think about new business models and how to attract this growing customer base. So that’s the second thing. The third, which is often seen as a negative, is actually a positive. It’s this idea that there is vast nonconsumption on the continent. And, you know, we define nonconsumption in our book, in our writing. It’s essentially when a vast majority of people in a region cannot access a product or service that would benefit them. And so when you look at Africa, just vast nonconsumption of many of the most basic things. I mean, from housing to even food to health care to education. It’s just vast right now. You can look at that and say that there’s no opportunity there. These folks are too poor. If Mo Ibrahim did that 22 years ago, he wouldn’t have created this vast market. But when you look at nonconsumption and say, oh, my gosh, if I go into this market, to this region, create a market, I will not have a lot of competition because right now people are not consuming. You can actually turn that around and see there’s a ton of opportunity. I think the challenge is many entrepreneurs and investors look at Africa and compare it to wealthier countries. From the governance side and even from the market side, you see the continent is in what I call the market creation phase, which means when you go to Africa to create a new market, we’ll stick with Mo Ibrahim example. He talked about how if you wanted to do a mobile telecommunications company in London or the U.S., he would have just signed papers in a conference room.

And the deal would have been done on the continent in the several countries he started. He had to build the cell towers here to educate a workforce. He had to build some clinics in some communities where his workers would live. He had to engage in community development projects. That’s not an anomaly in the market creation phase as long as an investor knows. These are the things that have to do. Then the returns that are waiting for them are going to be significant. When we look at what Henry Ford did when he was building the US, when we look at what Kodak did, Eastman Kodak, you go to Rochester, New York and see all the stuff that’s there named after him. Amadio, Giannini, Bank of America. We see similar activities. Right. And so what we really want to share with investors is this is not an anomaly when you have to build some of these things. But if you do it in a theory driven way, in a predictable way, you can actually reap a lot of rewards and help communities develop.

Henry Kaestner: So I’m fascinated by this concept to nonconsumption. I get the sense and maybe it’s accurate, maybe it’s not, that there are opportunities that are akin to what we saw in the United States, maybe back at the turn of. Last century, when Vanderbilt and Rockefeller and Stanford and all these people were going ahead and investing in places that things didn’t exist and they were able to shape culture, create culture by investing in the marketplace in profound ways. And I think that what strikes me is I listened to you talk is that there are similar opportunities here. What a compelling not only is there a market to be developed, but as you said, as a young content, you know, average age 18, 19 years. You’ve got consumers for life. That’s really profound. I’m also influenced and impacted by the fact that turning back again to go back in history about how committed Christ followers developed schools and hospitals that are all throughout Africa. And had that very focused in terms of bringing Christ and the gospel to an entire continent. They did that by investing early when other people wouldn’t have done that might take away from this is that there’s a sense for us to do that again and that we can invest in culture, in the marketplace in a way that points to God. And maybe it’s going to be easier to influence an economy for God than it might be for a more developed nation when things are more entrenched. I’d love for you to riff on that. Am I going down the right path on that? Is this that opportunity for us to go in instead of the schools and hospitals as we did one hundred years ago? Now’s the time for us to invest in a marketplace.

Efosa Ojomo: I mean, I think so. I mean, when you think about what work means for a lot of people, I know Tim Keller was on this show. I did a talk. And, you know, his book, Every Good Endeavor, talks about the importance of work in the life of a Christ-follower. When you think about the importance of work, just the average person, Crossville or not, we spend a majority of our waking life at work. So when you talk about influence, how do you influence a society? What better way to influence a society for good and for God than figuring out ways to create businesses and organizations where you have integrity, honesty, truth, goodness as core principles and core values? What better way to do that, especially when that organization is in a system where that’s really not the norm? Right. And so, in a way, I see it as a huge opportunity if more faith driven investors go to Africa, invest in a certain way. Right. We have to figure out how to shape culture, not the other way around, but invest in a certain way. I think that’s going to give us so much more bang for our buck than maybe going into a poor community, you know, donating a school or some T-shirts. I mean, I think investing is what we should be thinking more about.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. I want to be careful that you don’t harsh on T-shirts. That’s how I get my entrepreneurial start selling T-shirts.

Efosa Ojomo: Yeah, I heard that podcast, too. And that’s why I talked about T-shirts, because I know I’m kidding. I did.

Henry Kaestner: I love the fact you pander to your host. Thank you for that. I love you for it. It’s awesome. Okay. So if you’re a listener out there, this is where we’re going to do a little bit of crowd participation. We at faith driven investor in Faith Driven Entrepreneur had been super encouraged by the development of two different things. And I want to ask you first, if he knows of other things, we might be missing out. But one is this focus on investing in the ecosystem of Faith Driven Entrepreneur ownership. And I think about organizations like Hope International. I think about a Gorai in Snapp’s and TBN and others that are creating this kind of following Christ driven enterprise in the marketplace by doing training and many MBA A’s in matching up mentors with entrepreneurs, et cetera. So there’s a philanthropic opportunity that’s there. And yet, as investors, there are also a whole bunch of new funds to develop over the last 12 or 15 months that we’re tracking. I think about Sard and Tree of Life in South Africa and talent in and Sierra v.C and NovaStar. Can you go kinfolk in others? And I’m just really encouraged by the advent of professional management, both on their capacity building side, but then also in the fund management side, because otherwise it’s hard for the average listener to say, what do I get started? I mean, do I go online and just kind of go on Angeles or we fund? But there’s some other ways, and I’m loving the way that the market for faith driven investor is developing. Anything I’m missing there?

Efosa Ojomo: No, I mean, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. It’s one of the things that we have to begin thinking about, creating a better infrastructure that enables people who get this message and want to get involved to be able to get involved. There’s a fund called Future Africa, a young Christ follower who is figuring out ways to get people to essentially crowd fund investments. That’s why he calls it golden palm. Investment is another one. Good friend of mine went to Harvard Law School Business School, and he’s investing in key sectors in the economy, health care, technology, Verrat, Capital Management and other HBF alarm seem to be biased to the HBF alarms reason?

William Norvell: No, not at all. I don’t hear that at all.

Efosa Ojomo: Yes, health capital is another one focused on agriculture, really figuring out how Africa can become a breadbasket for the world. And so what’s interesting is you don’t have to go too far to find faith driven investors on the continent. Everybody I’ve mentioned is a faith driven investor, which to me was fascinating because I thought, oh, who’s doing this in Africa? Not necessarily who’s a Christian doing this in Africa? And I was like, oh, wow. Faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, you know.

Henry Kaestner: So I tell you, though, you know, HBS definitely has it up on the Stanford Graduate School of Business. William, how do you respond?

William Norvell: No comment.

Henry Kaestner: All right. Well, thank you for not shifting it back to how the University of Delaware alumni base is doing in investing and faith driven opportunities in Africa. And that’s the crowd participation part. As you hear, as you, the listener, understand new players that are in the capacity building space or in the investment space. Share it with us. Superimportant that we as a community can understand more ways that we can get involved in Africa. William brings to close, please.

William Norvell: Yeah, I will. And the only thing I’ll say before that is as you were listing of names and if you listen to this podcast you may hear me say this a bunch of my favorite quotes, but African investing in Africa just totally reminds me of that famous Bill Gates quote that most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in 10. And when you list all those names, my mind just went to this like, what is this conversation going to be in 10 years? It’s going to be so much more. And it’s hard to see that and to start investing in those people now. For our audience to start learning now to listen to those names, obviously email us if you want to learn more. We’re not hard to find. I just had this vision of this conversation in 10 years. And you say. And who knew? Well, it could have happened when we actually had this conversation. And only God knows. Right. And my other favorite quote I’ve heard from God is, you know, now tell you what I was up to, but you wouldn’t believe me even if I told you. And that’s our God if we are faithful and walk with him. And on that note, we are running close to time. So we love to figure out where our guests are in God’s word and where he may be pushing them. So if you have a moment, maybe just share with us where you might be, where he might be taking you today or the season. And let our audience into your life and your walk with God’s word.

