Episode 200 - Building More Than Returns: 200 Episodes In and Just Getting Started
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When investors start asking "What are we FOR instead of just what we're against?" everything changes—from deal selection to due diligence to the very definition of success. In this 200th episode of Faith Driven Investor, Henry Kaestner, Luke Roush, and Richard Cunningham reflect back at where the movement started and where it is headed. What began with a handful of investors has grown into a global community spanning nearly 100 countries, yet with Christians controlling over half the world's wealth, the opportunity ahead is staggering—and this milestone conversation exposes why we're still in the "top of the second inning" of a fundamental shift in how capital gets deployed.
Please note that the views expressed by the hosts and guests are their own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Faith Driven Investor.
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.
Richard Cunningham [00:00:00] You're listening to Faith Driven Investor, a podcast that highlights voices from a growing movement of Christ-following investors who believe that God owns it all and cares deeply about the heart posture behind our stewardship. Thanks for listening.
Intro [00:00:17] Hey everyone, all opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies of securities discussed. And this podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization. Thanks for listening.
Richard Cunningham [00:00:44] Friends, welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. And today is not a normal episode as it is a time for celebration. We have reached a milestone. It is episode 200 of the Faith-Driven Invester podcast. And I have got a couple of the OGs with me. The two guys that helped start this ministry. Well, we'd love to have John Coleman and Justin Forman here with us as well. A couple of mainstays you always hear. I've got Henry Kasener and Luke Rausch. And gentlemen, we're celebrating. We have hit 200 episodes. HK, let's start with you. Do you know when you recorded your first ever Faith Driven Investor podcast? Nope, no idea.
Henry Kaestner [00:01:17] 200, that's incredible. Richard, that is amazing. It's amazing. And it's been so much fun. You know, in the early days, Luke and I would do them and hang out and celebrate the mission that God put us on and had some fun doing it. And, I mean, I remember the feeling. I remember really looking forward to doing them. And as we started, as I started spending more and more time on faith-driven entrepreneur and faith-drive investor and Luke continued to. Run Sovereign's Capital as we did a divide and conquer. I remember really looking forward to hanging out with Luke and just joking around before the mic went on and joking around while the mic was on. And then, you know, coming back together, it makes me feel like 200 is a long, I mean, it's a lot of them, but really it's just celebrating what God has done through the movement. It's just awesome. But you know they come back and now we've got the video going, Luke's got the dignified gray in the beard. You know, I think when we started doing these, you were in like second grade and now look at you and- It's more salt, more salt and pepper these days. That's for sure. There is. I'd do it. I'd invest in you though. I mean, you look like you know what you're doing. Hey, a little gray in the beard is good when you're raising capital, and so that's helpful. We've already established I need a haircut. I don't know how many of you are going to be watching this on video, hopefully none of you.
Luke Roush [00:02:30] It's Gavin Newsom's Doppelganger right now on the pod.
Henry Kaestner [00:02:34] I don't know how I feel about that.
Luke Roush [00:02:36] Hey look, he's not
Henry Kaestner [00:02:37] He's not a bad looking guy. He's a good looking guy, he's got great hair. He's got a great taste in nice restaurants, right? I mean, let's look at the positives.
Richard Cunningham [00:02:46] It's an edgy reframing you guys always talk about. Well, Henry, to answer the question, it was July of 2019. So we're almost six years to the date of when the first FDI pod was launched. But I know the story goes back even further than that of kind of launching faith-driven entrepreneur, faith- driven investor shortly after. I'd love to hear, I mean, and travel back both of you guys as far as you want. Cause today's the day of celebration. We're kind of going back to the origins and we're gonna talk about where God might be taking all of this next, of course, and celebrate some of what's happened along the way. But go back as far as you'd like and tell us kind of how your paths crossed, how this idea of faith-driven investing kind of started. And I know faith- driven entrepreneur may have proceeded it a little bit, so it's worth maybe getting into some of that. But Henry, we'll start with you. Go back as the story needs to go to kind of orient us to where we are today.
