Episode 166 - From Heart Change to Action w/ John Coleman
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The Faith Driven Investing Movement always starts with heart change, but it shouldn’t end there. Christians are called to take action. We put our hands and feet in motion in response to God’s transformation in our lives.
A lot of Faith Driven Investors believe that, but many of us struggle with a practical question.
Where do we start?
This is not a prescriptive or presumptuous movement, but in this podcast episode, we want to hone in on some of the themes and ideas people have been talking about this year and give you some practical and actionable takeaways.
John Coleman will join Richard Cunningham for an in depth look at how investors around the world can start to get in the game.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Joseph Honescko: The faith driven investing movement always starts with heart change, but it shouldn't ever end there. Christians are called to take action. We put our hands and feet in motion and response to God's transformative work in our lives. A lot of faith driven investors believe that. But many of us still struggle with the practical question where do we start? We never want this podcast to be hyper prescriptive. But in this conversation, we do want to hone in on some of the themes and ideas. Leaders around the movement have been talking about at various gatherings this year, and we want to give some practical, actionable takeaways. John Coleman will join Richard Cunningham for an in-depth look at how investors around the world can start to get in the game. You're listening to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. Let's dive in.
Rusty Rueff: Hey everyone. All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Hosted guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. And this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization. Thanks for listening.
Richard Cunningham: Well, hello everyone, and welcome to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. We are grateful you are tuning in from wherever you get your podcasts. Glad you're here. My name is Richard Cunningham. I reside in Austin, Texas, and I have the great privilege and joy of serving on the Faith Driven Investor staff, and I am actually going to be your podcast host for the next season ahead of the FDI podcast. And if you're wondering, whoa, whoa, whoa, where are my normal guys, my mainstays John Coleman, Luke Roush, Henry Kastner? Not to worry, there's still very much going to be involved in the life and the future of the FDI podcast. We're just shifting some things around here internally so we can actually hear more from them. I'll kind of start manning the host responsibilities, and we're going to move folks like John Luke Henry into that color commentary, expert insight and kind of guidance role as they have just so many years of experience across this FDI space. And so we've got John Coleman here with us today. And John thrilled about this new season of the FDI podcast. And welcome. And I know you've been on the road a lot. Everything going well?
John Coleman: Well, Richard, I'm doing pretty well. Although I would say FDI listeners should know that despite Richard's kind introduction and thoughtful introduction, this is a coup. It's actually quite tense on the podcast right now. I only wish you knew. Now, Richard, I'm really excited for this season. Obviously, I've known Richard for quite some time, and, it's just such a privilege to get to work with him in this new season of the FDI podcast. And I can't wait to dig into the topics that we both care about. Invite some great guests on. So I'm very much looking forward to the road ahead.
Richard Cunningham: Absolutely, man. So we'll call this episode one phase one of the coup. That is our play here.
John Coleman: The revolution.
Richard Cunningham: That's revolution. So so yeah, recording this at the end of February 2024. And John, today we're hitting on man, it's been a red hot start to the new year in the faith driven investor landscape. And specifically there's been some seminal events that have taken place. So today specifically, I think we kind of want to hit on. Whereas Justin and Henry last week talked a lot about the heart posture themes that came out of each of those gatherings. Today, we want to pull out some of the threads in the themes, specifically from the FDI conference, kind of talk about some of the tactical, practical applications of them. It's a John. We're going to spend most of the time teeing up some topics for you. But before we start diving into the conference and some of those threads, just generally speaking, your thoughts on just all the momentum in the hot start we're off to here in 2024?