Henry Kaestner: And I’ll interject here for folks who need time and think I love the fact he’s got this chalkboard behind him and he’s got the great quote from Jeremiah, 29, that’s up there. It’s written down. That’s true. I don’t know if that was in preparation for today’s call. I don’t know if his next calls with the World Bank. Tell us about that.

Efosa Ojomo: Well, that’s just called my wife and I have up here to encourage us. You know, any Christ follower will tell you the journey is not linear. It’s not straightforward. And so we need reminders that we are on God’s team. He is here for us. He loves us. And that’s just one of the ways we remind ourselves that he has good plans for us, plans for welfare and not for evil. And so, anyways, I think, you know, to your question, William, where my wife and I are now in our faith, we just celebrated our one year anniversary. Is this Matthew six, 33 to 34. Those two verses. Right. You first. A Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. And then the verse 34 says, therefore, do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow, worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. It’s just this idea of putting God first. It sounds really simple, but we’ve been asking ourselves, what does it mean to put God first? To be proactive about our faith, to anchor our lives on our faith. And then everything else flows from there.

And so every year we’ve decided now that we would figure out an issue that we know God cares about and we would lean into that issue, that issue of injustice. That issue of poverty, whatever the issue is, would lean into that issue. And then whatever extra time we have, whatever extra money, whatever extra whatever goes to everything else. But first God issue and then everything else. And so that’s where we are right now. And we’re we’re pretty excited about that.

Henry Kaestner: It should be. That’s awesome. We are, too. Thank you very much for your life’s work. Thank you for your time. And just excited about our partnership and your faithfulness and where God’s got you.

Efosa Ojomo: Thank you. Thank you.

Henry Kaestner: Everybody gets the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We’re glad you’re back. Today’s guest is Eric Kim, co-founder and managing partner of Goodwater Capital. As early investors and Facebook, Twitter, Spotify and others, Eric and his team know a thing or two about the tech startup world. But that’s not the limit of Eric’s expertize. He’s done some great thinking about what spiritual integration looks like and their firm and how his faith guides him as he’s part of stewarding a portfolio of over a billion dollars. I’ll let you hear the rest of it from him.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. Today is super cool for me because we’re on with a good friend of mine, a guy that I’ve been able to be in in a Bible study and community group of sorts over the course of the last couple of years.

A number of us who are serious about our Christian faith and who got his place in the world of investing have gotten together just to encourage and challenge each other in our pursuit of knowing God and honoring him through our vocations. And it’s with Eric Kim that we’ve got today on the call and been looking for this podcast for a while. Eric, thank you very much for joining Henry.

Eric Kim: And Tim, thanks so much for having me. That’s a real honor and a blessing to be here with you on your listenership today. Appreciate it.

Henry Kaestner: So we have a love that is the official title for listenership that esteems our audience, which needs to be esteemed. Awesome. People were celebrating the fact that we’re now and something like seventy five different countries. But it’s been super encouraging to hear people come back in with great feedback and just great affirmation. So thanks for acknowledging that. And one of the things that you probably know and everybody in our listener base knows is that we like to hear the stories, the personal stories of the people that are on an episode with us. We want to get into some really neat things about the mission and the vision and values and how you think about things like a shadow mission. Today, we’re going to find out what in the world is a shadow mission. And then we’re also going to find out a little bit about the role that consumer technology plays in this post, covid or current covid world. But tell us about who you are, where you come from. And then in the mix of that, I want to know, what is your favorite piece to play on the show?

Eric Kim: Oh, I love it. Thanks for bringing that up. Well, guys, again, it’s just an honor. A pleasure to be here with you all.

So my parents immigrated from South Korea to New York City in the early 70s, which is where I was born when I was quite young. I moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where there weren’t a lot of Koreans where I grew up. I was there through high school. I grew up as a pretty serious musician and went to Yale for undergrad, actually, initially as a music major. And it was actually at Yale where I experienced the power of consumer technology and faith.

And a really interesting way when I was a senior, 9/11 happened. And I think everyone will remember where they were when they heard about the atrocity that happened. And for me, it was particularly painful. I had interned at a hedge fund that had some brokerages associated with it that were completely wiped out by what happened on 9/11, hit particularly close to home, being on the East Coast at that time and during that experience learned about the power of music and technology and community, because we came together as a group to host these benefit concerts. And I was a cellist on campus and we pulled together other groups in the way we advertised through that was through social media, kind of the version of that back then. What was social media where these kind of chat boards and I see a key messenger kind of environment and we advertise these benefit concerts. We saw the community, the network effects of getting the word out.

What inspired that kind of action at that time was kind of a rediscovery of my faith during college. And I talk about it later.

But a number of really influential kind of forces in my life at that time, everything from Campus Crusade for Christ to grab as a Catholic to St. Thomas Moore Chapel on campus as well. And by that ecumenical dialog and being at the intersection that really forfour. He had a really interesting kind of faith calling to come to service, and I bring up the 9/11 example because that carried with me throughout my career, going to McKinsey, working on a couple of startups, working at a large fund called Maverick, but ultimately feeling call to start with Tiwa, my co-founder in 2014, Goodwater Capital, which we believe is a value space to faith driven, purpose driven venture capital firm, which we’ll talk more about. But again, myself in a nutshell, kind of Midwest kid that now is here in Silicon Valley to try to do what we can do through venture investing to have a positive impact on the world.

Henry Kaestner: So if I remember a bit and we didn’t talk about this in the conversation leading up to the podcast, but if I remember back to 2014 and I had known to for a while, but it just started to meet you, there’s a faith story and how you guys got together. Can you share that?

Yeah, you know, there is a number, but God just kept having us meet each other.

Kind of it was serendipitous kind of flukes of nature at the beginning, but we would literally start running into each other. And we are obviously friends before. And we had gone to business school over fifteen years ago together at Stanford GSB, because when you’re ahead of me and then kind of as we were both thinking about starting our own separate firms at that time, God just found ways to bring us together. I remember one day at the Rosewood Hotel, kind of quintessential, you know, Silicon Valley shock.

William Norvell: And you ran into him there. I can’t believe I at the Rosewood.

Eric Kim: I know. I know. But it was like kind of in the thick of both of us thinking about an entrepreneurial venture. He was at Kleiner at the time. I was at Mavericks at the time.

And we had just had a conversation before. And like literally within that, I don’t know. Twenty four to 72 hour, we met again and then had another serendipitous conversation about, hey, what would it look like to start a firm together? And we kept doing that. And then the number of stories around the investors that we would literally meet at the airport that got delayed because the plane got delayed, you know, and then we happened to sit down at the same pizzeria. They were kind of these countless very serendipitous things that happened and, you know, couldn’t help but think that, you know, God’s kind of handprints were all over that in many ways. But it was really cool to see how that came together very organically at the beginning.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, I remember that she was doing something about it, really endeavoring understand how to go proceed. And as he was doing that, all of a sudden out of the blue, you called and it was just really cool, made a real impression on him. And you guys have grown together and grown. Have fun now that I think is past the billion dollars of assets under management. So God has blessed your partnership and it gives you a lot of success. Your fund that focuses on consumer technology taught us a bit about what it is that you guys do in the fund and bring it into today’s environment. Why is what you do particularly important today?

Eric Kim: Yeah, so our stated mission when we started in 2014 was to empower exceptional entrepreneurs who are changing the world. And our focus area is just consumer technology. We don’t do enterprise, SAS, security, hardware, biotech, all.

We do our digital horizontal platforms that touch the consumer directly.

And so whether that’s financial services, health care, education, online grocery marketplaces, video communications. Kiwa was an investor in Facebook and Twitter prior to joining him. I Goodwater I was an investor in Kakao Talk, part of Goodwater, which now has ninety nine percent penetration as a messaging app in South Korea.

