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Alright, so welcome to the meaningful jobs podcast season two. I'm your host Adrian and
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today I'm hugely honoured to welcome Robert Natalie onto the podcast. He's the CEO of
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Inspire Investing and he's got a lot to share about how he got into wealth management and
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how he found meaning in his work and to give advice to you basically to see what you can
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do better in your career to find more meaning in what you do. So welcome Robert, nice to
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meet you here. It's a pleasure to be here Adrian, thanks for having me. No problem.
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So I understand that before starting Inspire Investing you actually studied in a completely
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different subject I believe it's liberal studies. Could you maybe tell us a little bit
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about how you make that switch? Yeah, well, you know my first job was actually teaching
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martial arts when I was in high school and then like I had to stream I was just gonna
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be the barefoot martial arts teacher above you know the school above the Chinese food
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restaurant or something like that was gonna be my life, you know. Then I decided to go
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to school to be a fourth grade teacher and so that hence the liberal studies degree but
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I actually dropped out of college didn't go back my senior year because I started selling
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alarm systems door to door like part-time like to put myself through school sort of
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thing on the weekends and I made $96,000 that year you know working part-time on the weekends.
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So a lot of money for a young kid. You know this is a while back so you know teachers
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were making a third of that you know after graduation. Anyway, long story short I ended
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up getting to sales and business and one thing went to the other, did a lot of youth ministry
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work when I first got married and yeah and at roundabouts I kind of ended up in the wealth
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management industry of all places after the company I was working for went out of business
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in 2008 and I found myself looking for a job. One baby here and another one on the way.
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No idea what I was gonna do and just really praying about you know a family-friendly schedule
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I'd been working nights and weekends and that was like not good for my kid and my family
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and I didn't really like it and so I just figured I'd apply at bank jobs so I ended
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up with a job at Wells Fargo private client service and then investment department that's
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how I kind of started to learn the investment industry really just kind of on the job.
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So like were you really interested in wealth management from a young age or did you just
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somehow stumble upon it? No, like I said I was looking for a job that was family-friendly
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and I figured okay banks are open 9 to 5 Monday through Friday that's basically it so that's
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a good schedule. You know math was actually a major subject in school so it didn't really
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make much sense from that perspective and it wasn't something I necessarily had a man
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I wish I could be in the wealth management industry. And it was just the job I got and
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it was a sales assistant was the job title and I'm like well I can sell and I can assist
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and you know you're going to give me $80,000 a year full benefits and it's you know just
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during the week days and good hours so there we go I'm going to take that job. And yeah
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and it turned out I did like the industry and it took to it really well and learned
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really quick and got licensed and moving up through the ranks in that world. So I just
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see it as God's provenance. I'm a Christian and I believe God leads us in ways as we seek
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His will in our life and certainly I could see that happening. It wasn't some grand
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plan of my own right? So I'm thankful for how God has led me from that day and forward.
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So you mentioned quite a lot about sales and I guess you know perhaps you might be a natural
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sales person from a young age. Like how important would you say sales is in you know having
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a successful career as a wealth manager? I mean there's a lot of different personality
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types that are successful in wealth management. Sales is one of them. You know there's plenty
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of men and women I know who are very successful and they're not sales people at all. You know
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they're analysts or they're you know some other sort of kind of engineering mindset.