John Coleman: Yeah, I'm really encouraged by, you know, I've only truly been a part of the faith driven investing community for three years now. I actually just had my three year anniversary at Sovereign's [Capital] this week, and before that, I was kind of aware of some of the dynamics but not fully invested in those. And I would say there's been almost a step change in the level of engagement, the quality of engagement, and the breadth of engagement around faith driven investing. You know, the FDI, conference, broadly speaking, was very broad. Tons of direct investors, very global, a lot of high net worth investors and institutions, a mix of asset managers, the FDI fund manager gathering for those not familiar is really about professional investors, fund managers. That was in Palo Alto hosted this year as Richard had a lot of venture capitalists, private equity folks, real estate folks. But this was a session for those who are every single day living and breathing the professional investing world from big firms like some of the mainstream firms that you would know, to specialist firms like ours that are in faith driven investing and in Kingdom advisors. You know, it's kind of the Super Bowl of the faith driven financial advisor community. And it's just always an encouragement. They had several thousand people this year. They have this massive exhibit hall. They've got these great mainstage speakers, and there you've got several thousand wealth managers, financial advisors coming together with asset managers like us with other third parties trying to think through. How do they get their clients in the game for faith driven investing, and how do they counsel their clients with biblical wisdom? Right? Which is also an important part of the advising thing. So I was deeply encouraged on all fronts, although, I would like to travel a little bit less. So if we could have fewer conferences over the next couple of months, that might be better.
Richard Cunningham: Yeah, we we certainly start the year off hot, to say the least. So let's go specifically to the first of the gatherings we were talking about. The FDI conference kicked off with Luke Roush, your managing partner with you at Sovereign Capital, Henry Kaestner, also Sovereign Capital, talking about this idea of, hey, when you are done with today's conference, hopefully you'd be able to see that faith driven investors are at work deploying capital in predominantly one of three ways for market rate return, for concessionary and maybe impact investing, as often has been referred to or deploying for philanthropic or just pure giving purposes. And so when you hear that, why was it so important that Henry kicked off the FDI conference kind of through that lens?
John Coleman: Well, I think especially given how much we talk about the values of faith driven investing, anytime you talk about values investing, it's very important to clarify with those with whom you're speaking, where you stand along that spectrum. Right, because you do want to be honest and transparent about the return and risk profile that you're seeking alongside those values. And there's a legitimate spectrum from pure philanthropy to pure high return investing, whatever asset class that is that you can what you just need to be transparent about where you are on that. I think we're values based investors, whether Christians or advocates of ESG get into trouble, is when they claim to be investing with the values lens in a way that doesn't dampen returns. But in fact, there is some structural reason why returns will be lower, and there's no problem with that if people want to make that conscious trade off. But you got to be conscious of that trade off. And in fact, as professional investors, you then have to be thoughtful about what you can accomplish along each of those points in the spectrum, because I'm a big believer that the private sector can actually solve many of the problems in the world. I think that philanthropy is suited to certain types of problems, but not others. And so we're constantly trying to think through how can we use market capital to solve the world's greatest problems rather than philanthropy? But there remain things that have to be philanthropic, right? And it's important to identify those and figure out how we fund those and put capital against them. And in fact, Jesus called us very directly to engage in those charities, right? For the poor, for the widow, for the orphan, and those those causes still hold true. There are another category of investments that we could get into, things like, charter school financing, for example, maybe low income housing financing and certain constructs that do have a return profile. But you're making something of a conscious trade off on that profile in order to have the type of impact that you want to have for the risk return profile that you're getting. And we firmly believe there are elements of the high return spectrum where you're not at least seeking to trade off returns. You can never guarantee returns, obviously, but you're seeking high returns alongside a deep integration of cultural values or redemptive mission, etc.. And so we always think as professional investors about where we stand on that spectrum and how we communicate that well to and investors. And I think anyone dealing in values, whether ESG or faith driven investing, really has to be thoughtful about that as well.
Richard Cunningham: John, you captured it really well. But I want to talk real quickly specifically about the story of Dana and Bill Westerman. And this is a situation where Dana's father, about 12 years ago, left them an inheritance check, a meaningful inheritance check. That kind of rocked their world. And so, John, I think it'd be helpful if someone in your seat who interfaces often with LPs and investors of all sorts, when you see these kind of liquidity events or windfalls or moments like this across the faith driven investing ecosystem, what steps do people take initially? What pitfalls do you potentially see people fall into? Maybe contrast that a little bit with kind of some of what you see Dana and Bill do in their story?