And you can go into our company there. There’s something very unique about the power of, again, horizontal digital platforms that have network effects that every time a net new user joins in the power of that platform becomes stronger. So whether that’s a Netflix, a Spotify, telemedicine companies, financial services, fintech companies, peer peer payments, one more one more user comes into that community or that app. The whole gets stronger and that’s all we do. I could water the entire billion dollar plus of the assets we manage is just focusing on empowering exceptional entrepreneurs who are changing the world through consumer technology because consumer technology touches billions of lives on a day to day basis, if not hour to hour basis. Whether we like it or not, we are in front of these digital platforms almost every living minute of the day. And so when we think about our mission, our calling, our purpose, we wanted to focus all our energy into what we think is one of the most powerful forces from a secular perspective in the world, which is consumer tech. So we’ve been in early investors in a company called Musically, which is now called Tech Talk, which is Superfriends. Enter the news these days. And we’ve been in other companies as well, you know, all kind of stuff or more questions on this topic and love to explore any area. But I will just leave by saying a lot of those companies end up being fairly controversial also. So what? It’s Facebook about privacy, to talk about privacy or, you know, when and how should telemedicine be adopted or what’s the privacy or the security around fintech platforms?

We as a value investor, actually want to be in the thick of those conversations. We want to be right where the rubber meets the road with regards to secular innovation and where consumer behavior is changing, because we think that even if we change the trajectory of this company by one degree, we will have tremendous impact, hopefully.

So that’s where we’re focused as of today.

Henry Kaestner: So I think that that’s something a lot of people don’t think about. And so many people think of the role when they invest in private equity funds as being a passive player in an overall trend. But the reality is, is that when you come alongside an early investor and get a board seat, you’re now a partner. You have a voice at the table. And you’re right, consumer technology is a wonderful thing. We all use it to be able to have people who are speaking into the lives of the entrepreneurs to encourage them, but then also appropriately challenge them. Is there an example that you might be able to offer up over the course of the last several years, if necessary? You can leave the name out of it where there is this kind of ethical kind of fork in the road where the CEO of a consumer technology company is trying to say, we see an opportunity here, but your sense of values and faith driven, this tries to encourage them in a different direction.

Eric Kim: Yeah, that there are several points to a couple. I’ll start by stating our core values, which today are humility, integrity, transparency, quality, service. And then we’ve added a six one justice and we could talk more about that. But it’s through these lens that first we make it really, really almost painstakingly clear to our entrepreneurs before they sign up to partner with us that those are the values that we’re about. So if you want someone in your cap table that has those values, we’ll work with you day and night through those lenses. I would say, particularly with regards to consumer technology in this day and age. One of the things we’re really passionate about that has come up, frankly, time and time again.

It’s come up before I started. Goodwater, it’s ever more present today is the production of children on these platforms and whether it’s pornography, whether it’s addiction, whether it’s child pornography itself, it’s again, something that is near and dear to a lot of our hearts as parents and as family members, frankly. And we see it. It was something that there was a major platform that we were associated with. I can’t name it, but we had to really pound the table with regard to changing our growth trajectory, sacrificing some initial growth to make sure we safeguarded the children that would potentially be in the audience itself. And it comes up time and time again. But I think what is surprising and not trying to toot my own horn, we fall short in so many ways, but is that we are usually the sole voice pounding the table about these issues. And again, these companies netnet may be seen, but actually is very controversial or very, you know, potentially gray in some areas.

But what we often think about is if it’s not good or who else should sit in that void to make sure there is a voice of values in some of those situations.

So, yeah, it’s come up. It comes up and particularly around the protection of children is something that we’re seeing and we’re quite sensitive to.

Henry Kaestner: Well, as a dad, thank you for that. And William, your dad of a young child as well. So I know that, you know, was one thing when my children are a little bit older, 14, 16 and 18. And that is something that’s absolutely front and center. But you’re investing also in the companies. They’re going to be the leaders in consumer technology in the future to sit that out. When you do have that conversation with the entrepreneur and you’re pounding the table, do they wonder why is you can say, actually, you know, we’ve got this kind of moral compass that comes from something about who we are? What does that look like about why you’re pounding the table or you judge judging or versus that’s a unique opportunity to witness. And yet I shouldn’t be prescriptive even in the asking the question about how that manifests itself. But tell us more about you being the sole person pounding on the table and being completely different than the rest.

Eric Kim: Yeah, I think it comes down to mission and purpose and really getting at the roots of it. And now you mentioned shadow mission, but often we’ll come back to speaking into the hearts and the hearts already there for these entrepreneurs. They want to do intrinsically something really positive for the role. That’s why they risked everything to become an entrepreneur to begin with. But speaking into that side of it. Right. And aligning around what is that remember back what was that original mission you started this company for? It was for the purpose of serving X or Y. What was that original purpose? And as opposed to kind of what I would call often is the shadow mission. And this is popularized by John Ortberg. And John, if you’re listening, I’m praying for you, buddy, and we’ve never met. But you bless me immensely as you. But.

Henry Kaestner: The people you have ever met, senior Pastor Amen, the church here in the Bay Area, great man of God.

Eric Kim: Absolutely. But this message around a mission, I think, is actually where there is light and where there’s an entrepreneur’s kind of intrinsic nature to want to do good. And then on the other side of that is the desire to be on the cover of Forbes is to be a billionaire, is to have growth and to break all these records and to have kind of the accolade associated with it. And if we bring it back, each speaking into it is not from a moralistic perspective like this is wrong or this is right is I actually remember why you started this company to became let’s remember that real mission and take everything else aside. Take aside the case study that you want written about you take aside all the accolades that you want to take, aside the pay and think back about that mission. And that is, I think when the heart becomes most vulnerable for them and we can speak into it and whether they know we’re our faith and we’re not shy about it, we don’t necessarily advertising on our sleeves either.

But it invariably does come up in almost every conversation with the entrepreneurs we work with. I think they understand where it comes from and where it becomes real for them. Whether they are faith or not is that they have this underlying mission, which I believe God has blessed them with, and then speaking it to that and tying it to the reality that they’re faced with to make sure they’re making that choice because they can serve one or two missions in that moment.

William Norvell: Yeah, it’s so good. So good. I actually heard that sermon like eight years ago and it has changed my life and ascended to so many people. It’s just amazing to think about, you know, go in one direction. And then you have, you know, he talks about how you can just be five degrees off. Right. So a lot of times people think you’re 180 degrees off and that’s how you you know, you see your way off the path. But in reality, it’s usually just a little bit you know, you’re probably using the gifts that God’s given you. You’re probably doing all the things pretty close to it, but you’re just doing it for a little different reason. He talks about giving a sermon. He’s like, that’s what I’m gifted to do. That’s what God give me to do, is that in my shadow mission is every day I go to sleep and I wake up and I hope it says amazingly good looking, eloquent man gives incredible sermon once again, right?

Eric Kim: Yeah, it’s. Yeah. Just those few degrees off. But in an extreme sense, the articulation a few degrees off. But those few degrees are in the direction of how and how does that manifest itself for you.

William Norvell: What do you feel like you wrestle with as you were thinking through that paradigm?

Eric Kim: Yeah, I thank you for asking that. You know, when we started in twenty fourteen, Tiwa and I looked at each other and said, this is not my firm, this is not a year for this is God’s firm and kind of made that sacred vow to begin with and had that really strong misalignment.

And I think that what is the shadow mission for all of us.

I’ll speak for myself being as an investor, of being someone that you measure yourself based on the investments you make your track record. Right. The multiple and the IRR that you have created, the wealth you have created for others, take a lot of pride in that.

And I think that the shadow mission is to, as a firm or as an individual investor is to be a billionaire, to raise a certain X amount of funds, to be on a list, to get kind of the accolade associated with that track record that you establish. And when we started, the firm firms like there was never a mission to create a track record. It was to have impact.

And so I think that is the constant battle. And what I love about how Ortberg popularized the notion of a shadow mission is that it’s not to say we’re going to all just be pure and wash ourselves or this is just to say it’s part of us. It is there. We can’t just cut it off.

It’s really acknowledging because part of my pride and my ego is to be the best in investing is to have the best rapper is to be one of the most successful venture capitalists. I know it.

It’s there. But naming it and making sure that that is not what I’m feeding on a day in, day out basis is so important.

