Latest / The On The Rise Podcast / Investing That Makes the World Rejoice
Transcript
- Rise48 Equity: Welcome to the Faith Drive Leader podcast. My name is Nick Stromwall, your host. Got a really, really fantastic guest today. Wes Lyons. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. ⁓ Wes, we met at a Kingdom Advisors conference last year. ⁓ one of my friends, Ben, introduced us. I believe you guys were in some type of kind of small group cohort together and had known each other for several years. Is that right? Yeah, we've been in a mastermind together for for a decade now, actually. ⁓ my gosh. it started out, ⁓ five of us who ⁓ were all financial advisors, all had young kids and all wanted to follow Jesus in both our family and ⁓ work environments and it's matured over time and we almost every year we go do some adventure together and get on a call once a month together, but it's an amazing group ⁓ that really ⁓ it it's authenticity of the the culture is that you that we press each other on the hard things, like are you say you want to live your life this way? Are you really doing it West? You say you value this. Does your bank account match what you say you value? Does your calendar match what you say you value? So it's an awesome group, guys. ⁓ Ben's Ben's a good friend. So let's just d jump into that for a second because I think there's a lot of people listening that might be here about 10 years together, meeting monthly, a yearly adventure, maybe you even feel a little jealous. Like how do you create a group like that? Where does that even come from? Did you have to pay to join this? Did this kind of happen organically? How did it start? ⁓ originally it was a one of the guys, Patrick McGuinty, just had a passion that he was gonna find a group of financial advisors who had a similar heart. And he literally like he found me going to a fee-only advisor conference, hunting through bios on the next gen group, and found a reference to the navigators where I was volunteering as like, ⁓ you probably are a believer if you if you're volunteering with the navigators and like hunted me down. Like he was on mission to find this group of people who are in the similar life stage and and it shared the passion. ⁓ so kudos to ⁓ to Patrick for hunting us down and having vision for it. ⁓ but it also ⁓ what immediately pops into my mind is our is our spouses. Like the when you have young kids the willingness to send your ⁓ it's we're all guys so send their husbands off for a couple of days every year. ⁓ they they've clearly seen value in it in that we are ⁓ in the way that it has affected us. ⁓ because they sacrifice every time we hop on a plane and we're gone for three days. and ⁓ so I think of our spouses and the sacrifice that they've made to say this is really special. but ⁓ yeah we just the the Lord has blessed that friendship and it is worth the intentionality. As I think what I would exhort ⁓ it didn't happen by accident. It happened because Patrick was on mission, it was like, I am going to find men who share passion and are willing to do this with me. Wow, that's really powerful. ⁓ well, we connected over several things ⁓ when we met in person. And one of those is Trail Life, ⁓ which is a kind of outdoor adventure scouting program. How did you get introduced to Trail Life? ⁓ I was actually there's a there's a smaller ⁓ version of a similar thing called Alert that I was in ⁓ but our really good friends ⁓ we're helping lead the trail life group and ⁓ we just went and checked it out and it's it it ⁓ it's a bunch of dads that are trying to be intentional together, going camping together. it's a lot like scouts in in the like they're going through all the badges and things like that. ⁓ but really Christ centered and ⁓ it's a it's a structure in which I can be intentional with other dads together, if that makes sense. Yeah, for sure. It's ⁓ I I kinda think about it like a vehicle for one one facet of discipleship or formation ⁓ of your of your sons specifically. There's a a sister organization called American Heritage Girls. So me and my my three sons have been involved and we we really, really enjoy it. ⁓ well I want to jump into your story. Tell tell us more about growing up. ⁓ what did kind of faith look like at home before ⁓ you kind of stepped into kind of your next calling in life. Yeah I grew up ⁓ homeschool kid in a a missionary family but domestically here in the US. My dad was a missionary with the navigators to ⁓ international students that were ⁓ at ⁓ American universities. ⁓ so always grew up living on gift income ⁓ in ⁓ in Washington DC actually. And ⁓ but there were always people living in our home from some some place really far away, whether it was Nigeria or Kenya or Japan or Korea. We always had interesting people living in our home. And ⁓ I think that affected me more than I thought that was normal ⁓ when I was seven, eight, nine, ten years old. ⁓ but looking back, ⁓ we have a very international team today. I think it did I didn't have your average suburban experience in that we were having dinner with ⁓ with all kinds of people. ⁓ but ⁓ when I was in high school I was rowing and got recruited to go to the Naval Academy and row for