Henry Kaestner [00:03:33] Well, we could go really far back. A great friend of ours, Luke and mine, is a guy named J.D. Greer. And J. D. Is the head pastor of Summit Church and co-author of the Fate Journal and Osprey Book, and just a great encouragement to both of us. And this is going back probably 16 or 17 years. He called me up and said, hey, I've got this guy in a Bible study I'm doing that I think you'd like a lot. What would you get together with him? And he probably said a version of the same to Luke, and J.T. Grear was... Matchmaker just said, you know, this is somebody who's really serious about using his guests in the marketplace is trying to figure it all out. I know you're trying to do the same. And so we got together and went to a place called Joe's Diner, downtown Durham, North Carolina. Great hot dogs. That's right. It's famous for the hot dogs that you could have a hot dog with mustard. You can have a Hot Dog with chili. You could have. A hot dog would hot dog. So we had the hot dog and it was just like, I really like this guy is awesome. And then he was living in the same neighborhood as. My best friend, business partner, as we were running bandwidth at the time, David Morgan, and hung out, mutual friends. And then over time, we really just had this sense of shared mission, that there's actually, rather than just talking about faith in the workplace and the struggles we had and the challenges and the opportunities, what might it look like if we actually got together and did something about it? And this is the point in time where... Through the grace of God, bandwidth was having some success and I'd meet some other Christian business owners, but most of them felt uncomfortable in sharing their faith in the same type of way that Dave and I felt liberty to do so because they had outside venture capital and what they're doing. And we'd gotten together along the way with another guy that JD introduces to, Andre Mann. And Andre had also had this thought that there's an opportunity to blend work and investing in business excellence. And so we got together and decided that the way to... Really seize the opportunity that we saw was to start a fund whereby we would be an encouragement to faith-driven entrepreneurs coming alongside them. And yes, absolutely helping them with customer acquisition and intellectual property distribution channels and things like that, but also encourage them as they encouraged us in our faith. What does it look like to have a chaplain? What does look like to pray with non-believing employees? And so Sovereign's Capital was started. And then life went on for five or six years as we endeavored to start a fund and run it with excellence, believing that you could get great returns, spiritual and financial bottom line, not at the expense of biblical values, but because of them. And through the grace of God and some great deal flow and some great entrepreneurs and great advisors and great investors, oh, my goodness, you know, six or seven years into it, we were finding great success and that we could throw it with some of the biggest venture capital funds. And deliver good results. But then we saw another opportunity.
Luke Roush [00:06:26] Yeah. So, you know, just to jump in to break up the monolog.
Henry Kaestner [00:06:32] Please.
Luke Roush [00:06:33] The reality of our work is that we were looking at all these companies and we'd look at 100 companies and there'd be like one that really fit the right stage, the right geography, the right industry, something that we felt like we could bring some value beyond just down stroke and a check. I think all of us were a little bit troubled, but Henry probably most of all, that like the other 99 people that we met, many of whom were running really great businesses, But it just wasn't in the right sweet spot for us. You know, they were looking for something a little more than some prayer on the way out the door, you know, and like, don't call us, we'll call you, let us pray for you and you know send you on your way. There's an issue with that in that it felt as though even as we were called to kind of build sovereigns capital and focus on the investing work and reinvesting time and energy in the companies where we invested, we had all these other companies that were looking for community, like they needed content. They needed a place to be able to come together and collaborate like with other entrepreneurs who were like them trying to build something for God's glory, but like wanted community in that. And so Henry, I think really identified that like we've got to do something for these folks because the sovereign's team at the time or even now today, like we can't pour into every entrepreneur that we meet. And yet every faith-driven entrepreneur needs someone or something to pour into them. And so FDE was really born out of this. Kind of heartbreaking for all these entrepreneurs that we were turning loose because we couldn't invest in them and we couldn t spend as much time with them as we wanted to. And then Faith Driven Investor came a couple of years later because we were really trying to say, all right, ultimately these builders are looking for ways to tap capital markets. They need help in being able to re-envision what they're building. But as they build, there's capital requirements for for creating new things, right, for scaling growth stage companies, for... Facilitating transitions in multigenerational family businesses that are more mature. And so Faith Driven Investor was a way of actually creating some content, some lexicon vocabulary for how do we actually educate people on how they can reflect their faith in the way they invest to complete the other side of the market. Henry's great analogy that I reuse weekly is that in the early days of sovereigns 2012, 13, 14, our industry was a little bit like the Eastern Black Bodega. But at least with an Eastern Block Bodega, there was a line wrapped around the block. In our case, there wasn't really much product on the shelf. What had been there was mixed in terms of quality, and there weren't really many people shopping in the store. And so with FTE, we started to actually develop more product in terms of companies that were being born. And with FDI, we actually started to develop a queue that started to form outside the building. But it's still early days.
