Richard Cunningham Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Faith Driven Investor podcast. And you’re about to hear this, right? The Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast as well. Really exciting episode today as we were doing a joint release on both the FDI and FDE pods. As Justin Forman, executive director, co-founder, president of Faith Driven Movements, is in the podcast studio with me today. And Justin, we’re shaking things up a little bit, doing a joint release for the faith driven Investor and Faith and Entrepreneur podcast. As we were zooming in a little bit on a new initiative we have. Solving the world’s greatest problems, Solving the world’s greatest Problems has its own website, its own podcast. It is newly launched, newly released. And today we kind of want to go out to the FDA and FDA audiences respectively, and zoom in on one of those great problems, the problem of joblessness. And we’ll welcome our guests here shortly. But Justin, what are we up to today with this kind of special edition joint release podcast?

Justin Forman Man, good to be on the podcast with you again. You make it sound all fancy and technical like we had some deep, deep things to get to, but we were just looking for an excuse to get Richard Cunningham back on the podcast here for Faith Driven Entrepreneur. So we’re going to take what we can get. We’re competing with Baylor Baseball, Baylor Sports and all the different things that you’re commentating and jumping in on. I mean, yeah, it’s great to be back here together. It’s great to be talking about issues that matter and talking about things that matter. And so many of you guys, if you’re familiar with that, you’re an entrepreneur and faith driven investor. I’ve been following long of a new initiative called Solving the World’s Greatest Problems. And what we endeavored to do with that is to say, what can we do to create a trusted place that people can discover ways that they might be called to get involved? You know, I think when we think about this message, we think about this idea 20 years ago, information was scarce. I mean, I was looking the other day at some of these images when they were talking about Google when it first launched and some of the first images to it. And they had the search bar and right underneath it and it said like, you know, searching 250,000 pages or something like that and more coming soon or whatever it is. And it was like the point was, is when they first launched, they were trying to make the case for more information is coming. More information is coming. Hold on. Today, 20 years later, we’re at the exact opposite where we have to use machine learning. We have to use other things to try to take all of the complex and make it accessible. And so solving the world’s greatest problems is trying to be that bridge, trying to be a place that as God moves you as an entrepreneur or an investor to get involved, that you can find that first step. And so we do that through content. We do that through stories, we do that through podcasts. But that’s just the start. There’s going to be so much more coming from giving collaborations and groups to to give and to invest together with. And so there’s a lot of that that’s coming. But where we have started is we have started with some content, we started some podcast, and so you may have been able to check that out. There’s been a couple of episodes recently released where we talked about the idea, we talk about the campaign, and then we started to talk about some of these upstream issues, starting with gospel poverty. We had David Platt, we had Mart Green. Let’s talk about just some of the opportunities are in front of us and today we’re present into this idea of joblessness. And as you saw our creative team, if you check this out on the site, you’ll see this this image of these dominoes. And we really think that this is one of those issues represented by those dominoes. It’s upstream that if we can get some of this stuff right, not only can we find ways to better care for people and avoid some of the hurts and heartaches that come about when that’s not the case, but to we can just think about the opportunity that entrepreneurs, investors have, that we can be sources of either redemption or brokenness. That’s a very way that we go about it. We could be furthering some of the world’s problems if we’re not careful, or we can be a source on the other side. So yeah, super excited to talk about that. Today. We’re going to press on with some fun guests about this issue. But before we do that, we wanted to give you a little teaser. This is a little teaser, a couple of minutes of an episode for solving the World’s Greatest Problems podcast. It’s a fun style where it’s kind of like how I built this Guy Raz versus Radiolab just kind of mashed up together of all of these stories in a fun, engaging way. So let’s listen to that and then Richard will kick us off and some conversation.