John Coleman: Yeah, and Dana and Bill are such an inspiration. Right? They've been mainstays of the faith driven investing ecosystem. They're one of those families who really put up risk capital to get into areas that innovate for faith driven investing. And so I personally just have a ton of respect for each of them. And I'm really grateful for the impact that they're having. You know, it's not uncommon that people come into large amounts of money. And one of the interesting things, Richard, is that when people suddenly come into big amounts of money, it's often destructive, right? There are a ton of studies that show that lottery winners, after winning the lottery are more likely to go bankrupt, are more likely to suffer from various mental health challenges, are even more likely to take their own lives than those who haven't won the lottery because they don't have the habits, mindsets, values surrounding infrastructure to manage it appropriately. Becomes destructive for them. We see it all the time with things like professional athletes, right? A kid who's never had financial resources comes into something. Or young person at 19 or 20 or 21 years old, they're in a millions of dollars suddenly, and they just have no framework through which to manage that. There are people who try and take advantage of them all over, right? And they don't have the infrastructure, other people, frameworks for investing that allow them to steward that well. I think, you know, if I offered some advice to fate driven investors, I think resonant with what Dana and Bill talked about. The first is to make sure right out of the gates that your heart posture is right with regards to these things. You know, we can talk about it further. The Bible is very clear that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, but money itself is just a tool. God actually bless the number of people in the Bible. Abraham was one of the richest people of his day, right? David and Solomon, were both extraordinarily wealthy, which actually led to the downfall of at least one of them over time. But that was a blessing as long as they used it for his purposes. And so really digging into what the Scripture says about the use of money and capital, thinking about the mindsets and values that turn that from a totem to a tool, they turn it from an idol to something that you use for kingdom purposes. That's the first step, is to get that mental framework right, to really understand what you want to do there. The second is to be very practical about pausing. When you come into those resources and really thinking about what is the level of lifestyle that I need in order to live, and what is the level of lifestyle that I can live when I come into this money. And then secondly, you know, how am I going to steward those resources? I think Dana and Bill laid out a framework. For example, I believe it was 60-40 where they were going to do faith driven investing, where they think maybe I got that number wrong, but 60% of it in philanthropy with 40% of it, I believe, you know, some framework like that where you know exactly what you're setting aside for philanthropy, what you're investing for the future, and then within that investment and philanthropic pool, how are you going to determine the framework by which you're going to distribute that capital, and who is going to be your partner in doing that? And that's one reason I still think it's incredibly important for most people to have a financial advisor, for example. Right. Someone who has total transparency to what you have, who can keep you accountable. And I think it's important that person be values align like I have a financial advisor, even though I'm a professional investor, he knows what my will says. He knows what all is in my portfolio, he knows what our goals are, and he shares my Christian faith and my values. And so he's equipped to step in and make sure that I'm living up to the standards that I established upfront, as well as offering me wise advice. And, you know, second person is speaking to that. And I think those elements are really important for anyone stewarding capital, but particularly if you come into that quickly.
Richard Cunningham: I mean, that's really good. And I appreciate you bringing up the leg of the stool that is the outside counsel, the financial advisor, the outside wisdom. Appreciate your humility and sharing about your own. You also mentioned something when you said 6040 and you specifically spoke to faith driven investing versus philanthropy, but you say 6040 to start thinking asset allocation might be helpful to help people orient around this conversation of sometimes people think faith driven investing, they only think alternative markets. And there's totally a lot of spiritual integration there. Other times they think, hey, it's screening out sin stocks in the public markets, maybe talk about just for an investor out there listening in, asset allocation, a personal balance sheet and briefly kind of maybe orient people. Like how do you think about an asset allocation. It's you know, it's really hard to get to why if you don't first know where you are at X. And I think that's something you're talking about is taking a moment, stopping, pausing and understanding. Hey, God, we want you to use these things. But we first need to kind of reflect on, hey, where are we currently?