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So it's really just about in that space in the wealth management space and you're working
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directly with clients or you know there's careers in the back office or portfolio management
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or what have you right? A lot of different ways you can go and I think an important part
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as far as like a career goes is just how has God gifted you? What are your skills and abilities
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right? And so that's and how can you leverage them to the best effect you know to care for
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the people that if you're married and have kids you know then how do you care for that
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family? How can you just make the most of your contribution to help others bless others
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and and just kind of doing that into introspection right? So if you're not a sales person don't
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take a door to door sales job right? I mean that might not be the best way to go but just
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know who you are you know and and find a find a place where you can really thrive just being
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you and I've found that to be very freeing in my life and certainly helps you be more
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effective than in the work you do. Would you say it came natural to you in terms of how
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how you discovered what you were good at? Because I think for myself it actually taught
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me quite a number of years after graduating from college to really understand what I'm
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good at and you know that's why I then just began my entrepreneurship journey. For yourself
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like did you struggle to or did you use a lot of time to figure out what you're good
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at or bad at? Yeah I think my whole life has been that and I'm still figuring things out
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and learning things about myself hopefully we all are and it's just you know one thing
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after the other one step at a time there's a really great book I read a long time ago
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I recommend that often particularly to younger folks trying to seek the path for their life
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right just called Just to Do Something is the name of the book Just Do Something by
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a man named Kevin DeYoung it is a thread from a Christian perspective but it's about
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helping you find a direction in your life right and you kind of that have that what
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am I going to do with my life sort of question it's easy to get analysis paralysis and just
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think through all the try to think through all the variables and well what about this
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what about this and what if that and it's just impossible so I think you just need to
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you know do some introspection okay what what do I have right now what are the gifts and
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abilities and skills and experiences what are the opportunities in front of me which
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ones make the best fit and just go for it and just do something and you learn along
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the way you can always change direction and go a different different way I know I have
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in my life and and just hold those things in the open hand and seek to really just do
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a good job wherever you're at and again as a Christian we have a there's a verse in
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1st Corinthians 1031 says whatever you do whether you eat or drink or whatever you do
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do it all for the glory of God so that's that's what I try to do and whatever work I find
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myself in it's just really seeking to honor God which means loving him and loving people
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and you know it doesn't really matter what you do as long as you're doing those two things
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it's gonna be good life I see so I understand you've got like a short stint in well maybe
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a few years in Wells Fargo and then you actually decided to start your own fund called Inspire
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Investing and I think based on my research the most interesting thing I found is that
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you select which stocks to or which companies you're investing based on a stringent Christian
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criteria could you maybe let our listeners know like how you switched from Wells Fargo
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to starting your own fund and yeah how you investing companies yeah and that's again
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one of those things it wasn't a it wasn't a plan but I was happy as a clam working at
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Wells Fargo was in the Carmel California nice little coastal town there and your pebble
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beach and all the rest if you know that area the world beautiful million dollar account
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minimum second story office looking over the you know view the Pacific Ocean just I had
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no plans to change anything right in that scenario I was like I stumbled across really
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by accident yeah really by accident this this article online one day about something called
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biblically responsible investing and what that just means is you're paying attention to not
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just the financial aspect of a portfolio but the moral aspect portfolio what are these companies
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doing to actually turn a profit you know they're violating human trafficking issues and their
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supply chains are they selling pornography are they manufacturing abortion drugs like
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all these different things and so I was just curious I had never thought about that before
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and so I looked in my folio my clients portfolios and honestly the Holy Spirit has gripped my
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heart on that and because here I was president of our local pro-life pregnancy center at
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the time and I also own three stocks of companies manufacturing abortion drugs which is a complete
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disconnect right and I just incredibly convicting to me that I was in such a just such a conflicting
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space and with my values and then you go down the list and there's there's just all sorts
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of things you know going on in these portfolios that I was totally unaware of and basically
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in two weeks I just couldn't do my job with a clean conscience anymore and frankly I didn't
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know if I could stay in the business anymore because I'd never met anybody doing what we
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do now if it was even possible to invest a different way man so I just went home told
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my wife hey honey I think God's calling us somewhere else here's what I found and she's
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like well we got two babies in the mortgage so what's the plan right and I don't know
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what the plan is so we just started praying and really seeking God's will for our next
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season here was just really close to going to seminary being some sort of vocational
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pastor but you know the only other way I could think of staying in the business was leave
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the bank start an independent firm that just did some sort of biblical type you know something