Narrator What happens when a job is lost? Many of us understand the individual challenges one might face in unemployment. You know, things like increased stress, depression and insecurity. But that’s not even the worst part of it. The compounding effects of joblessness often lead to worse schooling outcomes for children, and those same children will have a much more difficult time in the labor market getting jobs once they become adults. Now, let’s let’s zoom out a little bit further and think about this on a macro level. Picture an entire community of people facing unemployment. Think about all the individuals who would struggle with their mental health. Think about the families this would affect. These are not imagined scenarios. You know, we can look at a city like Detroit in the United States and see the effects of joblessness on an entire community. In the mid 20th century, Detroit was a booming city with nearly 2 million people. It was among the country’s five most populous cities as people came in droves to work for the auto industry. Jobs were plentiful until suddenly. They weren’t between 1950 and 2010. The city saw more than a 60% decrease in its population. In 2013, the entire city filed for bankruptcy, and by 2022, the poverty rate was 33.8%, more than twice the average of the rest of the state of Michigan. Today, nearly half of all the children in Detroit grow up in poverty. While no one can limit the city’s downfall to one specific thing. There’s no doubt that the radical decrease in employment accelerated its downfall. The auto industry that once played the city’s hero quickly became the villain as thousands upon thousands of jobs were lost. And the lack of jobs affects more than the worker. You know, joblessness can shatter families, communities and entire cities. But that means the flipside is also true. Job creation can create positive and generational impact. It revitalizes, redeems and restores. My name is Afl-cio John. I’m the director of Global prosperity at the Cleveland Christian. And I’ll be a host of this episode of Solving the World’s Greatest. Today on the show, we’re going to talk about ways that Christian builders, investors and givers are helping the church win in this fight against darkness by creating jobs that bring positive and lasting change. Now let’s dive in. Act one Creating better systems. We’ll start the show off today addressing the urgency of the situation. Now, if you’d like to stress yourself out about the future, just take a look at recent studies on the global job market. A recent report by the World Economic Forum forecast that in the next five years, job growth will increase by 69 million. That sounds pretty good until you read on. There will also be a decline of 83 million jobs in that same time period. In essence, we are going to lose more jobs than we gain. And to be clear, this data represents a job market across the entire world. Sometimes people hear about the issue of joblessness and mentally relegated to certain countries or think that it only applies to developing regions. But wealthier economies are not immune to the changing winds. In fact, Jack Kelly, a senior contributor for Forbes, wrote an article in 2023 summarizing a study by Goldman Sachs that predicts that 300 million jobs will be lost because of artificial intelligence. Kelly puts the issue bluntly in the article, writing that if generative A.I. lives up to its hype, the workforce in the United States and Europe will be upended. This is a global issue, but it is not unsolvable. Many of our brothers and sisters around the world have been fighting this battle already, and they have been winning, especially in areas where joblessness is not a new problem.

Richard Cunningham Welcome back, everyone. All right. Let’s dive into today’s conversation. We have got a couple of just extraordinary seasoned builders. And while Justin Foreman and I are both in the state of Texas, I’m in Austin and Justin is up in the DFW area. We are traveling across the world for this one as we have Keren Pybus of Ethical Apparel Africa, located in West Africa. And Ronald Ishak of Hacktiv8 coming to us from Jakarta, Indonesia. So what a joy to have so many geographies and time zones covered. Friends. Ronald, we’ll start with you. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being with us.

Ronald Ishak Thanks for having me.

Richard Cunningham It’s fun. Yeah, absolutely. And Keren, you as well. Hey, let’s do this to kind of help set the stage. How about a 30 to 60 second kind of intro and background from each of you personally and professionally? And then we’ll get going.

Keren Pybus Okay. Hi, I’m Keren, and I’m the CEO of Ethical Apparel Africa and the co founder. We are seeking to create jobs in West Africa through ethical apparel manufacturing. We have a factory there and work with multiple other factories as well to create jobs through an ethical way of manufacturing clothing where we put all of our profits back into the workers and worker empowerment and creating the best place to work. We want to do it on a large scale, so we’re mainly exporting to the US and a bit to the UK and Europe. I’ve been in the textile and fashion industry for 30 years, so it’s my passion and my love all together.