But unless I name it up front and understand that that is my kind of natural tendency, I think that is really what has preserved our partnership, which is really important that Goodwater and actually helped it blossom because we’re not looking towards our own self fulfillment. We’re really looking towards the fulfillment of the mission itself. Now, we fall short all the time. I want to be really clear. It is so hard. Right. And it’s just like those magical moments when a brother like Henry with our Christian Accountability Venture Capital Group, you know, can hold you accountable to some of these things and to check your ego. And again, it’s just that constant battle that we’re in that I would just again, encourage everyone who might be listening to this. Like just what is that shadow mission of yours from the investment or from a secular business perspective?

And name it, don’t be afraid of it, but name it in the hopes that you can sometimes check it at just those crucial moments.

Henry Kaestner: I want to dove into that a little bit more because you’re on to something there that, of course, plays all of us as Christ, not just us as fund managers. It’s riffing on Proverbs 16, two and twenty one to all of a man’s ways seem pure to him, but his motives are weighed by the Lord. And every time I read that, I am so incredibly convicted and I have these shadow missions and the danger, if you have some level of success in the world and especially the Christ followers, that you can pretty much justify almost everything you’re doing in terms of trying to create value and trying to participate. And much that might be true. But you might have this 80 percent of what you’re doing can absolutely be defended as I’m investing for the flourishing of society. But when selfishness or the approval of others kind of seep in, it takes us further away from God. And so you’re doing and through the work of John Ortberg. But what you’re really showing here is that you have endeavored what you want just to be that much more conscious of it in the humility that comes with that. Let me just say that that’s different from what you hear from the typical Sandhill Road venture capitalist.

Eric Kim: I have to just thank you, Henry, in particular, because you’ve been a great mentor to me. And I go back and remember one of the most impactful things you said to me, which I think applies to anyone, regardless of where you might be on a wealth scale or where you are in life.

But the metaphor holds true.

And you said to me, Eric, never get liquid because you may have seen, I think, in some other folks lives just what happens when folks achieve some success in the notion of equity. Again, doesn’t matter where you are a scale, that notion is that you suddenly have like this freedom to just do whatever you want because you’ve got this kind of accumulated currency of here on Earth. You can just do whatever you want. And certainly it pertains to the wealthy. And I think it pertains to everyone just kind of mentally from a currency of feeling in need and on our knees for Christ and on our knees because we realize how dependent we are on the Lord and then going to being in a quote unquote, liquid situation. Where to your point, I do whatever we want. I got the resources I can hop on this plane. I can maybe get this really nice kind of luxury item here or things like that. And I’m not saying nice things are bad, not by any means. But at the same time, what happens is we’re disconnected. We’re going from not just being part of this world, but being of this world in that moment. And I just remember back when you told me about that, it’s just like a conversation we can all have and be very real about like what does that mean for us? You know, whether I’ve accumulated that like an extra few bucks through the stock market as a couple bucks a couple of weeks, like, does that suddenly change your mental state somehow and your attitudes towards the Lord and God? And I think particularly it’s just something we have to really be mindful in being in the investment world.

Henry Kaestner: I completely agree. That was very encouraging what you said. I need to give credit for that to Jim Bowen, who is the founder and CEO of First Trust Portfolios, a very early investor in Bano.

On the personal side, he just had set on a ministry board with David and came on board and we went out and met with him and he said, guys? And he dressed and looked a lot like Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko character in Wall Street. I’ll never forget. He said, never get liquid. I’ve seen it just destroy families. And on the flip side of that, and there’s the cautionary side, the investor that I look to as a mentor, just an incredible class act, really godly man. It’s a guy named Tom Darden. And Tom ran and continues to run Cherki Partners, two and a half billion dollars worth of real estate assets and huge land holdings in India and other places like that, really the best in the world. And what he does, which is to renovate what are called Brownfield’s real estate that has some sort of oil damage or something like that. And Tom rides a bike to work. He has immense wealth. But one of the things that really grounds him is not just his faith, but the fact that he is never liquid. Every single time he has any type of liquidity, he’s investing in the next entrepreneur that comes around. He has hundreds of investments and different technologies that are really making a difference in the world. And he does it every cent whenever they go public, he immediately sells the stock, not immediately. But he’ll tell you, you know, he looks for an opportunity, sell stock and then put it in another investor. And as a result, he never has the liquidity around him to think about buying another yacht. And in the process, because he’s investing in illiquid assets, either a private equity or venture capital fund like you all have, or an individual angel investments, he’s really creating part of the fabric of the enlargement of society. So thanks for having said that as encouragement to me, but I need to give credit to Jim Bowen and then to the guy, his model that out for me, Tom Dart also.

William Norvell: Let’s get. I usually steal John shuttle mission statement, but you already knew about it, so I can’t take credit for it. You’re like the one guy that listen to the deep tracks and, you know, really upsets me. ERG, I want to take one step back. You mentioned a phrase kind of in passing, but I think especially for our audience. Want to go. You said you were faith driven, venture capital firm. You know, and I know we’ve gone around the world a little bit on what that could mean in certain situations. But I want to give you a chance just to maybe from the highest level say, what does that mean to you? Do you look at investments differently? Do you work with your entrepreneurs differently, 100 different things? Do you work with your team differently? Just what does that mean to you? In the essence? Because I think there’s a lot of people listening that either are that or want to be that. And I think you have a really unique lens on what that means.

Eric Kim: Yeah, it’s evolving for us. And in 2014, we launched with this mission of empowering entrepreneurs who are changing the world and did everything we could to serve that mission in 2020. Amidst the pandemic of covid-19, amidst the pandemic of racism, which continues to burn across our nation and world, we added a sixth value of justice to our five preexisting values. And the reason I bring this up is that I would say that we launch in 2014 with our mission in 2020. I feel like we reemphasize or rediscover our purpose itself, and that is to bring justice and healing to the world. Again, the notion of justice is that being inspired by Michael six, eight, how do we bring justice to the world? And I think that is again, where the rubber meets the road for us. That is how we try to measure ourselves as being a corporate faith driven venture capital firm or being leaders of faith leading a venture capital firm. I think those are almost synonymous or I would hope they could be. I hope that who I am on Sunday is the same as who I would be on a Wednesday or Friday. And so that, I think is through the lens of are we really bringing justice to the world? We look at investments through that lens in the consumer techland. Is this really going to bring justice of some sort to the world? We recently looked at a company bringing telemedicine to the mental health space and it’s frankly heartwarming. Inspirers reinspire us every time we meet an entrepreneur that is so mission oriented and it aligns with his value of justice that we can actually bring some kind of healing to the world itself through our investments. It also makes us think a lot about our Elche base. We’ve been, as Henry mentioned, really, really fortunate to be at the scale we are in six years and.

Thinking about where do we take capital from, are they values align? Do they also align with our desire to positively impact the world? And it’s not just lip service, but something they’re willing to, you know, go to battle on our behalf for and then certainly our employees. I think that we’re a team of about 30 folks here in Burlingame. And how do we think about who we hire? Are they values aligned? And do they share this maniacal desire to change the world for the better? And I think that is our current manifestation. I think this will probably change and mature. But right now we feel like we’re in the thick of the battle right now. And so when we prioritize the various meanings of what a quote unquote, future of an investor could be in our current state, the current chapter in what we’re prioritizing is should be on the front line of really trying to push this impact, to bring justice, to bring healing to the world. That is kind of what is driving us right now and what we’re prioritizing within the spectrum of what that could mean. And then we’re doing it through our investments. We’re doing it through the people we hire and to help capital that we take on.

William Norvell: It’s amazing. That’s an amazing articulation of what that means to you guys and really appreciate that.

And your whole team would think that comes to mind as I try to get a little practical at some level.

As you know, a lot of people here are doing investments and obviously names don’t need to be included in this at all. Could you maybe walk us through a few investments that didn’t meet that criteria?

You know, companies that you saw that you said, I mean, gosh, if we weren’t us to invest in that, that’s going to make a lot of money and it’s going to be a success. And, you know, we may get a call about that from one of our LPs that ask you better have a good reason for passing on that one.