them. And ⁓ and that was a challenging fun experience to row for Navy and go get a degree there and ⁓ dominoed into ⁓ meeting my wife there. And so we were both ⁓ naval aviators together for almost ten years and ⁓ yeah, we joked that ⁓ she would always lead all men crews in combat. We were aviators on P threes that hunt submarines or hunt tra ⁓ hunt ⁓ terrorists and ⁓ it was always all men that she would lead. So We have four sons now. We joke that her ⁓ her whole career has been leading men. They just got smaller and more demanding. ⁓ so she was well prepared for the four men that the Lord wanted to raise in our home. That's amazing. Cool. ⁓ yeah, we have three sons and I'm I'm one of four boys. So it's it's amazing the the impact that you can that you can have when you really invest in that that next generation. So I I guess how what was the draw To the Naval Academy. I imagine if you're a rower getting recruited, there's probably other offers on the table too. I think ⁓ honestly it was this idea. I think I was petrified of the the normal suburban life. ⁓ I looked at people who had two kids and a dog on on straight street and I was like, that looks petrifying. I do not want to kind of die a slow death in suburbia, if that makes sense. And I was like, if I go here. It might be hard, but I think it'll be exciting, if that makes sense. And ⁓ I mean I I laugh about it, my wife and I do, 'cause she had a similar narrative of if I go to a service academy, at least things would be interesting, kind of running away from suburbia. We now live in suburbia with four kids and no dogs, so of course we but ⁓ we've ended up in what we said we would never do. ⁓ but ⁓ but we do get to to fight great battles, ⁓ as I'm sure we'll talk about in a moment. Yeah, that's amazing. ⁓ okay, so Your story then goes from the Navy. What happens next? ⁓ pretty soon after graduation, I've I always had ⁓ it was an engineering degree that I got. I've ⁓ basically always had a book on God and a book on money or investing or business running simultaneously for ⁓ almost twenty years and just gravitated towards investing, personally running ⁓ trading strategies and ⁓ started talking pretty early on. with a financial advising firm about coming to them when I was done with my Navy commitment. ⁓ so went back to school and got the CFP courses done and took the CFP actually right while I was at the Pentagon ⁓ working in joint staff acquisitions and then went and became a financial advisor. Like got ⁓ did that for five years. That firm that I went and was an advisor at ⁓ loved private assets and started doing at first what were accidental impact investments and then gravitated more and more ⁓ ended up birthing what's now Eagle. ⁓ and I just gravitated towards the impact investing side of investing because I I love investing but I also love seeing the world change. And when I saw that those two could mesh through through a single vehicle, it just was like, whoa, that is worth betting a career on. If if it would be possible to get paid to do that, I'd love to do that. And ⁓ the it dominoed through to the group that's now Eagle was hired to build a fund together. And share that similar passion. And ⁓ just over ten years ago stacked hands and said we we want to build a fund on impact investing. That's amazing. Okay, so s for some of our listeners, they might not understand that term impact investing. So you can't can you unpack that for us? Yeah, very simply. ⁓ it's impact investing is investing for not only a financial return, but also some other measurable change you want to see in the world. ⁓ that might be If you're doing affordable housing, you want your financial return, but you also want people's ⁓ housing meaningfully uplifted. Or it might be that you are investing in ⁓ healthcare and you're measuring your success by your financial gain, but also people healed. Or like in my ⁓ my I lead the counter-trafficking vertical and our measure of success is both our financial gain to investors, but ⁓ the number of children rescued or traffickers arrested. ⁓ the change that we make in the fight against human trafficking. Okay, that's amazing. So a couple of years ago, I read Faith Driven and ⁓ Entrepreneur, Faith Driven Investor, and then I read ⁓ Don Simmons Steward Investor. I kind of had this kind of progression of thinking about how I want to steward my own resources. And part of it is it's kind of you get open to this world of alternative investing, private placements, syndications, funds. It kind of opens up to, ⁓ wow, there's actually a vehicle to multiply your resources faster. Every investment carries a inherent level of risk. And then there's actually some vehicles where the very vehicle itself isn't just, you know, producing a outsized return, lowering your taxes and you know minimizing risk, but there's also some impact to it too. How did you kind of come into that world or want to Do that with your career or your calling. Hey everyone, just a quick word before we jump back into this episode. I'm Zach, the CEO of Rise 48 Equity, and I want to take a moment to share a little bit about what we do and why we do it, because I think it's going to resonate with a lot of you who are listening