Ronald Ishak Yeah. And I’m Ronald Ishak and I do have debate. I’ve been building this for the last eight years. I founded it and leading it as CEO. We’re basically a program that turns absolute beginners into job ready developers. And 12 to 16 weeks and then help them find jobs not just in Indonesia, but also around the world as well. And so, Dan, we’ve trained today up to 50,000 people through our multiple programs, from bootcamps to corporate training programs to video based courses and things like that. And it’s been a fun and exciting journey just to see people from a stage where they’re very insecure, where they are, to see them thrive and succeed using just the power of technology. So thanks for having me.

Richard Cunningham Yeah, it’s great to have both you guys on. It’s been fun to capture both of your stories in different ways. So for our listeners here, they’re dialing in. There’s two great video stories capturing both of the journeys here. And so be sure to check that out either on the Solving the World’s Greatest Problems website or faith driven investor websites. But Keren, I was hoping that maybe you could kind of kick us off here when we talk about solving some of the world’s greatest problems. Oftentimes we think about maybe aid and we think about charity. We think about the different ways that nonprofits step in to solve some of these problems. But I would love for you to just kind of cast the vision of like when people say a job is created. We hear that in our report here in the West. We might hear that in a jobs report varies around the world. But when a job is created, when that’s happened, can you just kind of give us kind of some of the perspective of what that does, either for a family or for a community and just the ways that that has such a ripple effect beyond just even that one individual job?

Keren Pybus Yeah, definitely. I think for us it was really about giving people sustainability and giving people security. And when you’re working in an environment where there’s a huge amount of informal employment and lots of opportunities for informal employment, it doesn’t give us stability. And that’s really what creating these jobs is doing, not just for the individual but also for their family. And quite often they can be the breadwinner or maybe 1 or 2 breadwinners in the family, which means that they can provide a really basic level. They’re providing food, they’re providing housing, they’re providing amenities, they’re providing a lifestyle. There’s even beyond just those basics for those people. But it means that they can rely on it. They can save for their futures. They can you know, in Africa, saving for your funeral fund is a really big, huge deal. And at the same time, they can have support and things that are going to enable them to live their lives in a secure way, too. So whether that’s the health insurance that comes with it or whether it’s other things like the free lunch that they get, which means that they don’t have to then feed themselves, you know, a big meal again later on because they’ve had a really big meal at lunchtime or something like that. So it’s more than just a job. It’s about creating a a way that people have security and sustainability for them and for their family.

Richard Cunningham Let’s talk about that a little bit more. When you talk about the family work, what does that look like? Because I love where you’re going with this, because, you know, when we talk about solving the world’s greatest problems, the website, we talk about 30 of the problems, we talk about some of the different ones, and we talk about fracturing families. We talk about health care, we talk about anxiety. We talk about hunger, we talk about homelessness. We talk about all these different things. And I think that you’re taking us some places, but specifically with the family. Can you talk about the confidence or the ways that the family is able to thrive when you have that consistency of employment?

Keren Pybus Yeah, in a lot of developing countries and culturally. So a family stays together, so you will have generations of family living together. It’s not always true. We’ve got people that are in our factories that are in their 20s living on their own. So it doesn’t necessarily mean that, but sometimes they’ll also travel in and they’ll have families living in villages elsewhere. And so you’re not just providing for your own disposable income, you’re providing for a network of people that are reliant on you. Now, we’re very fortunate in Ghana that education is free up to the age of 18, so that’s not necessarily a factor. But that’s not true in many, many countries where people are having to pay for education. So you’re paying for that next generation that you may be paying for a younger sibling to go through university, for example, to create opportunities for that person for the future. You may be supporting health care with one of your older relatives that maybe would have just necessarily died younger for no reason at all if they hadn’t been able to access that health care that you are able to do. You’re providing also in a lot of situations, people to be able to stand on their own if they’re in a really bad situation. Domestic abuse, adultery, anything like that, which means somebody needs to be able to go out on their own. They can do that. They can support themselves being able to they can remove themselves from a dangerous situation because they’ve got the security of that job and the security of not just the job. And I think what’s really important within this and. Maybe we’ll come onto this later. It is not about just a job. It’s about that job being worthwhile, sustainable, safe, and a place that they can have a family within that job environment as well as their family that’s outside of that. So it takes away a lot of that. What if what can I do? That kind of thing? And it creates people honestly. We’ve noticed a real shift into from short term thinking into long term thinking. They’re not just thinking about what’s going to happen the next day. What do I need to spend my money on for the next day? They’re thinking about what can I do for the future? How can I change my living accommodation? How can I provide for my sibling to do this or whatever? And because they’ve got the security of longevity.