Eric Kim: You know, if this comes up for us in the financial services space quite a bit. So if you think about fintech companies broadly and Henry and I at William with you as well, we have been co-investors in some wonderful fintech companies that are really bringing kind of the banking to the unbanked, if you will, or bringing the access to the financial services, to the broader community, which is wonderful. I think where we’ve said no flat out to certain investments is where we feel like it’s taking an unfair break from the consumer with regards to lending, with regards to some of the interest rates that are being applied, there are rules of consumer protection out there already around what you can charge. But there are companies that get around it, I would say, through some questionable practices. And so that’s something where we have felt like this is a huge business opportunity and it’s very subjective. Right. My view of it is going to be very biased. But what’s quote unquote fair? What’s a fair interest rate to charge someone, for example? That’s what it comes down to ultimately. And I think that’s where, again, the perspective of the entrepreneurs become really clear about what side they are on in terms of where they would like to take things for the U.S. to maximize kind of short term profits, because it’s, again, very easy to justify. Well, if they were going to the black market or to some really suspicious kind of lending sources, it’s better than that. But those companies are in a position to both profit, but also to good to provide better services. I think where we’ve seen this really come in to answer your question directly, is in the lending space, sometimes we’ve had to say, you know, it’s just not worth it because it’s going to be very high, profitable company. But these practices just seem unfair. And again, I know it’s subjective, but that’s just how we feel about those situations.

William Norvell: No, that’s true. Yeah, absolutely. That’s super helpful. And yeah, unfortunately, God didn’t lay venture capital in Romans anywhere right now. There is some things you got to pray about and then you may come to a different conclusion than another investor sometimes.

Yeah. Who’s also driven by their faith. But staying close to you and what do you feel called to do is so unique and what inspires everybody, I think to figure out their own story as we unfortunately come to a close. One of the things we love to do is see how God’s word can transcend between our guest and our listeners. And we find it amazing to see how we hear from people that, you know, they just needed that verse today from that other person’s life and the intertwining of stories. And so what I’d ask you is, if you’d be so generous to share where God has you in his word, whether that is something you read today, something you’re in this season. Michael Jackson. I heard it could be that could be something else just to be great.

Eric Kim: Yeah. Thank you. And there were two things that came to mind when I was thinking about joining you today. And I think that the first is it’s just the Sermon on the Mount.

So take any part of that. But I think what I am constantly impacted is blessed are the. Or and what does that mean for us? I kind of purposely I’m calling this off because we’re in venture capital and kind of in this secular tailwind of investing and things are going up into the right and all these things.

But what does it mean to be blessed are the poor? And I would say that is something that that can mean a lot of different things for different people. For me, it’s to be poor in all things. But Christ. And I think that is just something that I hope that people can reflect about today, and obviously we’ve got a lot going on as a world politically and with the pandemic in among whatever state we’re in, we can be both kind of very sexually rich and also secondly, poor, but still not poor in the way that was being talked about in that survey. And how can we keep our hearts to really be rich in Christ and just to be enriched and Christ alone. So hopefully that makes some sense to folks and just kind of something that’s really top of mind for me.

Henry Kaestner: That’s beautiful. Thank you very much for that. And thank you for your time today. This is why we do this podcast, as you are talking about how you thought through the concept of shared ambition, how you able to listen to a sermon from a pastor and say, what does that mean in terms of my life and what does that mean for my fund, my partnership, my relationship with our peers and new companies to think about the holy ambition that you can have and being a technology investor and how to be able to shape culture and be able to mentor and lead entrepreneurs that are trying to understand what is their value base, what is their north star? Can they pick any North Star or is there actually a one and only one North Star? What does that look like? Your ability to faithfully and wouldn’t similarly witness to that in a very secular world is really outstanding, is unparalleled, and it’s why we do this podcast.

Thank you for sharing your story and it’s been awesome to see your success. And I love you. Also, just as we close out, just the way that you guys got back together at the beginning of the year and said, OK, let’s revisit our vision of values, are we missing anything and let’s celebrate the success we’ve had. And to a certain extent, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And you’ve had a lot of success. But how do we get sharper and how do we pray together about how God would use this fund in our lives? And that’s super encouraging. So thank you.

Eric Kim: Thank you so much. Such a blessing to be with you all today. My partner is listening to this. I just want to call my my brother Kiwa sharpens me every day and again with other folks around us has really been just so instrumental, got used to actually in my life. And I just want to say I love you, brother, and thank you.

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

This podcast, it wouldn’t be possible without the help from many of our friends. Executive producer Justin Formate Program Director Johnny Wil’s Music by Karl Carl Chigwell. You can see and hear more of his work that summer, Drugstore.com and Audio and editing by Richard Bahle of Cornerstone Church in San Francisco.

Ron Blue: All of a sudden in five years, I had a national clientele, a rich, wealthy Christians who wanted to give, and that’s how the whole thing got started. And today, there’s ten thousand clients at that firm Serve’s that are giving away one hundred and fifty million a year. They’re managing about 12 billion in assets. And I look back and I realize how God prepared me to do what I did. I can take zero credit for it.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome to a special edition of the Faith Driven Investor podcast, From time to time, we’ll get involved in a broader definition of investing. And this is one of those times when we think about storing the wealth that guys entrust us with. Much of that is going to take place with investing in mutual funds and in stocks and bonds and venture capital, private equity, all the different topics that we have rolled out over the course of the last year and a half or so, over 75 or 80 podcasts with speakers like Frank Chen from Andreessen Horowitz, Andrew Stevens. And gosh, we’ve had just about every asset class. But lest we think that it’s just about investing that God cares about, which is different, of course, in a way, a lot of people think about it, the reverse of that as people just care about giving. But since we and you is listening to this podcast, subscribe to more of this one pocket mentality, that is we stored these assets. We have an opportunity to participate in the work that God is doing. We need to, from time to time, start focusing a bit on the giving side as well, and in some cases were called to go ahead and make that investment into the private equity fund or into the mutual fund. And in some cases, we’re called to be faithful to the giving opportunity that’s right in our midst. And so every once in a while, maybe every 10 episodes or so, we’ll get into that a little bit more deeply. And whenever we do that and do that with one of my best friends in the world, Darrell Heald, you probably know enough about my story by now to note, at age 28, I came to faith. At age 38, I had what I call my born again again moment when I met Darryl. And Darryl asked me the simple question, Henry, why do you give? And that sent me into God’s word. And it just changed my life. So whenever we have an opportunity to talk about this, I’d like to bring Darryl back on board. We’ve been partners in ministry and invested in so many things since that time 13 years ago, which I’m super grateful for today. We’ve got an incredible guest in Baila. So before I go any further, Darryl, welcome. Welcome to the program.

Darryl Heald: Thanks. And good to be on the program. And I’m super excited. You could have just skipped over any of my intro. Let’s go straight to our guests.

Henry Kaestner: Well, before we do that, we’re going to go almost straight to our guest from Blue. And Ron, by the way, welcome to the program. It’s awesome. Have with us back again

Ron Blue: a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I’d love talking to you guys.

Henry Kaestner: You’ve always been such a great encouragement to me talking about this, these formative experiences that God has put in my life in these really important relationships. Ten years ago, we started Sovereign’s Capital and it was Darryl that introduced us to you, and you went ahead and got it right away and said, I’ll do anything I can do to help you. And we asked if you’d be on our board of advisors and if we could get this guy who’s probably the biggest name in Christian investing and the generosity with which you said, yeah, absolutely. You know, if any way I can help you and you put my face on your website and just tell other people that you’ve talked to me and that blew me away. It blew me away. I’ll never forget. I’ve told you before, but I’m going to tell you and our listeners that again, as we’re getting ready, though, I was taking certain liberties with our relationship and I showed up this podcast nine minutes late. And what our listening audience may not know is that we on occasion will have several of these podcast recordings we do in sequence. And we just got off the podcast interview with Dallas Jenkins, who is the guy behind the chosen, and we’re talking about him. And he had a message. He also has known Ron, interestingly, and this is something Ron, I don’t think you knew, is that Ron hired Dallas well before he was famous to direct a video that Ron did, which I think is super cool. But one of the things that came up in the interview we had with Dallas was that somebody had come to him early on in his career and said Dallas. And I was on a Facebook post on a video he’d done, and he wasn’t sure that the film they had done had been received as well as he had hoped. And somebody from Romania four o’clock in the morning said, Dallas, your job is not to feed the 5000, it’s just to supply the five loaves and two fish. Now, they’re just beginning with what you have. And then, Ron, as I was explaining interest, apologizing for being late, you shared an anecdote that was very similar to that. And whenever I hear those repeated themes, it makes an impact in my life. It makes me feel like God is trying to tell me something and maybe as well. And you were talking about a time when you thought you showed up to an event and it wasn’t as well received. Or maybe there weren’t as many people there as you would have wanted in your bride. Told you what