Henry Kaestner [00:09:26] Today is a Spanish term for like a little Latin American market, and they probably have a different word for Eastern Europe.
Luke Roush [00:09:33] And mixed metaphors have never stopped me.
Henry Kaestner [00:09:34] No, me neither. I think it was awesome. You know, one of the things that I remember about that is there are these kind of these infamous stories of Anatole Melanchier coming in, who's a fate-driven entrepreneur that want us to invest in and he's from Moldova and we said, I'm so sorry we can't invest. But then there's John Porter, who came in after we'd started fate driven entrepreneur. And we thought, gosh, you know, we've got these resources, this content and community. By then, gosh fate driven entrepreneur probably had watch parties in 300 different locations around the world. And John Porter wanted to look for capital. And I said, well, I'm sorry, we can't invest in you because we're not investing in Africa. But we have all these incredible resources and really realize and talk to them that we weren't scratching his itch. But I went to Luke, we're talking about what does it look like to open up our LP base to invest in somebody like a John Porter. We knew that we had some LPs that had been to Rwanda, which is where this guy was running this company, Misaka Creamery. And this was not Luke's problem, this was my problem. I was just like, you know what? Gosh, if 80% of businesses in America fail, what are the chances of the business in Rwanda working out? And it's just, I don't know what it looks like. And if we refer this on to some of our LPs that have been to Africa, have an interest in Africa, maybe that just doesn't work well, and they're gonna assume we did some discovery and diligence on it, and this is just like a no-win, so we're just not gonna do it. But really, as Luke and I were processing that, it was really a Holy Spirit moment where we can realize that that was not for us to decide, and that we were being tight gripped. On our LPs and we weren't thinking first about the kingdom of God and that let's leave it to God and the Holy Spirit to help lead these LPs about where they'd allocate capital. And while we're at it, maybe we're not the only game in town. By then we'd had some success and we thought, gosh, if somebody is motivated by their Christian faith and they've got investment capital to deploy, of course, they'd choose sovereigns. But we never really just thought like Who else is God calling to the same thing that he's called us to? Is there anybody else out there? And there are lots of people, especially in real estate. And so we just said, gosh, we need to get out there and expose our investors to other fund managers motivated by their Christian faith. We did the first one in partnership with Chuck Bentley out at the Christian Economic Forum, which that year has been held in Deer Valley, Utah. We invited our LPs to an event. We found some. Faith-driven real estate fund managers that were very much started and run by their Christian faith, delivering incredible financial returns and incredible spiritual impact to their LPs by including things like chaplaincy in the way that they invested. And we said, all right, this needs to be a broader movement. This is not the sovereign's capital story. This is something that needs to much broader. And so that was this moment where we said all right here's an opportunity. To instead focus on just sovereign's capital, to instead, focus on a broader movement of the body of Christ looking to steward their investment capital in a way that built God's kingdom under his power for his glory with men and women who were driven by investment excellence. And that was the beginning of FDI. That's awesome. And somewhere around that, we decided let's talk about what we're discovering and let's interview some of these other fund managers and let' look at what spiritual integration looks like across investing in a bunch of asset classes. That we didn't have any any expertise in. I remember talking to a guy who was running a natural gas and an oil fund. I'm like, guys, where's the spiritual integration in that? I mean, how do you evangelize like a, you know, a barrel of oil, right? Because like, how about all the oil field workers? Like, oh, yeah, of course. And then we had a guy on the podcast early on had written the book, Thank God for Bitcoin, Jimmy song, I still haven't figured that completely out. But you know, there's spiritual integration and that or at least the guys completely convinced of it. But it really just, you know, part of this whole movement has been about just a personal quest of mine to just see God at work, to see God working through other fund managers. And you know it's the C.S. Lewis thing, right? It's like, I thought I was the only one that cared about this, but Luke and I have had the opportunity to interview really literally now hundreds of people that God has also given a calling to to start his capital with excellence. And so every time we talk to somebody, we hear more about just another one of God's image bearers doing some incredible things all around the world. And it's instead of this feeling like, oh my goodness, gosh, another competitor. It's like, oh my gosh, Luke and I and the team at Sovereign and the Team at FDI get to be involved with some unbelievable men and women. And it has been really cool.