Richard Cunningham Keren That’s incredible context and setting the stage, we’re going to come back to you in a number of points you just unpacked. But let’s go over to Ron real quickly and kind of hear some of the initial context as well. And your camp, Ron, because for lack of better terms, you’ve created a coding school that takes individuals and gives them the ability to access so many various different types of work across Asia. And so we’d love to hear kind of some of this from your perspective and activate.

Ronald Ishak So I think like what comes to mind to me is thinking about the minimum wage in Indonesia. You know, in US dollar terms, like a month salary here in Indonesia is equivalent to about $400, and that’s the formal one, right? And then so there’s a lot more informal people taking jobs like, you know, selling things on the street and things like that. It might be a lot, lot less motorcycle delivery drivers perhaps. And so when we think about what we can unlock by, you know, teaching people how to code, it’s really unlocking not just, you know, to go beyond the minimum wage of what’s possible, but also being able to cross political boundaries, people to be able to work somewhere, you know, Singapore to Australia, where the minimum wage is, you know, significantly higher, the pay is significantly better. And then on top of that, as a software developer, they can just do so much more to the point that, you know, when those opportunities are unlocked, you know, somebody can suddenly, you know, support their entire family and just do incredible, incredible things.

Richard Cunningham So talk a little bit about that, Ron, because I think here’s one of the things that we think about. We think sometimes we create a job and it’s like a static thing and we’ve created it and like we’ve added to the count and. All right, good. Well, let’s go on to be creating the next one. But yet we live in this inflationary environment. We live in these places where the costs continue to go up, where we figure out some of these different things that are happening. And even in your business, when you talk about coding and teaching coding, that’s always changing. You’re always having to upgrade, you’re always having to change. I would imagine, you know, artificial intelligence, machine learning that’s changed and pushed you guys to figure out, okay, how does that change for us? So how has something like that forced you guys to continually be upskilling and innovating?

Ronald Ishak I think A.I. has really changed my business quite a lot. You know, it’s kind of like giving somebody a calculator, right? You know, it increases the productivity significantly. And then so we’ve had to upgrade our programs to help people sort of adapt to all these new tools for us to produce more output in just much shorter periods of time. But I think one of the challenges being a school is kind of like just like giving somebody a calculator. You want them to learn the math first before they just use, you know, just the buttons and press the equals and then have the results fit out. And so, you know, those might be some of the initial challenges. But I think like, you know, once it’s enabled people to just be significantly more productive, like ten x more productive, I think it’s just amazing what it unlocks.

Richard Cunningham And tosses out openly to both of you guys. We often talk about entrepreneurs that things have changed and for entrepreneurs that I guess we’d put it this way the hero of the problems of the world years ago often was like the celebrity cause it was the big concert, it was big business, it was aid, it was all of that. And now, as we’ve been talking about, like, it’s changed and people are noticing job creation, they’re noticing economics, they’re noticing the important sustainability. How have you guys seen that not just being noticed by the church, but just maybe other like local city governments, municipalities? How are you seeing opportunities to partner just with the broader ecosystem of investors, NGOs? How are you seeing some of this kind of come into play where people are saying, man, you’re solving a problem and that we have a shared vision of making sure that there’s growth in that? I mean, because here in Texas, I mean, people are recruiting businesses left and right. We are trying to just harness economic development left and right. How are you guys seeing that in your context? How are you seeing other people value the job creation potential of entrepreneurs?