John Coleman: Yeah. And you know, Tim McCreadie got into some of this later in the conference as well. So I'll kind of blend some thoughts from the two of those I think. Yeah, yeah. There's the basic topic of asset allocation. You said 6040, which is the classic stock bond portfolio that people talk about. Right. People used to recommend the average person should be 60% stocks, 40% bonds, etc.. The truth is that asset allocation is just a framework by which we think about how to put our money in different instruments stocks, bonds, money markets, bank account, cash depository institutions, alternative investments based on a few things. Our risk tolerance, right. Which is obviously quite important. How much risk can we take our timeline for investing? Am I 20 years old or am I 90 years old? How long can these assets stay put where they are and our liquidity needs at the very least, right? Which is how much capital do I need now? Which is why most people aren't 100% in private equity, for example. Right. Which is quite illiquid. You know, I might need some cash now for daily living, for emergencies, for things like that, or to meet my liabilities over time. That's the basic type of asset allocation. Usually work through that with a financial advisor or even if you're an institution like I sit on a couple of endowment ICS and we constantly think about what is the asset allocation that matches our lives. Abilities so that we can make sure that we support the institutions those endowments are intended to support in a proper way. And we have consultants who help us think about that in a very rigorous, analytical and quantitative way. And that looks different for someone with $200,000 or $200 million. But each of us have to pick that. I think in the same way, we've all got to think about our asset allocation within faith driven investing to the types of points along that spectrum that you and I talked about at the beginning of this call. I think it's really healthy to have giving goals, for example. So the tithe, that's the most basic example of that in the Bible, which Dana and Bill talked about as well. But for many people with a lot of financial resources, you can actually go above that tithe, right? You can set aside a bigger pool of capital, or you could even have a goal that, you know, over time, you want to give away as much as you spent, right? And you set a number for that for your lifetime goal, saying, I'm going to give as much as I spent over the course of my life. So something like that where you deciding what your philanthropic capital is and then based on the capital that you actually need to support your lifestyle versus what's in philanthropy, you're choosing, where do I want to play on that spectrum of concessionary returns, of high returns? How comfortable am I taking high risk? You know, typically people with more capital are better able to take big risks, and that has tactical implications. And so you have to start thinking about based on your own profile, where are you going to play. I think that deciding that upfront and pushing yourself to think about impact, equivalent to the financial returns you want to get, is a really important part of that equation, though, because it's very easy to default into just doing a me two portfolio what everyone else would do. And I think for us, we have to be reminded that we're called to steward that capital in a dramatically different way.
Richard Cunningham: Yeah, I'm really glad you talked about that, and I'm glad you brought up Tim McCreadie too. So Tim, to kind of catch up here speaks later on in the conference. And he does a wonderful job of essentially kind of making the point that, hey, the product on the shelf, the momentum in the movement, the number of assets that are pouring into faith driven investing, the excuses are starting to go away one by one, for why someone would be hesitant to step into faith driven investing for a long time. And John, I'll have you riff on this real quickly. It was, well, hey, I'm not an accredited investor. And so for legal reasons, there's no reason I could ever be involved in the faith driven investing movement. But what's coming to bear is remarkable opportunities in the public markets for your everyday retail investor to lean into faith driven investing and financial advisors are receiving more and more product outside expertise consultation that shows them well. There is competitively cost effective products with competitive returns for someone in their everyday stocks and bonds portfolio. Speaking of that kind of asset allocation to access faith driven investing, and then I would hope that anyone hears this and says, hey, this is a conversation I can have with my financial advisor or this as I engage at work. Maybe you work in the asset management space or the financial services industry. You can kind of start to push the line a little bit and say, hey, have we thought about mainstreaming, if you will, the concept of investing that is inspired by our Christian values? ESG certainly pushed to the forefront and found its way kind of, you know, at mass, it feels as if because of the number of Christ followers out there, this is something where there can be ground up demand that causes the intermediaries to act.