to this series. At Rise 48, we're a real estate investment company, but the way that we think about our work goes beyond just improving properties and generating returns. We genuinely believe that when you invest in a community, you have a responsibility to invest in the people who live there too. That looks like hiring community managers who are present and engaged with residents. It looks like hosting monthly events for our residents to build an actual community. It looks like our team showing up together to volunteer and partner with nonprofits in the areas where we operate. For those of us who are faith driven, I think there's also a deeper question underneath every investment decision. And it's not just what's the return. It's what is my capital actually building? Those two things should and can coexist together. At Rise4gate, we built a model where strong returns and strong communities go hand in hand. If that's the kind of investment that you've been looking for We'd love to connect with you and tell you about what we're building. You can learn more at rise48equity.com and we'll get you right back to the episode. I mean honestly we originally got into venture capital because we wanted non-correlated total returns. We wanted investments that didn't move with the Fed. It's ⁓ I remember in two thousand and eight being so upset like somebody had lied to me when the entire screen turned red at the same time. I was like, the sixty forty portfolio is supposed to move in opposite directions. ⁓ and obviously there's a dampening effect of having bonds in a portfolio. It's not completely crazy. But I felt like somebody had lied to me. Like literally everything moved the same day. ⁓ and largely due to what the Fed did. And so we were hunting for ways for our high net worth clients to build portfolios that had different risks. ⁓ things that literally wouldn't move when the Fed convened. Is was like the very simple ⁓ and that got us into early stage ⁓ in ⁓ technology investing. And some of that was really changing the world, solving malaria, solving Bullying solving different problems that these technologies were able to touch. And it was really those entrepreneurs walking alongside them and seeing that ⁓ they were tackling really big problems. Malaria is really big, cancer is really big. Human trafficking is really big. And honestly, the bigger the problem, the bigger their opportunity was. And some of them were crushing it. And I ended up kind of confronted by their success, if that makes sense. these these entrepreneurs that I'd invested in because my mental model was that if you wanted to change the world you had to give money away. ⁓ and if you wanted to make money you had to go almost this linear scale. I don't know if we ever talk about it. We have this idea that like on one end you give your money away. It's complete loss. And it's this linear scale all the way up to the people who make the biggest money are just barely staying out of jail. ⁓ is kind of this j general sense of like they're skirting the rolls, they're barely standing out of jail and they make the most money, and that it's kind of linear in between there. ⁓ the existence of the these entrepreneurs and their success challenged all my assumptions. And and honestly, that's when even tide was starting to succeed as well in the public markets, because we also did public market investing. They were crushing it with their investing that makes the world rejoice. And ⁓ I started asking, wait a second. Could you invest successfully in ways that moved our ⁓ moved my heart, moved God's heart, made the world rejoice? I love the language that even Tyve uses. ⁓ their success was challenging. The subset of our portfolio that was impact investing was challenging and birthed this thesis that maybe you can do incredibly well investing, focusing on solving problems that move our hearts. Wow. So A lot of people might be listening to this, and this might be kind of new concepts for them, kind of moving through these different phases. If someone wanted to learn more about impact investing, where where would you send them? What what what resources should they be looking at first? Honestly, one of the best places to start is Rachel McDonough's book River in the Garden. Kind of gives you just as a narrative form of a family going through discovery on impact investing and private investing. ⁓ it is a journey emotionally to start to grapple with these ideas. ⁓ I rem there I've had experiences where I'll tell people all the incredible things happening, both the harm that's happening in the world and the ability to solve it with for-profit investing. And if you if it it can be challenging to grapple with the idea that our fundamental assumptions about investing are might be wrong. Like the very biggest fundamental assumption is the purpose of investing is to make money. I fundamentally believe that's wrong. The purpose of every organization on the planet is the exact same thing to solve a problem or express creativity. And one of the fruit of solving a problem is that you can in for-profit land is that your revenue and your enterprise value should grow But it is similar to saying that you could ask me why