Keren Pybus I think the biggest change for me is actually being with the big donor agencies. So where a lot of US aid or the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office or Jay-Z or Solidaridad, those people’s money went into pure aid. And there’s still some very, very important elements of that part of it. They have shifted huge budgets into trade facilitation, which in turn creates jobs. Because you’re creating manufacturing in different places. And it’s not just about creating market linkages. It’s about funding to create capacity building, create technical skills, create career path, create opportunities for locals. So for us, you know, we’re trying to create a textile industry in Ghana that, you know, really has a huge, deep roots in a lot of very traditional manufacturing but doesn’t have the experience of doing it to international standards or international compliance standards. We have to bring in a lot of expats to do a lot of those things, to be in with a lot of skills training to be able to pass on that knowledge. One of the big things with the donor agencies is how do we pass that skills to the locals so that it doesn’t become reliant on an expat type of business. But actually you’re upskilling the locals. So I’d say the donor agencies have really changed their mindset around that, which means that there’s a lot more money available to get grants and things to be able to kick start some of these programs or to be able to work with programs and work with investors as well. So a lot of it’s also then linked to how are investors going to work with it. So there’s a lot of match funding available to. So if you got an investor that’s going to work alongside you, then the donor agency will match that funding, which makes it really attractive for an investor as well because they’re getting a great deal for that money. So I think the donor agencies definitely wrong.

Richard Cunningham What would you say to that?

Ronald Ishak You know, I think for me, like looking back in the last few years, you know, I think one of the big things to sort of happened was the pandemic. But one of the things that come out of that for us is actually building this thing called the Association of Digital Talents Training of Indonesia. And so this is a collaboration effort between me and my competitors, but then sort of working for the greater good, working closer to the government. We now have a channel to work with together with them, sort of see why we need more talent in the marketplace that knows how to use technology. And also thinking that, you know, ever since the pandemic, sort of the acceleration of a lot of these traditional companies suddenly coming to become digital, you know, the need of talent for digital in Indonesia has spiked quite a lot. And then so now, you know, the government is more receptive to sort of like, okay, you know, let’s start to build standards so that we can scale this faster. Let’s create some protections here and there. So I think that has sort of been this shift that I see in the last few years for us.

Richard Cunningham Ron, I wanted to push into something you said there. When you’re talking about change, you’re making change. You just said that you weren’t going about it on your own, but you were linking arms with even some of your competitors. How would that change the dynamic? How has the conversation changed within that? There’s something unique there that oftentimes competition is a funny word, especially in the church. What are you learning through that process?

Ronald Ishak You know, one of the most unique parts about this association is sort of how it sort of came together as well. You know, I remember in the middle of the pandemic, you know, everybody was stressed out. My competitors were stressed out. And we actually got in a Zoom call together and we ended up praying together, funny enough, and sort of that relationship of just, you know, instead of seeing each other as competitors, sort of as like, hey, we got to survive this together so that we can come out of this, you know, we’ll be stronger together. It really started out of that. And then so that relationship was built out, you know, over the next 2 to 3 years. We only set up the association this year, sort of putting all of the competitors together, working for a greater good. I think that’s the beauty of working in education. It’s not trying to kill each other. It’s not trying to like, you know, winner takes all type of game. But then with education, you know, it’s kind of like we can help enlarge the pie. We can create more opportunities. So it’s been cool to sort of see that roll out, especially because I’ve been in the field of like, you know, building startups, trying to kill each other and things like that. But then in education, it’s just like, Hey, we’re here, you know, for the greater good type thing. And so it’s a cool collaboration. I think it’s something cool to observe.

Keren Pybus I would add to that too, because I think you’re absolutely right. We work with multiple different factories across Ghana and trying to bring all of their different skills, and they are technically all competitors. But for a buyer coming into the country, they don’t want to come into the country and buy from one factory. They want to be able to come in and make the trip worthwhile. They want to be able to buy from multiple factories. So if those factories can work together in terms of finding their own unique selling points, what is the thing that makes them specific? It might be a type of machinery they’ve got. It might be a type of product they’re making. It might be a particular type of market that they’re serving. They can all then layer together and work together with things. Then you create something that is more attractive from a trade perspective as well, and you’re not working against each other. You’re putting your energies into working together. So I think there’s huge value in as Christians leading that and being people that don’t put the competition factor first is something that sometimes does make us different within a marketplace as well.