Ron Blue: she said, Ron. She said God said feed the sheep, don’t count them. And it changed my whole perspective. You know, it just it took away the whole idea of how big the audience don’t make any difference. It may be an audience of one because you don’t know who God is going to put it in the audience and you don’t know what he’s going to say to them. So my job just to be faithful to deliver his message and he takes it from there however he wants to. So don’t count them. Just feed them. And appreciate. Henry, you’re feeding. Flock here of people that are really becoming serious, you know, when you get serious about your money, you’re serious about your faith, and when you put those two together, that’s a big deal. That’s why Jesus spoke so much about money, because it’s the greatest barrier to my relationship to the Lord. The God of Mammon steals that every single day. And we live in a culture that I think is the most difficult to live in because there’s so many temptations. And I don’t mean that in a condemning way, but I say, you know, I didn’t even know what I needed till I went to the mall and that and there’s billions of dollars being spent every day trying to make me discontent. And a lot of it gets through.

Henry Kaestner: So I’m still with you.

Ron Blue: It’s hard to live in this culture and have the proper perspective on money. So I’m delighted that you’re doing what you’re doing.

Henry Kaestner: Well, thank you. And to your point, we’re trying not to count our listeners in, but they know all three of them know that I love them. And Mr. Tony

Ron Blue: Abbott, your wife doesn’t count

Darryl Heald: two of them. Love I love.

Ron Blue: I’ll tell if

Henry Kaestner: you are one of those two people, though. You’ll know that we’ve had Ron on before. We featured Ron and one of our conferences, and he weren’t our first ever lifetime achievement award. And so some number of the folks listening to this are going to understand some of who you are in your background. But before we get into that, I really want Daryl to guide our conversation today because it’s something that’s so near and caught to who he is and and the ministry that guys got him on. But give us a flyover. Who is Ron Blue? What have you done? What is God done through you in your career? Bringing us up to speed real quickly and then going to go real deep on generosity?

Ron Blue: Well, can it real quickly. I turned 79 this year just a few months ago, and I was fine with that until I realized that I was living in my 80th year. Then I began to feel really bad

Henry Kaestner: right now that if we could all look as good as you do in our 80th year, then nobody would ever have to fear being 80, that’s for sure. But you’re now to be clear, you’re seventy nine.

Ron Blue: Right? And the good news is that before long I’m going to be able to shoot my age in golf. If I can live long enough,

Henry Kaestner: I’m not going to live that

Darryl Heald: long.

Ron Blue: Well, that quick story, I was raised in a Christian home, but I totally rejected the faith. And I went to college. I went to college to have a good time. I did got kicked out twice, got back and got married. That changed everything. Got my MBA from Indiana University in nineteen sixty seven and went to work on Wall Street with at that time Pete Margaret Mitchell and was with Pete Murray for three years, starting my own firm. I didn’t want to stay with the big firm, so I started a firm in Indianapolis which today is still going by the way and

Henry Kaestner: name on the door to

Ron Blue: the same name on the door. They don’t know who I am. Anyway, I spent seven years doing that and during that seven years my wife came to Christ in nineteen seventy two, asked me what I thought about that, and I threatened her with divorce because I was on the success track. Then I was an entrepreneur and I wanted to become wealthy and I was getting it. So she didn’t say anything for two years but she lived out first beta three and there was a godly woman that I there was something different. And so I prayed to receive Christ on my way to play golf. In nineteen seventy four, I had the four spiritual laws. I was by myself read through those and I said to the Lord, I don’t want to change anything, but I’m willing to be changed. And that day I shot a thirty six on the front side and I said, man, if I had known this how to become a Christian in a long time ago, if I got back on my game on the backside. But that led to joining Campus Crusade two years later and working in Africa for two years. I traveling to Africa. I made ten trips. But during that time I was also teaching leadership seminars and decision making seminars in the United States. I was gone 70 percent of the time and my wife, we were in a strange city when we moved to Atlanta. My income had gone from one hundred and fifty thousand to twenty five thousand and we had five kids below the age of 12 and she had a husband gone 70 percent of the time. And she called me at the office one day and she said, How do you get on Christian? And I said, What do you mean? She said that this is the abundant life I’ve had, all the abundance I can take. And what that led then was I was with Dr. Howard Hendricks, who was a friend and mentor, and he had been asking for financial advice from me. And I had been out of the financial world for a couple of years. But he said, would you take a look at my finances? Which I did, and I was able to sit down with him and Gene and say, you know what, Howie, you’re doing just fine. And it was like a load came off of his shoulders. This was in nineteen seventy nine. And now when I look back over those 40 some years, I realized that the question he was asking is really the question almost everybody wants the answer to, and that is how am I doing? They want to know the answer to that question, every one of us wants to know, and of course, it changes over time. So I felt like having traveled to Africa, that there was a lot of money in the United States. So I determined through a series of things that I wanted to help Christians plan to manage their money so they have more to give away. And that was not called financial planning at the time. Financial planning didn’t exist. There was no such thing as a CFP, and it was product sales or investment sales and insurance sales and so forth. But the first client that I had, he wanted to give a million dollars to Campus Crusade. I did not know him. He was a physician. And I said, well, what’s your income? He said, eighty two thousand a year. I said, What’s your net worth? He said, I don’t know, three or four hundred thousand. And so I’m thinking, there’s no way he can give a million dollars away. But God in his providence had done something. And that was the last couple of years as a CPA. I had done a lot of bank projection work and all it was was projecting cash flows over five years and working them out to a final net worth statement. So that’s what I did for this doctor. And it turned out he could give away a million dollars. He gave he had more property than he realized. He gave away his property, lowered his taxes, increase his cash flow, increases giving with Florida’s taxes were to increase his cash flow. And you worked all that out. And in five years, he could give away a million dollars and still have basically what he started with. And I thought there’s a lot more people like that. And I thought recently, what if he’d only wanted to give one hundred thousand? That would have been my bar. But it was a million, and so my bar became a million, and because he gave it to Campus Crusade, Dr. Bright asked me to speak at all of their donor events. And I would say, look, if you want to give away a million dollars or more, I can help you do that. And not only that, you can pay me to help you. And so I knew how to build a time based business, so I didn’t have to sell any product. And I knew how to do financial planning. And all of a sudden in five years, I had a national clientele, a rich, wealthy Christians who wanted to give. And that’s how the whole thing got started. And today, there’s ten thousand clients that the firm serves that are giving away one hundred and fifty million a year. They’re managing about 12 billion in assets. And I look back and I realize how God prepared me to do what I did. I can take zero credit for it. And it’s such a joy now to I can look back and say, wow, isn’t this great? And I’ll finish with this. What I found was the people that gave away those huge sums of money were the most joyful people I knew and the most contented. They were accomplishing something with the resources God had entrusted to them and they were experiencing the joy of giving. So they were good investors. They were good entrepreneurs, but they were better givers. And I don’t mean that on a comparative basis, but so I’ve had a great life. Henry, helping people give away money

Darryl Heald: your life, indeed. Thank you for sharing the history. What a legacy it’s got. I mean, it takes a while to tell a story when you start to your seventy ninth year.

Ron Blue: Yeah, but

Darryl Heald: I love you. So Henry and I know each other thirteen years, but Rodney and I’ve known each other over 30 years. Yeah. So I was the young real estate broker and the company I was working for actually owned the building where you all were Ozzfest. And so I was two floors below Rodell Balloon Company and I was going to church with a couple of the young financial planners that were working for Ron. And they started give me these books that he wrote, Money Matters and Money Matters for Your Kids. And I was very much influenced by Iran. And Judy, Kathy and I both have been. And one of the reasons why we did what we did, a lot of ways that we raised our kids around these money issues, giving and things like that were influenced by you. And I’m thankful. So we’re really grateful for that. And it’s kind of fun that our families are friends. We’ve served on a number of boards together as well. But Rodney, thanks for joining us today. One of the things that I know that I’ve heard you talk about a number of times is what are the impediments to giving? You have this triangle like why aren’t more people giving? Because you just gave this great example of this guys says, hey, I want to give a million and so on. But where is that kind of a state of giving? And in one sense, there’s a lot of resources out there. Occasionally we see a person like this doctor being generous. But what’s holding a lot of other people back?