did I marry my wife? And I could tell you I wanted four beautiful blue-eyed boys that were growing and strapping. And you would have a decision on your hands about whether you told me that that's the wrong answer. We're we might not be good enough friends where you challenge me on it, but you it would be an awkward pause if I answered that way. Because you know that's not the right reason ⁓ to to get married to her. No, I got married to her because I fell in love with her, wanted to spend the Rest of my life with her. And one of the fruits of that was that we have four beautiful blue-eyed boys. There is a big difference between the fruit of a thing and the root of a thing. And in investing, the most obvious fruit is financial performance. But it is not the purpose of either building enterprises or of investing. And that's a fundamental shift that you really have like. As you're building businesses, you really have to go through. Like that's why I think a lot of people gravitate towards real estate in ⁓ in faith through and investing, because it's so easy to understand. Putting roofs overheads is fundamentally redemptive. If you do that really well, people's lives are better. It's so easy to kind of connect. The world is a better place because we built that multifamily property or that self-storage property. People are problems are solved. ⁓ and one of the ways that you can measure whether you created value for the world is whether the financial performance was there. ⁓ but you have to If you're gonna go on this journey, you have to be willing to ask really hard questions way down to the root of why do you build businesses? Why do you invest? And if our model of the world is is as accurate as we think it is, then we will have a it it'll be like we're playing on a three-dimensional map of the globe and everyone else is playing on a flat earth map map of the globe. We should have inherent advantages if our model is better than theirs, and therefore we should outperform. But if you're coming to us because of outperformance, you miss the whole boat. So that's really good. I hope people can ⁓ rewind that and listen to it. I think is is really good and there's there's so much opportunity in the impact investing space as well. ⁓ okay, take me back to twenty eighteen, the Philippines. What happened? What did you see? I had the privilege of commanding the US deta I was officer in charge of the US detachment to the Philippines. A couple I had 55 guys and two aircraft and a phone number for the Delta Force that were embedded with the Filipino military ⁓ fighting door by door through ⁓ a city that ISIS had taken over. ⁓ so every night we would fly down and ⁓ we would be the overhead eyes in the sky for the Filipino military, helping them ⁓ take their city back. And one day I checked in on station as we broke through this. Clouds radioed down to get the tasking for the day. And the tasking was ISIS is going to be using children in combat to lure the Filipino military out of their positions. Go find these kids before it's too late. And it was just a jarring experience to to try to understand. My first thought was why on earth did they bring their kids into combat? Because I had like I had no grid for what what was happening. And then it doesn't take that long to go, wait a second. Of course, ISIS didn't bring their own children into combat. They found somebody else's and then coerced them. Turns out there were about 15,000 kids ISIS ISIS had brought into combat camps, basically. ⁓ And ⁓ and I didn't find them that day. ⁓ They those we were there's not a happy ending to to that story. ⁓ Down the line, the l I would find that the Lord was working and answering answering our prayers. And we got to play a fundamental role in ISIS losing control of that part of the Philippines, which is really encouraging. But I was changed in my in the aftermath of trying to comprehend that. And I think what changed in me was growing up in suburban Washington, DC, you know that there's crime out there, you know there's people who do bad things. I don't think I had a theology that had really ⁓ it I think it always jarred me a little bit when the Bible would talk about like evil people. Like, ⁓ are people i is there really such a thing as evil people? ⁓ if that like I know the Bible says it, but I think we're supposed to think that everybody's inherently good. I'm just telling you how bad my th theology was, if that makes sense. And that was one of those moments where I realized, like, no, I think there really is evil in the world and there's something worth fighting. And that I I feel like it was like a yeast that went into the dough of my growing up and impact investing. this ideal i was lodged like yep there is structural structural evil worth fighting. ⁓ of course today that looks like our whole practice area of fighting human trafficking with for profit dollars. ⁓ but it started with I had to believe that evil was evil and that it was systematic, that there were organizations that would pull fifteen thousand kids out of their parents' homes and groom them for combat. Like it I had to that had to become part of my world before I could turn and begin to fight it. Wow. Yeah. I can't