Richard Cunningham A tide that raises all boats, if you will need to hear you both riff on that. All right. Well, hey, I want to get you almost personal in this aspect of it. Keren, maybe you at the job creation, Ron, you with almost the job upskilling. Can you think about a specific story or stories of some lives that you’ve seen, people that you’ve been fortunate enough to employ or maybe Ron, you’ve seen come through your program and just kind of the effects and this the transformation that you’ve witnessed take place in a particular live or lives. Keren, I’ll start with you.

Keren Pybus Yeah, sure. If you watch the video of Africa about Africa, you’ll see a girl who Florence, who’s profiled on there and Florence came to us as an operator not hugely long out of school, and we saw a skill set in her in terms of her ability to think outside the box, her ability to embrace technology. And we put a lot of effort and work into creating different skill sets with her. So first, full motor skills on different machinery, teaching her all the basics of sewing and moving her through the kind of ranks, putting us into some external training around pattern creation. And she is now the assistant person manager in the factory, and she’s gone from, in her family kind of being somebody that is part of that family environment to being one of the major breadwinners in that family, ensuring that her grandmother could get the health care that she needed. And so seeing individuals like that moving through is just really exciting. A warehouse manager came same, similar saying Raphael came through the ranks, really try some different things and we’re just able to hone those skills and and I think they then act as role models to others in the factory because yeah we need to bring in a lot of expert expertise and everything else. But sometimes we as expats can be almost out of reach for the locals. They can’t identify with how they can get there, how they can develop that skill set. And especially when you’re trying to teach not just a technical thing, you’re trying to teach people to think outside the box. You’re trying to get them to think horizontally and vertically and problem solving. You’re trying to, you know, look at different attitudes to work towards work and those kind of things. You’re trying to teach all of those things, not just the if you sit at this machine and press this button, it’s going to do this type thing. And so by seeing other Ghanaians that have moved through the factory and move through the industry into other things and to other roles and progress and seen how their lifestyle changes as an impact or how they then steward the resources that God has given them. It inspires other people and inspires others to look at it and to take that job and think, this isn’t just about coming in and working your 8 to 5 shift. This is actually about something that could be more than this and creating something for themselves as well as their family.

Richard Cunningham What would you like to happen on that?

Ronald Ishak I think, you know, when I think about the stories that we there’s so many I think the one that I always come back to is this guy. You know, whether you’re one of our alumni who has sort of joined our program during the pandemic, in the video there, a whole section of it in there where they get to interview him. But it’s just a cool story to sort of see somebody from a motorcycle delivery driver that had dropped out of school, couldn’t afford to pay for his university degrees, sort of join Activate, took up our income share agreement program where he didn’t have to pay anything now, but then he would pay later after he would get a job from the Activate program. Sort of just see that transformation and that just sort of even wanting to see it all the way till the day where he sort of jump from one job to another job and just seeing his career progress, it’s always like exciting, you know, to sort of just give somebody the tools to build and then sort of see what they can build from that. And I think what’s really cool as well is also seeing him, you know, volunteering to be able to teach some of the Activate classes as well, you know, sometimes as a guest lecturer and things like that. I think it’s just heartwarming to sort of see once you sort of help somebody overcome that deep insecurity or that one thing and then the amount of gratitude that they have afterwards, I think it’s just amazing.

Richard Cunningham Great thoughts. Very grateful for the work that both of you guys are doing. We often say that business has the opportunity to create redemption or to create brokenness. We can run businesses in ways that can further some of the very problems that we’re trying to prevent. Or we can step into those dark spots and be light and that can be that redemptive tool. So one of the things that we do with solving the world’s greatest problems is try to make the complex accessible to try to help people take that first step. And so I would love for you guys as we close here to give just kind of a word of advice. If you’ve got an investor or an entrepreneur that’s listening to this for the first time listening to this and they’re hearing for the first time in some ways that jobs can be some of the upstream solutions to some of the world’s greatest problems. Maybe in the past, everything that they thought about, they’ve been thinking about the giving pocket and the giving side of things. And they’re starting to see that really all comes from one pocket, whether it’s giving or it’s investing, it’s all the resources that we’ve been entrusted. So they’re coming to that place and they’re throwing their hands up saying, I want to know more. I want you guys to speak. Maybe there’s an article, maybe there’s a. Maybe there’s a moment, maybe there’s scripture, something on each of your journeys that really kind of is the moment where the lightbulb turned on for you and you realized, wow, this has an opportunity for this is is just as much ministry and impact as some of the traditional things in the traditional viewpoints. So for listeners out there, where should they start? What’s a good place for them? What’s a good article or something to go through? Keren. I’ll turn to you first. What would you encourage people to do to take their step to explore further?