Ron Blue: Well, I think if I were to boil it all down, Darryl, I think there’s three things that have to happen in giver’s life. No. One, there has to be transformation. You’ll never see maximum giving apart from transformation. So it begins with a heart attitude, a belief in what the Bible says about eternity and about my life here. But secondly, there needs to be intentionality. A lot of people give, but they really give out of their surplus. So they give large sums of money maybe, but they don’t necessarily maximize their giving unless they have intentionality. And I used to say there’s two questions. No one who owns it, you got to answer that question. But the second big question is, how much is enough? You know, how much is enough to accumulate, how much is enough on a lifestyle? And there’s not a right answer on that. There’s only a faith answer on it in the faith answer says, OK, God, what would you have me? And I would ask this way, how much do you want me to keep? And the rest I’ll give away. I love what Bob Buford, my friend, said to me one time, he had heard me ask that question, how much is enough? He said Ronnie said, I figured out how much is enough. I doubled it and gave the rest away.

Darryl Heald: I said,

Ron Blue: But that’s OK. He said, a finish line. And if you have a finish line, then the question becomes if you’re accumulating. Why am I accumulating more? And I believe so. There needs to be intentionality. But I think there’s a third thing that is very helpful in maximizing giving, and that is accountability. And I was in that business of providing accountability and I required all of my financial planners to have a financial planner, myself included. I have a financial planner. You know, I’ve written 20 books on finances, but actually read one book 20 times. But I have a financial planner because I can’t hold myself accountable. And Judy and I think differently a lot on the giving. She’s far more generous than I am. I mean, she’d give it all away. When we sold the business, I felt pretty good. She said, you know, God gave you all that. I said, you’re right. She said, you better give it all away so that when my retirement. But when she said that, then we told the financial planner what we were going to do. And so we’ve been held accountable to not accumulating them. And I would continue to accumulate if I didn’t have a financial planner holding me accountable to a decision that I felt like I had made at a particular point in time. Anyway, there are lots of stories about that. But I think transformation, intentionality and accountability are really three things that when they take place, you see maximized giving. And I will say this to that. I know that the only thing that breaks the power of money is giving. You ain’t got to open your hands or you’ll never experience the freedom of a relationship with Christ because you’ll always be there be two things to be going on. No one will be fair. And fear mentioned a lot in the Bible. And when you if you haven’t done that, there’s a fear of loss. And you obsessed with it, and that’s the biggest, you know, I talk and you’ve heard me say this, the paradox of prosperity and the paradox of prosperity is that the more you have, the more choices you have. Therefore, the more confusing it becomes. I mean, anybody that’s owned a boat knows what I’m talking about. When I sell the boat, they say it’s the second happiest day of their life, or if you own two homes or whatever it may be. And we’ve had two homes and I’ve had a boat and was happy with all of it was gone. But the more you had, the more choices you have and therefore the more fear of loss and the more confusing life becomes contrary to the American dream. And I’m not talking against people living well at all. That’s not the issue. God places people such as you guys, and I think probably such as the audience in positions of great influence because of the success they’ve had either invested in rebuilding their businesses. And that’s a good thing. And it’s OK to enjoy that. It says God gives me Rusty all things to enjoy. But he doesn’t say that joy should be my objective. He said also says right along with that, you’ve been given much in order to give much. So generosity, investment, entrepreneurship, they all tied together because they represent success in many ways, but then conquering the success by living generously.

Darryl Heald: That’s great. Thanks, Ron. I love those three things there. And so what is the so I mean, there is a significant financial services industry out there, right. That is looking to serve, you know, everyone listening to this podcast. So then what’s the disconnect with the current level of service and what you’re talking about? And if I’m kind of leaning in to what you’re saying right now as an investor and wanting to be more intentional, have that accountability, what does that look like?

Ron Blue: Well, the problem in the financial services world is that there’s a conflict of interest inherent in it. So, you know, when I tell people that my metric of success in the financial planning firm was how much our clients are giving away. Not how much we were accumulating, and today, if you would talk to around the blue adviser, they would talk about how much their clients give. And, you know, as a consequence of that, we almost never lost a client one. And number two, we almost never lost the client generationally. So now I’ve lived long enough to see people and I knew through it Kathee years and years ago. And he’s now in there for generations of the cafes. And they’re all working with advisors that are faith based, an advisor that is faith based and a client that is faith based, share the same language and the same value system. So if I’m an investor or an entrepreneur, I’m looking for an advisor. I want to know what that adviser believes. I want to know what motivates you. I want to know what he thinks about giving, because theoretically, if a client gives to a million dollars, I’ve lost the fees on a million dollars. What I found is when a client gave away a million dollars, got replaced with somebody who had two million. So I think there’s a scarcity mentality. And to me that is almost it just can’t be because the scarcity mentality says I serve a God who can’t create and I serve a God who’s not sovereign. I was once talking to a group of advisers and there were six Merrill Lynch advisors sitting next to one another. And I said, Are you guys in competition? And they kind of squirmed and I said, if you are you do not believe in a sovereign God, God can raise up those clients and he will. But, you know, faith, I see the evidence of faith in retrospect. I never see it in prospect. So I’ve got to make that decision, do that thing. That’s right. And then God honors that and blesses it.

Henry Kaestner: By that you mean you can see patterns in your life where God was faithful and blessed you in times when you didn’t see that happening. But it’s so much more difficult for us to anticipate how that pattern will continue in our lives. We’ve seen it time and time again about how God is provided right when we needed. And yet it’s so hard to just kind of project that forward as if God was sovereign and love me up until May. Twenty six, twenty twenty one. And then after that I was on my own.

Ron Blue: Yeah, well that’s true. And the life of faith never stops. You know, I struggle like everybody day to day. Now I do say this. I had good mentors and I do have a quiet time almost every day. And today I was meditating on abiding in Christ. What does that mean? You know, and it means total surrender. But I knew that, but I needed to know it again today. Yeah, and now it’s near the end of the day and I need to know it again. So the life of faith doesn’t end, but it is a life of fruitfulness and joy. Also, when you look back and, you know, I got the privilege now of looking back and not seeing what I did, but seeing what how God used even me. He used Balan’s as he could use me. And my wife taught me that

Darryl Heald: we love dearly. We love to feel. But what are the things that we actually just had a discussion on today? So we’ve seen this out of covid, this incredible rising market, so many asset prices going up so often. So one of the conundrums, it seems like with when we think about what we’re stupid in asset is like, if I think it’s going to continue to go higher, why give now? What would be your advice on that?

Ron Blue: That’s a great question. Yeah, I love that question. I used to get that a lot when I used to get it. When I was speaking to donor groups, they said, you know, if I’d give me a million dollars, I could make two million and I have more to give. So I said, well, let me let me give you an illustration. Most people know the magic of compounding. If I took ten thousand dollars and compounded it at twenty five percent over 40 years, it would grow to seventy three million dollars without adding another penny to it. If, on the other hand, it only compounded out at twenty four percent, same time period, it would be 52 million. So it’s the twenty one million dollar difference on one percentage point. Now the reason I say that is because what is God’s interest rate. Thirty fold. Sixty fold. One hundred and thirty fold is thirty thousand percent and sixty four to six thousand percent. Nine hundred dollars. Ten thousand percent. So how much is ten thousand dollars given to the kingdom. At ten thousand percent for all eternity. That’s the difference, so I want to do my given while I’m living, so I’m knowing where it’s going and I want it I want it invested in the kingdom because the return in the kingdom is far more than what the stock market’s going to return. So I use that illustration because people can grasp that and to say, well, I’m going to give when now you need to give right now and say something else. I think you need to give some cash to nondeductible cash. And I got this from a pastor who he did this and I picked up the example. So it was not mine, but I carry cash in my pocket and I look for people that are unnoticed. The most unnoticed are those who clean the bathrooms in airports, and so when I go out and I do a lot of flying, so when I go in the bathroom, I look for that cleaner and they’re always standing in the corner head down, sometimes not saying anything. And you walk over and you give them 20 dollars or forty dollars or one hundred dollars, whatever it may be. And the joy that you see on their face, that’s far more fun, if you will, than writing a big check to a ministry that had a guy followed me out one time and he said, I saw what you did. Why did you do that? And I said, listen, I am so blessed. I want to share that blessing with somebody else I love.