imagine what that was like. And as I've watched the content, it's it's absolutely heartbreaking to to see how people ⁓ take some someone made in God's image and and abuse it. And I'm sure that was probably a a big pivot for you when it when it when you started going down the trajectory of what do you want your life to be. How did that shape what you're doing now? d I mean it's i our life is a culmination of a bunch of small choices. ⁓ y and my family as a background like had some experience in trafficking. It was building to this like I think theological shift of believing that there was evil in the world. and then a bunch of I feel like so many of the innovations and steps in my career have been entrepreneurs proving to me what was possible. I keep the boundaries of what a creative entrepreneur Can solve with a for-profit model, keep getting pushed and keep getting pushed. Like we had one-off abilities to get into companies that were fighting human trafficking. But ⁓ I didn't realize that it was possible to do what we do today. Like we we our one of our most successful entrepreneurs literally ⁓ builds packages for law enforcement, hands it to them, and then when law enforcement takes down a trafficking network. ⁓ they're able to share in the money that they seize from human traffickers. So it's not even law enforcement paying us, it's human traffickers paying us to take down human traffickers. And you're like mind-blowing innovation to ⁓ is a business model innovation to go, wait a second, traffickers have tons of money. Don't the police seize them? Would they would they allow us to help them to take down the network just by sharing in the seizure? That's the type of innovation where you're like, I I could not have imagined that we could have used human traffickers' dollars to fund the demise of human trafficking in the United States before we started. And I keep getting blown away by the innovations like we were one of our nonprofit or one of our for-profits is approaching $3 million in revenue helping homeless people come off the street. I literally had I would give examples of home investments that I would never get to make, like homelessness, because I was like, well, clearly there's no payer. Who's willing to pay? Turns out, ⁓ Hospitals ⁓ on average pay about eight thousand dollars per month for every homeless person within a two mile radius of that hospital. And so if you can come alongside them and help them bring a bunch of those people off the street, they save ten times what they spend on this company that helps homeless get off the street. ⁓ and so it's a for profit model where homelessness it that's a more extreme example, but It's again and again been entrepreneurs where I get to walk with them and experience what they're doing, and I get blown away. Like the creativity of using market-based solutions to achieve the change you want to see in the world. I'm like, I'm like, I should stop being surprised, but I keep getting surprised. You know? I mean, I'm just kind of like my my jaw is just like, that's amazing. so so what percent of the dollars that you're capturing from traffickers is actually funding that arm of the business, I guess is what the question. But I don't know if you have that data. ⁓ that business was built to ⁓ built around that thesis and so it's a a huge chunk of that business. It's called implicit good ⁓ ink. ⁓ they also, because they're so good at that, just get hired by police because they want a lot more of what they do. And there's not always a seizure on the backside. ⁓ so they get hired to solve murders and different things like that. ⁓ but ⁓ but that is the that is the core business model of what IGI exists to do. That's one of twenty five companies we have that are working on counter trafficking. So portfolio wise it's a smaller portion, but it's a huge chunk of their business. Okay, so tell me more about Eagle and the Eagle funds that you've created, the Freedom Fund and what's what's happening. Like let help our listeners understand the mechanics, not just the mission. So in early stage venture capital, we get to come alongside entrepreneurs that are ⁓ are solving some big problem in the world. We've been impact investors for ten years. We've had funds totally dedicated to counter trafficking for about three years. the magic to understand what we do is to most people have pictures of impact investing that involve philanthropy ⁓ at its core, where they take a ⁓ an old school business model. And they bolt philanthropy onto it. So one of the most famous examples would be like the Tom's company. I'm gonna sell you a shoe and I'm gonna give a shoe away. Deeply redemptive, if it but we call that ⁓ we call it bolt-on impact, because they took the basic business model of selling a great shoe, bolted philanthropy onto it, and that's how you got the impact. And we juxtaposed that against what we call direct impact companies, where a comp where companies are paid to see the the change you want to see in the world. So like one of our companies helps refugees get placed into jobs. And on average their income goes up about two and a half times before Veriskills and after Veroskills. And they've gone from a concept company