Keren Pybus Well, that’s quite a big question. I think for me, right at the beginning, I think where your passion and your skills meet is often where your calling is. And I think just because you’re really passionate about something doesn’t mean you have to necessarily give up on it. So if there’s an industry that you’re passionate about, you’ve got skills in that industry. Embracing and seeing what you can do in that industry is really important. My kind of big changing moment, I guess, was reading the John Ortberg book, If you want to walk on the water, you’ve got to get out of the boat. And just knowing that actually you’re never going to solve it or you’re going to get out of that boat and there’s going to be moments where you’re sinking and moments when you don’t know what you’re doing, but fixing your eyes on Jesus and just keeping that kind of like one thing has been really good. I think a learning for us, particularly when you’re thinking about job creation, is making sure that within there your recruitment policies and the process for bringing people on board is really thorough and robust. You don’t have to kind of shy away from that just because you’re trying to give all these jobs to people. You know, we’ve got people queuing up outside the factory every day looking for work. I can’t give a job to everybody and solve all of the world’s joblessness. And so it’s about getting the right people, praying through that, but also creating what are the right tests. Interview stage. How do you test for attitude, for behavior as much as technical skills? How do you give people that proper training that gives them the chance to swim at the beginning and not just sink because you bring somebody in the new pulse so much things on and that they can’t actually cope with it. How do you hold people’s hands through that? How do you give them the life skills training that goes along the side, the jobs training as well, so that, you know, most of the people that we’ve employed have never had a formal job in their life before. So even just the concept of turning up to work on time every day at the same time every day is a completely alien concept. And so explaining the why for a lot of these things, as well as the what becomes really important and for investors. You know, we had a moment, I guess we went on the marketplace very early on in our kind of FDI journey. And we have an incredible investor, Jeff, who you will see on our video. I’ll name him because he’s on the video. So you’ll see him anyway, who saw at the beginning of vision for this and saw also that you’ve got to go through a training cycle when you’re creating jobs and you’re not creating income while you’re training. And so having money to pay those salaries and be able to support those people and create that whilst maybe they’re not creating value for your organization because you’re in a training environment, but you need to do that is where investment becomes really important because having that cash in to be able to do that and then to be able to support those people through that training environment as you then are able to then turn that their work and their things into output for the business later on becomes this really important marriage between what the investors can do and what the entrepreneurs can do. So I’d say go for it. Find your passion for your skills, putting together, pray about it and jump out of the boat.

Richard Cunningham Richard We should have just started in in the podcast right there. We should just hand the mic to Keren. Gotten out of the way. I mean, that’s. Aaron. That’s going to be tough to top, man, but that was really good.

Ronald Ishak That was really good. I think, you know, for me, thinking back, like the last, gosh, eight years, I think that the journey of Building Activate came with a lot of insecurities. You know, it came with a lot of doubt for me. But I remember somebody telling me, you know, God doesn’t call the qualified, but he qualifies the call. And I think like that really put it into perspective for me to remember what I need to lean on. But this time, where when there’s things that I can’t do, I need to pray about it. And sort of just seeking God in every moment of building something and sort of just, you know, looking back now, it’s just being a maze of what, you know, putting and leading on God was able to do. And so I think, you know, there’s listeners out there sort of thinking about, you know, I want to build something, know I want to create more jobs in the marketplace. And I believe that if God has planted that in your heart and that’s something that you step out in faith to do, that I really do believe that God can use that for his kingdom and for his glory.