Luke Roush [00:14:19] Well, I think actually like one of the things that was a shift is that the early days of the faith and work movement and the early days of what was traditionally called biblically responsible investing. So the faith in work, and this is actually first time Henry and I have actually talked out about it out loud. So it's kind of fun to process this together with him. But my sense of the early faith and work movement was largely about personal transformation, right? How am I going to actually contextualize my faith in the way I show up at work? And it was really more kind of internally focused, heart posture, head posture, stewardship, a lot of focus on generosity, but less focused on like, how do I actually leverage my business to change the way I build product and service, change the ways I engage with my community and actually be salt and light in a more catalytic way, not just individually being transformed in one or two people that I might work with, but actually more broadly. Like, how do I actually take this idea of what was originally called business as mission, which is more ministry people trying to become more sustainable in their work? How do I flip it and actually take red meat-eating capitalist pigs who are by the grace of the Holy Spirit being awoken in their faith and now actually looking to take their business and reshape it or take something new that they're trying to build and build in a way that is very, very catalytic? That's actually, I think the shift is actually moving away from. Early days of kind of faith and work, how do I see these two things come together in my life? No, no, no. How do we actually take a business and think about transforming the industry that we're playing in by virtue of the way we develop product and service, the way deliver product and service to our clients and engage with the community? I think the other thing that I would say is that going back to sort of the early days of faith-driven investor, before we waded into this and again, like all by God's grace for his glory. I think that the emphasis was more on like, what do we want to avoid? So biblically responsible investing was very much around what are the things that we really probably shouldn't own and profit from because they're antithetical to human flourishing and they rely on some form of addictive behavior in humans to make the business model work. So gambling, adult entertainment, you know, things like that. I think what Henry and I and Andre all got aligned on early is we want to be known not just for what are we against as believers, but more so what can we fall in love with? Where do we see human flourishing occurring in the marketplace? How do we want positively screen for businesses that are making a difference? Let's focus on that. That's the main narrative. There will be some things that we want avoid. There may be some other things where we want a presence on their cap table and then with management to see if we might reframe some of how they do their work. Primary motivating factor in the early days of the phase of investor movement, certainly sovereigns, was very much of like, let's be known for what we're for.
Henry Kaestner [00:17:18] This is a good time, so I really wanna make sure that I highlight some of the other influences. A lot of it was God speaking through His Holy Spirit to Luke and I, and then a whole bunch of others. Justin Foreman, who was running the Featured Entrepreneur at the time, was an early contributor, of course. But there's also a group that we got together maybe six, seven years ago at a French bistro after a Sovereign's Capital LP meeting. And it was people like Josh Kwan from The Gathering, and Mark Wesson from Eversource, and David Wells from the National Christian Foundation, And there may be a 25 or 30 getting together and just saying, okay, so what does it look like for there to be a broader movement in the way that we're able to hit at some of these themes that Luke is talking about right now, about what are we for as Christ followers? And that's really important. So it just has not been the Luke and Henry show by any stretch, although the team at Faith Driven has been nice enough to let us be on the mics a lot at the expense of the overall quality of the podcast. But there have been a lot of great. Great people that have really sown into our lives, prayed with us, for us, inspired us. You think about the redemptive work that Praxis does in helping to reshape the way that people think about how they're running their businesses. Lots of folks. God has removed the scales from lots of our eyes to include the listener to this podcast. And this is a movement. If you're listening to this podcast, this is something to bring to your community. One of the things we have been able to do over years is with the faith-driven team put together a community group course of six weeks that explores some of these concepts. And you do that in a peer-based community of 12 to 15 folks and with a great facilitator. So this is something that God is bringing us all into.