John Coleman: Yeah. That's right. And when we communicate that with the intermediaries, I don't think they're bad people or anything like that. It's just this structural kind of momentum of intermediaries. Right. They're typically cautious and conservative with their clients assets. The ESG or mainstream values investing framework is a helpful one because they're accustomed to that. They already make exceptions for values based investments within frameworks with which they're more familiar. What we can now push on is to say, hey, this is just a different category of values based investment. It's important to me, and I'd love it if we could begin to at least explore adding some of these options to the platform. And it's easier to start with things like ETFs and mutual funds because they're more broadly available. But that can extend to private equity, to venture capital, to real estate. And I'll tell you, Richard, you know, one of the encouragements to me is I am seeing quality, faith driven options now in almost every asset class. You know, one of my propositions coming in with Henry was there are very, very few asset classes that can't be done with some element of spiritual integration. I'm not sure what that looks like for gold. I know there's a very vibrant debate about Bitcoin, but you know, for the vast majority of stuff stocks, bonds, real estate, private credit, direct lending, asset based leasing, music, REITs, movie studio content, investment, venture capital, private equity, all these different things that we think about. I'm seeing emerging opportunities to do it in a faith oriented way at one level or another, and I think that's quite exciting to me as well.
Richard Cunningham: Absolutely. Really well said. Well you tee up a good kind of transition. And so we're going to move a little bit down the balance sheet here and kind of go from one asset class to the next as we did that in the conference. And so now here we are in the real assets kind of category. Chuck Welden of WeldenFields and his real estate investment company has really spent some time thinking on, hey, what could spiritual integration that term, John, we've used number of times look like in our multifamily real estate investing. And so we'd love to invite you just I know Sovereign's has some real estate kind of activity inside of what you all do as an asset manager. Have you kind of speaking to this particular asset class for a moment?
John Coleman: Yeah, and getting to know Chuck over the last few years has been a joy. Obviously they've got WeldenField, but he's also been instrumental in Lion's Den.
Richard Cunningham: Oh great. Call out in.
John Coleman: A number of other just pieces of infrastructure in the faith driven investing movement. And in many ways, he's been right there, shoulder to shoulder with Rob West and with Henry Kaestner and with Ross Robinson and so many others who've just been in this for the long haul. And it pioneered it. And so my respect for Chuck as a person, it's just extraordinarily high. I think real estate is one of the most interesting areas that faith driven investors should be thinking about. If you think about the context of real estate, you are operating in a space where you touch individual people a huge percentage of their time, or in commercial real estate, you know, where you're getting people or even industrial where they're producing things. You have this opportunity in the lived environment to be where people are all the time, right? To really people that are one of the greatest callings that we have in the Bible. Is hospitality, right? For strangers, for enemies? We are to extend love and hospitality and greeting to those people. You go all the way back to the Old Testament and just think about the people who were spared because they invited strangers into their homes to provide them protection. You think about the way that Jesus behaved, inviting people in when his followers were gathering. You think about all of these examples. The Good Samaritan, if someone who was willing to take someone in, who was willing to take them to an end and take care of them, another opportunity for hospitality, right? I think real estate is one of these exciting areas where we get to practice our faith deeply in a lived environment that contains people for such a huge percentage of their time. Multifamily, I think, is particularly exciting for that reason, you think about the opportunity to welcome in people who are often in unstable situations, and yet through their lived environment, you can try and provide a safe space. Surround it with people, including the property managers, those who are working the property, even the maintenance staff, the folks working landscaping. You can prepare them to extend Christian hospitality to these people. There are these opportunities to take people where they live, and instead of them having to go seek out hospitality, and instead of them having to randomly run across this idea of Christian love, you can bring it to them where they live. And so I'm extraordinarily excited about that.
Richard Cunningham: Man. Really well said. One of the things to the faith, true investors listening, who maybe aren't in the real estate space but are thinking, I'd love to see some of these fund managers. That's John talking about. Or just like, look at a website and see how people are communicating this. That's the beauty and FDI groups and that's the beauty. And just kind of poking around our website is you'll bump into some of these names. And so now we're talking culture and entertainment. But John, you actually conducted this interview in the FDI conference with Dallas Jenkins. And one of the things you guys talked about is so much of what happens in our world is downstream of what we see in the arts and what we see in entertainment. Talk about that more. And what Dallas Jenkins, creator of The Chosen, has done. But just more broadly, I think when people think of faith driven investing, they think of what we've talked about today stocks, bonds, real estate, maybe some one off private equity fund manager. They might think of crypto or something like that, but they don't think of entertainment or movies or values investing in that regard. So maybe help kind of people look at this asset class.