Richard Cunningham Man Great words from both you guys. So grateful for the wisdom. I love what you’re talking about. Keren, is this as you talk about this idea that you can’t give a job to everyone, and in those moments you have your heart tugging your head, kind of wrestling through that. There’s still sequence, there’s a process. There’s still best practice. This is to learn from love the perspective. What you’re talking about, Ron, is we’re always learning. We’re always learning to upskill. We’re always learning to that. And even as much like what you hit on there at the end as independent and as driven as we are, that we really at our core are designed to be dependent. And that is a weird, weird thing for an entrepreneur to face and wrestle with daily. So grateful for Wisdom listeners that you are dialing into this. Here’s my encouragement. You might be feeling this thought of man. I want to explore this more, but I don’t know where to go. I don’t know where to start. There’s some great resources. John Edwards book. I love the thought of just kind of getting out of the boat, a way to get out of the boat. And way to step into this is to have a conversation with other like minded entrepreneurs or other like minded investors. And so Richard, myself and others on the team of all been a part of leading different faith driven entrepreneur and faith through an investor groups they meet either in person or online. But if you’re an investor and you really wrestling with this idea and thinking, man, God, give me some capital or family, some capital to entrust to invest in the businesses that are upstream of this or to give to some of those organizations that are helping facilitate some of the job creation, whatever that might look like. My encouragement would be is to check out the Solving the World’s Greatest Problems website, but then check out one of these faith driven investor groups. There are some just robust conversations that are taking place there. And as Richard can attest to, there’s a lot of like minded investors that are meeting each other for the first time, realizing that that passion that God has placed in you, there are others that share that passion. And when you connect with them, man, it changes everything. Richard, any closing thoughts for us as we come to a wrap? And I think the thing I would say is Ron, Keren, just knowing some of your stories and your journeys, you’re both backed by faith driven investors. And I can just imagine maybe just a quick word on that. As a faith driven entrepreneur building something, stepping out of the boat, what an encouragement is to have like minded values on the cap table, am I right?

Keren Pybus 100%. It’s been an absolute privilege and just a faith building thing when when people just cool you up off the back of a podcast or a back of a video and go, I love what you’re doing and I feel that goes calling me to work with you and you just like, Wow, this is just incredible for people like on the opposite side of the world that maybe I’ve never even visited the country you’re working in to want to go on that journey. And so I’m really grateful for anyone that’s invested in ethical apparel, Africa or anybody that wants to in the future as well. And it has been incredible witness to, you know, we don’t employ all Christians. And so for the team to see the amount of Christian investors that we have on as well has been also a really amazing witness as well. And for those that have managed to come and visit and see what you do. So yeah, get on the train. It’s a great one to be on.

Ronald Ishak Absolutely. I think like I remember the times, you know, when things are difficult and when you get your investors to pray together with you, I think it’s just so empowering. So, yeah, I’m just so grateful for that.

Richard Cunningham Some Brownie Shack activate out of Jakarta, Indonesia. Keren Pybus of Ethical Apparel, Africa and Ghana. What a fun episode. What a joy to have you both on for a special faith. You’re an entrepreneur and faith driven investor kind of release episode looking at solving the world’s greatest problems. For Justin Foreman, I’m Richard Cunningham. Thank you so much for joining us. Friends. We will catch you next time.

Narrator We are grateful for the opportunity to serve this community and see your listeners come in for more than 100 countries Faith driven investing can be a lonely journey, but it doesn’t have to be. The best way to stay connected is to join a group study with other investors looking to get the same answers, the questions you have and find great community as they do so there’s no cost, no catch. In person or online, you can meet an hour a week with other peers from your backyard or the other side of the world. You can also stay connected by signing up for our monthly newsletter and faith driven investing Dawg. This podcast wouldn’t be possible without the help of many of our friends. Executive Producer Justin Foreman. Intro mixed and arranged by Summer Drags Audio and Editing by Richard Barley. Our theme song is Sweet Ever After by Ellie Holcomb.

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