Luke Roush [00:18:59] Well, and two things that I've learned from Henry, one is we serve a god of abundance. We don't serve a God of scarcity. The early years of my career were very focused on direct competition and a bit of a zero-sum game. That's kind of how I thought. And that is not the reality of the world that we live in. And one of the things I've learnt from watching Henry is that like, now we need to be rooting for rivals. Like we need to be rooting for people who are doing work well. And there's a bunch of people, you know, even as the movement has evolved that went before, right? You think about Praxis, you think about Timothy, you think of Ave Maria, you think a whole bunch of other early movers that were down the road, at least wrestling with this question of what does it look like? And that work continues. You think of Eventide, you think Robert Netslade inspired, a whole of bunch of different people that have actually been circling on this area for a long time. And one of the things that I think has allowed. The movement to flourish is that broadly speaking, with maybe a couple of exceptions, broadly speaking the movement is for each other. Like there's obviously places where there's direct competition kind of A versus B, but by and large, like the movement has grown and rising tide raises all boats. I think people have kind of leaned into that. And also the broader idea that like, it is not about any one of the private equity firms or any one to the advisory firms, RIAs that are in this arena. It's really about like, what does God want to do? And Lord willing, He does it through us, but if He chooses to do it through someone else, we need to be excited about that because the mission is fulfilled. It's not about us individually, it's about the mission.
Henry Kaestner [00:20:34] Well, and it is a broader movement. I mean, maybe nobody better to speak about the expanse of the movement and the growth of movement than you, Richard, right? You know, so you're providing leadership for the fate driven investor, institutional investors summit. And gosh, how many folks did you have out at the Rosewood?
Richard Cunningham [00:20:52] I mean, what you guys are getting at is there's multiple expressions of what this can look The answer is 180. 180. You had 180 out. It was awesome. I like giving indirect answers, Henry, and kind of arriving after a nice monolog. Well, thank you guys for all of that. But yes, we've gathered- Keep on going. I'm sorry. I should have let you go. 150 to 200 the last couple of years of private equity and venture capital. 180. Managers. 180 is the round number. Gavin Newsom, thank. The desire is like you guys said, is hey, they all have a unique expression of faith-driven investing. There's a hundred plus trillion dollars in managed assets across the globe. Only a couple hundred billion of those are in explicitly faith-aligned products. But there's, Pew Research says there's 60% Christ followers in the U.S. Or at least people that identify with a Christian faith. And so just the numbers don't add up in terms of the number of assets within faith- driven investing made a couple 100 billion. There being a hundred trillion in managed assets in the US. And there's just such an opportunity for Christ followers to keep leaning further and further in. Like the math just doesn't make sense. And so the desire here is to say, hey, private equity and venture capital managers, you probably have an outsized opportunity to rethink the shaping of your portfolio or the spiritual integration practices you have. Not that a public equities manager can't. I mean, Luke could speak to that extensively in terms of the influence you can have on a public company CEO. Henry, you took a company public. Private equity and venture in particular, and private companies, when you have direct influence on the owner operator of the company, there's just an opportunity there. And so that's why we gathered those folks.