Darryl Heald: Rod, one of my favorite stories you have, why don’t you tell our audience is the Chick fil A’s story, the lady that.

Ron Blue: Yeah, I’ll make it short. I used to take my son many years ago to breakfast every Friday, one of my sons to and there was this lady named Rex and she worked at Chick fil A. We’d always meet at the Chick fil A and she was always the most pleasant, smiling and so forth. If she got saucy when I opened the door, she would have our meal ready for us because we’re always ordered the same thing. So I was walking out one day and I thought, I wonder if you can keep a fast food waitress. And I’ve never done that. So the Lord convinced me to tip her, give her something. So I reached in my pocket and I pulled out of twenty and the Lord said, You cheapskate, you got a lot of toys. And I said, Oh, no. So I took five hundred dollars and I followed him up. I went back in and I said, Can you take a tip? Is it OK? She said, yes. So I gave her one hundred dollars. She didn’t know how much it was and walked out. And the next week I was back in the chick Ticketfly and I was before my son had come and she came over to the table and she said, I was so happy. When you gave me the money last week, I needed a new set of tires, she said. But when I got home, my daughter, who was in high school, came home and there was a girl in her class who had had a fire in their apartment and they lost everything. She said they needed the money worse than I did. And so I had the ability to give that hundred dollars to that family. And I thought, man, I gave out of my abundance and she gave out of her property at that impacted me, I mean, and convicted me for sure. So I encourage people who you can give a lot of money away, but I encourage people to give some cash away to give it away. We’ve got a family that has ten kids that, you know, here in Atlanta. They had two of their own and they adopted three from Africa and then a family. The parents died and they adopted all five of them. So they have ten. So at the end of the year, Judy said we need to give them some money. We go to Costco every now and then fill up some cards and take it over there to them. But she wanted us to write them a check. And I thought, well, if I write that the helping hands, it’ll be deductible, but they’ll also take their percent. So I wrote the check and we drove over there and we gave it. And that type of giving is is just blessed giving. I really enjoy that. And I don’t want I don’t want to talk about me in the sense of I’m so good because I am not naturally generous by any means. I’m naturally pretty selfish. And, you know, I like nice things. I like to fly first class. I like to drive a Lexus, but I God won’t let me drive a brand new Lexus anymore. I have to buy. I used to run ride.

Darryl Heald: I mean, we could love to hear more stories than all, but why don’t we do this? I mean, because you have helped people do all this planning. So you talk about this blessed giving. What is your allocation look like? Kind of know we think about asset allocation all the time. And and so I’ll go from a giving standpoint, what is your advice on what are the dimensions and all in a giving allocation?

Ron Blue: Well, no one there’s nobody including Bill Gates or Warren Buffett that has enough money to solve all the needs. So you can’t solve every need with money. And so I generally counsel people. Where’s your heart? You know, what’s your passion? One of the things that you think are important, you can give broadly, but have again, I’ll come back to this intentionality. What is it that you really want to give to that you’re committed to? And I think husbands and wives need to be talking about this together because they probably have different interest. And that’s OK, that’s the way we grow. So I think giving it’s not an allocation. Well, I do believe in tithing to the church, but that’s the beginning point. I don’t really consider that the giving. I mean, it is. Yes, but the real giving takes place after that. I’m giving out of obedience. I want to give out of obedience, but I also want to give out of desire. So what is it that motivates me and that can change over time? So I can for people, it’s not necessarily an allocation. The Bible talks about giving to widows, giving the orphans, giving to the poor for sure, and giving to the church. But there’s a lot of ministries and I want to attach my money to my heart when it comes to giving. So I have things that I like and things that Judy likes. You know, it is funny because every time we get a letter from John Erickson, I know it’s going to cost me money because Judy loves Johnny. She loves the minister. We’ve known John for 40 some years and that’s a passion. So any time Johnny goes, she gets money because it’s a passion. So I said, give her your passion is tell your heart to your money in terms of your giving. So, yeah, I’m sorry, Daryn, when you’re asking me questions, you’re asking me questions in my sweet spot.

Darryl Heald: Why does the government. So what is that? Let’s say your blessed peace is like how much percentage of your giving and what do you all look like it? What about global? What about, you know, nationally? How do you kind of break that down and think about some of the different buckets that you’re giving to?

Ron Blue: We made a decision early that we like to give to people, so we give a lot to missionaries. We made a decision along that line that people that are working in Third World countries have more difficulty in raising money than they do in America. So we have a tendency to get more internationally when we’re giving to missionaries and missions than we do in this country. We like to give it comes down to people. What’s the impact on people? So the sex trafficking, the poor, that’s where we like to put our money and that’s our passion. I heard today we have high school curriculum on personal finance and we charge the school twenty five dollars a student to give them the curriculum. The guy that heads up our high school ministry and our institute read a testimony today of a high school junior who how, having gone through the class, it had changed the direction of his life to wanting to be in ministry. And that’s where he was going. And he said, twenty five dollars bought a changed life. That type of thing means a lot when you’re giving and I think we’d like to give to where we see the results. Also, it’s hard to give some place that you’re not tied to, literally tied to. So we pray about it a lot. We don’t give to everything that comes to our door by any means. And I don’t feel guilty and not giving because God has given us the ability to give. He’s given us the places to give and I can’t give every place. And in some cases it may be if I give, somebody else doesn’t have to give. So I don’t feel guilty at all about turning down requests for money.

Darryl Heald: Thanks, Ron. Another thing to where I’m just curious with I’m sure a lot of the listeners probably have children, grandchildren and all how you, Judy, have written on this before, but could you give us some ideas on how we can help our kids or grandkids understand that it’s more blessed to give our safe?

Ron Blue: Well, there’s two things about training children that can really sum it up. And I had a father asked me one time, how do you train your kids to manage money? And I said two things. No one more is caught than taught. So they’re going to do what you do. That’s the biggest factor in how kids handle money and think about money, and I said, the second thing is you learn to manage money by managing money. And that’s the really hard thing today. And a credit card society of having your kids manage money. But there needs to be a way and there are ways that they can do that. And that same father said to me later, he said, I realized when you said that, that because I do online giving my kids had never seen me tithe. And we didn’t talk about it because we had made that decision. We did our online giving so they’d never seen me tithe. So just think about it. What am I doing to communicate the values of giving one? And number two, how can I train my children to manage money? And here’s the mistake that parents make. They don’t let their kids make mistakes, especially the wealthy. I see they can afford to bail them out. And I don’t mean out of jail, but they can afford to do a lot of things. So what would that look like?

Darryl Heald: What how would you set that? What would be a couple of suggestions that you would say, hey, you know, you should try these couple of things?

Ron Blue: Well, no one intends on the age. OK, so we started training our kids. By the time the youngest was eight, we kind of had the system figure it out. And so we gave them a budget to buy their clothes and we knew that they would have spending money needs, that they would have needs to make gifts to Christmas and so forth. And we wanted them to say, but we wanted them to tithe. So we gave them money and we did it on a monthly basis so that they had to manage the money. So when you give them one twelfth of their clothes, money. In February, they don’t have to buy their school clothes until August, so they had to learn to say, but they also had to learn that when the envelope was empty, they were done and we allowed them in some cases to trade from one envelope to another, with the exception of tith in savings. But there had to be their ability to make the financial decisions. So somehow you probably need to help him set a budget and then figure out the management side of it, especially with the credit cards today, because cash, you just don’t deal with cash much anymore.