John Coleman: This is one that's kind of a personal hobby horse of mine. I'm super impressed. I love it. You know, I think there are very few things that Christians could do to influence the culture for human flourishing. Then create culture, movies, television shows, music, the written word books, you know, all of these sorts of things. You think about it. The United States in particular, exports almost nothing else as much as culture, right? You go everywhere else in the world, and you are listening often to American music and movies and TV. We are surrounded by it. Your kids, between that and social media, are spending hours and hours a day in front of these things. It is having as great an influence on our ability to flourish, our ability to come to know truth, and just the way that we think about ourselves in the world around us as anything else. And again, it combined with social media in particular. And so I think Christians have an obligation to be engaged in culture. I think historically, Christians have done, at least in recent history, a reasonably poor job of that. We often haven't made product. That's it, the quality standard of the mainstream product that was out there. And that, honestly, is one of the things that was so revolutionary about the chosen and what Dallas did with The Chosen Dude.
Richard Cunningham: I think I'm betting a thousand on crying during every episode. Just oh my gosh.
John Coleman: And you know, we rewatch all the episodes. We make our kids watch them with us and they love watching them, right? Because they're really good. And that's the test, right? When your kids want to watch something with you, because my kids would love to go watch all these other things because they're good, they're really good, and we want to make content like that. And I think Dallas has really done that. I'm a huge fan of a guy named John Erwin who's done that with Jesus Revolution and American Underdog. And I think there are an emerging set of opportunities to invest in that type of culture that are really taking off. One of the ones that we did, and I'm not trying to promote us recently, alongside a number of others, was Help John and Dallas launch a new movie studio called The Wonder Project, which is intended to do exactly that. They've recently announced a partnership with Amazon. They're producing a TV show now called House of David that will hopefully do for the story of David. What the chosen has done for the Gospels is the aspiration. It's also kind of a cool story. It's going to be like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones for the story of David, which I think is really neat. And we think that just like The Chosen that can reach hundreds, millions of people, the chosen is such a hundred million people. But in order to do that, you need capital because this stuff is expensive. Go look at what Netflix or HBO or Amazon or any of the studios Lionsgate are putting into movies. You know, they don't cost $1 million. An independent film will cost 15 to $30 million. Some of these giant studio productions are $200 million or more. So they take serious capital. And that's why I think Christian's opening that up as an asset class to invest in beginning to Marshall Capital, conscientious, as long as the creators can match that with great creation is an exciting opportunity. The scary thing about the space is a lot of folks have gotten burned there historically because it is a different type of investing, like venture capital. There are winners and losers. You really have to understand the industry in order to do it well. And that's why I think professional investors who are faith aligned, getting into the space is essential right now, because it is easy to get the economics wrong. If you're not familiar with the studio system, Dallas and John are obviously quite familiar with that. So they've been able to craft something that I think can be positive for investors. Other creators can too, but I think professional investors leaning into the space, starting to raise funds, really learning the system and helping individual investors and institutions get in the game is important. And as I think about the impact investing side, you know, somewhere in between kind of high return and philanthropy, there are very few things I think we could be doing that would touch more people and help to make their lives a little bit better every day.