Luke Roush [00:22:22] Well, and to your point also, like, you know, I think that just to tie into that, one of the things that we've said since the beginning, and I think it continues to be true, is we want to be descriptive of what faith-driven entrepreneurship, faith- driven investing looks like, but not prescriptive. One size fits one, you now, and, I failed to mention Bob Dahl, now over at Crossmark earlier, but he's been thinking about this for a long time in different contexts, really active within the kingdom advisor community, think about Rob West and the whole K.A. Crew and the journey they've been on. So I mean, there's a plethora of different ways. To represent faithfulness in the way we do our work. And it's important to not become too myopic on our particular flavor of what it looks like. What is important and what I think is a mandate is you gotta be seeking Godly counsel. You gotta be on your knees in prayer and you gotta look at God's word. If you're doing those three things as you interpret where God's calling you as an entrepreneur or an investor, you're gonna end up in a good spot, but it's gonna be different. And I think that giving some grace as we all figure this out together is important. The good news, here's the good news. We're probably in the top of the second inning of a very long baseball game. So it is early. It feels like at times like we've been at this forever. But the reality is in the long arc of history and sort of what are we trying to build together for God's glory? Like really, really early innings still, still a wonderful time to jump in.
Henry Kaestner [00:23:45] Thousands, thousands of podcast episodes in front of us.
Richard Cunningham [00:23:50] I love a good baseball analogy, Luke. Thank you, guys. That's a lot of fun coverage. I guess the question that has to be asked next is what happens next? Luke, you mentioned we're in the top of the second inning of a really long baseball game. Where do you guys want to see this go? And I know, is this a domestic thing? You know, Luke, You spent a season in Indonesia building out sovereigns capital over there, making some Southeast Asia investments. Henry, we know about your passion for Africa, the school of hard knocks video that just went viral. You reframed kind of. What stewardship can look like in talking to Africa. Justin Forman is currently on the continent of Africa. As you guys think about where faith-driven investing goes next and broadly just kind of faith- driven movements, how do you frame up the global kind of domestic conversation?
Luke Roush [00:24:33] I'll comment super briefly and I'll turn it over to Henry, but I think our view from the beginning is that this is a global movement. The pacing, the way it shows up around the world is going to be a little bit different. But if we believe capital has influence to be able to shape culture, then that's an important opportunity, I think, as Christ followers, to be salt and light all over the world and to be to find ways to reflect our faith in the way we put capital to work and help shape cultures, many of which are still in the process of being born, developed, shaped. So I think it's a global thing and we've seen that at work very much in Southeast Asia, which is the only place outside of the US that we currently invest. But Henry, I mean, you've been much more globally exposed. Your thoughts.
Henry Kaestner [00:25:15] Well, from a movement perspective, and this is as you're saying, this is outside of what sovereigns capital as an investment fund does. But from a moving perspective, the singular thing I'm most excited about is the development of a faith driven investment industry in Africa with some unbelievably talented men and women with great investment backgrounds, Ivy League educated, Wall Street, 10 years. Real assets under management, really great performance. And then just a spiritual integration that is really almost unparalleled. Just the development, the maturity of an industry. As an investor, I get excited about the macro environment too. You're talking about a place where there is an average age of 19. It's gonna be the only continent that's gonna to be growing. Average age of cross-country is 19.2 years. The number of producers and consumers coming into a marketplace is astounding. There's been some great political stability. As much in Africa as anywhere, any other continent in the world. And you've got this incredible sense of just individual economies growing, six of the ten fastest growing economies in the World will be in Africa and yet only 0.5% of the world's venture capital and private equity are going on to that continent. Now I get excited about it from an investment perspective that's one that's seeking alpha, you know, you want to steward the capital that guys entrusted you with with excellence. But I also get excited about it because I also know that in a world in which USAID is pulling out, but believing that trade, as opposed to aid, works. Now that's not to say that the way that we pulled out has not been very, very shaky, and I would have done it differently, to be clear. And yet, as a Christ follower that is stored in individual capital, or maybe institutional capital, to look at an opportunity in Africa where there are hundreds of millions of people living on less than $5 a day, believing that as we... Invest in that