up to they're trading at a at a great valuation today. And their revenue is their pay double person get a much, much better job. So they literally get paid To see the change we want to see in the world. Because it and where it comes up, most people don't have a mental model for this. So they'll hear us describe what we're doing, and they'll normally end up asking a question something like, What about the tension between profit and impact? Like if it comes down to it, which one do you want more of? Like, are you really in it for the ⁓ in the profit, or are you really in it for the impact? and there's some aspect of they just want to hear our hearts, and that's different. But like with Vero Skills, ⁓ they're paid to see vulnerable people get way better jobs. I would kind of flip the question and be like, well, how many vulnerable people would you like to see get great jobs? ⁓ I can't get to a hundred thousand people, vulnerable people placed into jobs without this becoming a like incredibly valuable company. There is no t like there is no tension between their revenue and their impact. They're directly correlated. And and that is the heartbeat. It's of what we're I go to those stories because that's what we're attempting as well what we aspire to at Eagle is to build portfolios where obviously there's always risk. Like these it's not about eliminating risk. It's that if our IRR is through the roof, you will also know the world has become more of the world that you want to see change. ⁓ it is highly correlated with the world becoming the place that we want to live in. ⁓ because every one of those companies got paid to see the change that we want to see in the world. Getting that direct correlation. ⁓ And for entrepreneurs that are that are building, it's about building business models where you can get paid to see the world, the change you want to see in the world. So if your passion is most about vulnerable people in foster care or something like that, go hunt that problem down and figure out how to get paid to see the change you want to see in the world. And it just brings a deep, deep joy to building that business. It is hard to do this. I'm like we look at five hundred deals a month to get down to one. It's not that these come around every day. ⁓ but it is really, really easy to root for ⁓ to ⁓ for Jonathan who's helping homeless p people come off the street to go from two and a half million to twenty five million in revenue 'cause we're rooting for so many re reasons. Like, of course we want a great IRR, but it's a really big deal to come off the street. That's a life transformed. Wow. That's really encouraging. Okay. So speak to that leader who's listening to this. And maybe, you know, two ditches they could fall into. One ditch is, you know, to have impact, I I need to do something explicitly impact focused versus, hey, I'm gonna build a plumbing company and I'm gonna do that for the glory of God. I think both can be God glorifying. I don't think one is is better than the other. But at the end of the day, how do you integrate your faith? into your work. I l I love digging into like ⁓ If you've worked with a bad plumber and a good plumber, you know that it is deeply, deeply redemptive to have a great plumber, if that makes sense. so it's like the three ⁓ three dimension it we we look at it as like three-dimensional impact, if that makes sense. ⁓ the redemptiveness of the work that you do, if the plumbing in my house works, it matters for my life. It truly truly affects my family. And so from a ⁓ you can set vision for companies about being deeply trusted to do that again and again. And it is an asset to the community when you have a great plumbing company. There's also the effect it has on employees. And you could be like, all right, well, how many excons can I hire? How many refugees can I hire? How much how much can my hiring process transform? And can I use chaplaincy? There's all the effect on the people in the business and then there's the the effect of what you do with the profits. So I would just challenge people to look with multi dimensions. it's not about ranking whether ⁓ implicit goods work where they get to hand packages and see traffickers go to jail ⁓ for their ⁓ process is better or worse than a plumber. Because if we had no plumbing, the entire community would be in crisis. We would have to stop everything in order to go fix prop plumbing problems, you know? ⁓ it's it's not about ranking those. It's looking at multiple dimensions and seeing what moves your heart most. If bringing chaplains into your business is getting you really excited, go do that. If hiring the most vulnerable people and seeing live streams, like getting great jobs for vulnerable populations is transformative. Like if you want to get upstream of human trafficking, you deal with economic problems. Like at its core, it's a deeply, deeply economic issue. ⁓ So I would challenge people to just integrate their passions into what's where their skill and the world's pain overlaps. You know, rather than looking at our story and saying, Well, I wish mine was like that, you know. I think you're on mute. Are you? That was really good. I'm gonna write that down as a