Richard Cunningham: Man, that's fun to hear you talk about. And, you know, you mentioned John Erwin's name, and this is someone we've had on multiple faith driven investor events. Speaking of conferences, just so much of what they do is of such excellence. So I'm going to go on a little bit of just a kind of rampage here to close us as I look at the remainder of the conference and just say we went to emerging markets, something near and dear to one of the feature investor founders, Hearts and Henry Kaestner. And we showcase the story of Christeen Rico and how she left an executive level role at Apple and moved to her birthplace of the Philippines to start an accelerator and joined up with the venture capital fund. And then Tim Macready kind of reigned us back in and said, hey, it's not just about the alternatives market. There is an opportunity, as we've kind of hit on here, to think about the mainstream implications and opportunities of faith driven investing in your traditional asset allocation and your stocks and bonds portfolio. As you look to Stewart ETFs and mutual funds as you need liquidity. And Tim did a great job. And we're going to have him on the podcast here in the weeks ahead. Talking more about his research around growth of the movement, the products available, some of the spiritual integration metrics he's looking at in his team at Brightlight are looking at. And that was great. We showcased a wonderful story of green hope out of Indonesia with Tommy Tjiptadjaja and Sugianto Tandio, which was just super powerful talking about investing and partnership. And I want to tease this one out a little bit as our final story was a practical hey, what next for faith driven investors? And it was the story of Potomac Angel capital. And we're going to have Patrick Farrell on our very next faith Driven investor podcast talking about Potomac, the application of investing in community, not going at this alone, and the opportunities at play for spiritual integration as you think of really early stage investing and partnering with entrepreneurs and incubation in the formation of their companies. So with all that in mind, John, before we sign off here, as we think about this next season, season's FDI podcasts, any closing remarks or thoughts from you?
John Coleman: Yeah, I would just say to this community, first of all, be really encouraged by what's happening in the marketplace. There is a lot of innovation happening. We talked about some of it today. You're seeing it at the FDI. I mean, the FDI fund manager gathering, Richard, which we didn't talk about too much. We had investors from some of the biggest venture capital and private equity firms in the world, CEOs of some of the biggest asset managers in the world who are Christians, who are trying to think about redemptive uses of their capital that may look a little bit different than Sovereign's. It may not be able to go quite as far in some of those institutions as we would go on the spiritual integration. Inside, but we also have to let a thousand flowers bloom. And it's important that people get engaged where they are. I think secondly, I would encourage people to not let the perfect be the enemy of good. I think it's easy to throw up your hands if you can't do your entire portfolio is faith driven, or if you don't know how to do that and say, well, I'm just going to stick with what I got, not do anything. And my point of view is like, just dip a toe in the water, get started with one thing, move cautiously and deliberately. Do a second thing once you get comfortable with that. Just get in the game. Start trying to do it thoughtfully. Get an advisor who can help you do that in a way that doesn't sacrifice returns. It keeps you safe, and then spread the word. We talked about spreading the word to gatekeepers, trying to get them more amenable. We want to get the word out about FDI and FDE, certainly just so more people are engaged in the movement so that more folks are considering doing this with their capital. But spread the word. And certainly as we launch into the next phase of this podcast, we would love your feedback on how to make this as engaging as possible. You know, we want to make sure we're telling stories that are impactful, that we're giving people educational materials that make a difference, that we're making the faith driven investing ecosystem practical for people that they can actually get in the game, Richard. And it's not just a hypothetical. It's not just theory. And we want you to push us on who you want to see on this podcast, what topics you want to see, what things are confusing, what we can help clarify, and how we can make this as engaging as possible so that we can be a part of that movement that you all really you all are leading.
Richard Cunningham: Yeah, absolutely. Really well said. John. This is a movement that is led by those of you actually out in the field. And John, you said a key phrase that I'm so pumped that you said because it was the theme of the overall 2024 FDI conference, and that was get in the game. Take that opportunity to go from spectator, go from passively kind of digesting this, like you said in theory and moving it into practical application. And it's just one fateful step at a time. This is not prescriptive or presumptuous. This is in faithful obedience. And Joey Honescko, our producer behind the scenes, reminded me that, hey, if you ever to John's point, you have that suggestion, you have that guest we need to talk to podcast at FaithDrivenEntrepreneur.org . So John Coleman, thank you so much for your time today. We will see you folks next time with our good buddy Patrick Farrell on to talk about Potomac Angel capital.
Henry Kaestner: We are grateful for the opportunity to serve this community and see listeners come in from 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 to 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 at faithdriveninvestor.org . This podcast wouldn't be possible without the help of many of our friends. Executive Producer Justin Foreman intro mixed in, arranged by Summer drags. Audio and editing by Richard Barley. Our theme song is Sweet Ever After by Ellie Holcomb.