marketplace, providing employment, and doing that with faith-driven entrepreneurs, faith- driven fund managers. There's a chance that 20 years from now, that is a vibrant marketplace, that it's all about spiritual integration. You know, one of the things I love about Africa is that when I go and speak to faith- driven entrepreneurs in Africa, I don't have to tell them that the work matters to God. When I'm here in America, in my hometown, there's some amount of work for people to just kind of lean into the fact that God has glorified through our work in the marketplace. And this is something I picked up from Brian Fickert. We had the vestiges of this evangelical Gnosticism, right? Which is a thing that comes from the Greek faith, which is the separation from the secular with the spiritual. They don't have that in Africa. So like, of course we should pray before our board meetings. Of course we shouldn't pray for the healings of our employees that are sick. And of course, we should have a winsome witness to those who don't yet share our faith. Of course, of of course. And so we have this opportunity as faith-driven investors to be able to put capital and encouragement and in prayer support. Behind these entrepreneurs as they in turn develop relationships with us and they pray for us a big part of the reason I get excited about Africa is this selfish thing as I do that as I get involved in these stories of these African fund managers that are doing this with excellence I come to know God more fully myself you know it's all about me right I get more as I stored capital now. To be clear, this is not about an Africa story. This is about a bigger, broader thing. It's about us as the body of Christ getting on our knees and just asking God how he'd have us steward the capital he hasn't trusted us with. And for some of us, it will be check out what's going on in Africa, it's amazing. For others, it'll be let's look at innovative ways to continue to think about real estate investing across multifamily or retail or office, incredible things going on and co-working. There's more of an opportunity to expand what's going on in the lower to middle market. Incredible things that are going on the venture side. Think about all the just incredible technologies and artificial intelligence and the opportunity to come alongside investors like a Mark Sears that's coming up with a novel approach, the redemptive way to do domestic AI investing. So there is incredible opportunity all around the world, but this is one that's not to be prescriptive. As Luke said before, it's meant to be descriptive. Opportunities virtually in every asset class, in every geography, but it's an invitation to us all to just ask God how he'd lead us and with a hopeful expectancy that as we ask that question, he'll answer.
Luke Roush [00:29:38] And here's the vision. The vision is that every Christ follower, independent of net worth, independent of asset class, independent of geography, has an opportunity to reflect their faith in the way they put capital to work. That's the mission. And so back to kind of what does the store shelf look like, still really, really early, there's tons of opportunities. And there's areas of the world, there's different industries, there's different types of businesses, where you can have more or less impact. Doesn't make one better than the other, but there are highly catalytic parts of the world. And sectors of the economy where I think that, you know, the impact can be multiplied. So super exciting about where things are going.
Henry Kaestner [00:30:14] Guys, it's been great to do this with you. I'm just, I'm grateful for you, your friendship, your partnership. I'm thankful for all of our listeners. My request is that as you're listening to this, this is a movement of God and it's not meant to be consumed, it is meant to be passed along and encouraged and maybe you get together, a group of people there in your small group and just wrestle with things like this. But thank you for tuning in over these 200 episodes. We wouldn't have a podcast if we didn't have listeners and we wouldn't a movement if God wasn't. Inviting others to participate. So you as the listener are a big part of what God's doing.
Richard Cunningham [00:30:47] Well folks, this has been episode 200. It's coming out on June 30th as you listen to this. Going forward, one of the things I wanted to say from a housekeeping standpoint is that the Marks on the Markets will continue as every other episode for Faith Driven Investing podcast and the video podcast will start to be more and more normal. We've seen a couple teased out with Brent, be sure. Henry thought today was a video podcast and so we'll see, there might be some social clips of Henry today. But going forward, the actual in-studio live FBI video podcasts are coming to kind of match more of the Fates of an Entrepreneur podcast. But pump for the next 200, Luke, pump for next 200 Henry, thank you guys for your time today. What a joy to celebrate the FBI pod together.
Henry Kaestner [00:31:26] 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 faithdriveninvesting.org. This podcast wouldn't be possible without the help of many of our friends, executive producer Justin Forman, intro mixed and arranged by Summer Draggs, audio and editing by Richard Barley. Our theme song is Sweet Ever After by Ellie Holcomb.