quote. Thank you so much. okay, you've worked with some some great ⁓ organizations. ⁓ I think recently you've you've partnered up with Tim Tebow. What was that like bringing him into the the latest opportunity? They put us through a whole rigorous process to to join Tebow World. You go through a lot. ⁓ but it it was really good. They brought so much expertise in, ⁓ and Tim did and his team did on fighting human trafficking from a philanthropic perspective. Like there are a few better organizations than T B O Foundation on taking a philanthropic dollar and producing change in the world on ⁓ both special needs and and fighting human trafficking. That was a di deep expertise that w that really added to our team. ⁓ and then of course he bring a lot of people are aware of what he cares about. ⁓ because he he has a ton of followers. ⁓ but ⁓ it's been ⁓ learning to work together has definitely made us stronger as we've because people have been fighting human trafficking for a really long time and we they helped us get into the room with so many of these people that are 20 years in have written the laws that ⁓ that are really, really deep on this. And we have some cool innovations that are helping move the needle on fighting human trafficking. We also are trying to ⁓ humbly come in and build with those that are twenty years deep. If that makes and not just say, We're the entrepreneurs, we have these ideas. ⁓ so they've really helped us try to mesh the innovative entrepreneur with the folks who have been in it for twenty years. and just learning to ⁓ be very careful with s how we shape the wording around this. ⁓ 'cause like some of ⁓ they they had to grapple with is it okay to make make money fighting human trafficking? Cause it if a lot of people would love to take Tim down a peck. ⁓ he just looks too too excellent, you know, if that makes sense. And ⁓ and that helped us shape the language around ⁓ what it means to to ⁓ invest for a deeply redemptive goal. ⁓ because the precursor assumption around why would you invest to fight human trafficking is that you're kind of extracting something from a system in order to invest. Yeah, you have to it gets to your core assumption about like, well, if every investment is about solving a problem, well, which problem do you find most redemptive to solve? If you come in from that angle, it looks blazingly obvious. This is a wonderful place to invest dollars. If you come in with the preconceived notion that investing basically extracts from the system and philanthropy adds to it, you're like, Well, I can't extract from the system via fighting human trafficking. It it gets into s it is matured our language around why we invest because we've had to a answer those questions from from that angle of ⁓ well what how would people criticize this? Yeah. That's really good. ⁓ you know, we could probably go for a long time, but maybe final question. For a Christian who feels called to use money as a tool for justice, but doesn't know where to start, what would you tell them? I think it's really powerful to listen to like the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Listen to ⁓ I have been transformed most by coming alongside and actually being involved with people who are just one step ahead of me. Basically. As the entrepreneur who's doing something a little further than I thought possible. When I make a bet on them and and hand them a check and join their board, I get transformed by them. ⁓ but I mean almost back to the beginning of the conversation of like finding the five of us that were saying, Hey, we're on mission and in and we each had areas where we were kind of a little further than the other people and the others where we were getting tugged. ⁓ finding people who are one step ahead of you. ⁓ and maybe they're just maybe they've done chaplaincy and you haven't. Or maybe they figured out how to share their they f they're like share their faith at work five times last year and you're like, I haven't done it once. Let's let's hang out. Just like one step ahead. ⁓ It's a little bit i if somebody's like seven steps ahead, it's hard to make the leap. The Lord has like brought those people and just ⁓ seeking out people ⁓ that are that are taking those steps that you want to ⁓ want to take. And then you can vicariously do that through the podcast. That's why I think of podcasts and whatnot, just listening to those stories. Cause tr stories transform. ⁓ it expands our our capacity a little bit for imagination of Well maybe what is the intention of God for my plumbing business? Well, this has been a really good episode. Thank you for coming on, for sharing more about what you're doing. If people wanna learn more about you, the company, the the groups that you're ⁓ bringing together, where where should they go? ⁓ Eagoventure Fund dot com is our website. ⁓ we have ⁓ we put out quite a bit on LinkedIn as well. So if you search us up in either of those places, you can there's a stream of stories coming out of the team to Awesome. Well thank you Wes, this has been great. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. ⁓ we can just leave this cache in here. I'm gonna I'm gonna let it keep recording. Our editor's gonna ⁓