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I rather investing and I didn't even know what to call it right and but that was crazy
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kid and have any money or experience or whatever like all the things that you need to have
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and but as we as we prayed God made it abundantly clear that's exactly what he was calling us
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to do me to do and so about two months later I made the incredibly frightening decision
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to leave the bank left my clients with the team I've been with previously started over
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from scratch just me a laptop less than two months of savings in the bank fully prepared
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never to pay my mortgage every time in my life but knowing without a shot of a doubt
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this is exactly what God has called me to do and there's nothing else I could possibly
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do except this even if it was a complete miserable failure I just this is what I have to do right
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and like okay Lord your turn your time to show up right here we are and I started sharing
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the story with people about you know educating them about what I found and saying here's what
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I found here's I'm doing and they had the same reaction I did it was crazy their eyes
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got big their giants to floor like wow I've never thought about that before how do I find
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out what I'm invested in what does it look like to invest differently and the business
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started booming and so I had to actually start looking for another advisor to join me in the
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firm to help with the growth which was never part of my plan I had no grand vision to start
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any sort of enterprise but one advisor led to two led to five to ten to twenty to within
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a couple years mentoring hundreds of Christian financial advisors all over the United States
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who had somehow heard about from a friend of a friend of a friend about what was going
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on over in our little neck of the woods and they were having the same sort of conviction
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experience I had and they're like I have to change how I'm running my practice how do
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I how are you doing what you're doing can you help me so we did and and obviously God
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is at work he was doing something open the eyes of his people to this huge issue and
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opportunity and one of the problems was there was not a lot of product to use so you know
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as we're mentoring these advisors and running our practice there was just you know we kept
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getting the question where where would you find a low cost index based like biblically
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responsible investment solution to use because that's how I built my practice it's a big
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you know it's a big thing in the investment industry is index investing and the answer
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is nowhere there's was no product so we tried and tried and tried to get actual asset management
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companies to launch product for us and you know there's a lot of interest because there
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was a lot of money coming in the door but you know we got down to the values that we're
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screening for in these secular firms just you know couldn't see themselves doing that
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from a political standpoint or what have you and so that just left us in 2015 sitting around
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our little table in the office you know I'm saying I guess that means us let's figure
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it out so did it again about three or four of us left a retail practice left our clients
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with the rest of our team start up from scratch no money no clients you know started inspire
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investing with that name new company with the goal of investing in the most inspiring
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biblically aligned companies in the world right we're going to kick the bad actors out
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yes but where are the best companies that are like really blessing the people that they
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interact with their customers or communities workforce in the world and let's make low
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cost indexes out of that you know it was pretty cool how it started growing again and then
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all of a sudden like we had this 20 year like big huge goal it wouldn't be cool to have
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a an ETF one day and exchange traded fund which is like a you know it's trades on the
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New York Stock Exchange people combined over the world that'd be super cool and it became
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a two-year reality right we were on the New York Stock Exchange closing ringing the closing
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bell launching our first two funds on a wing and a prayer a lot of top ramen beans and
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rice but and then the next day we're on the front page of the New York Times and then
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we're in the final 20 18 was it around that 2017 2017 February 2017 and then yeah financial
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Times Wall Street Journal hundreds of articles start coming out we didn't have a PR team
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it just the Lord blessed it fast forward to organically then I guess yeah yeah organically
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I mean just there's this huge market right there's people of faith yeah all over the
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place yeah and you know I think most people would be hard stretched to name a firm or
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anyone who's actually focusing on the faith-based market and he's sort of significant meaningful
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way to provide products that are aligned with their the deeply held values yeah and so here
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we are and and there we go so now fast forward we're managing about 2.1 billion dollars and
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we've been in the top three fastest investment firms in the nation fastest growing investment
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firms in the nation for a number of years running ink 5000 top quartile financial Times
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fastest growing public private company yeah in North South America just glory to God because
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obviously this was not part of my plan like I mentioned is just God's plans are better
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than ours and if we seek Him first and all we do He is faithful to provide and lead us
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and it doesn't mean financial you know wealth and success that's not it at all but there's
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always a blessing in my opinion when we we seek Him first in more than just financial
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more important ways but and I'm thankful that in our case He's something to bless our business
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and grow this movement help us to reach and really just serve people of faith all over
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the world to help connect the deeply held values with such an important part of their
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life which is you know how they're saving and investing for the future.
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Well I always admire people who can actually make the jump from having a stable job into
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starting their own business or switching jobs without even having a job offer and I think
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I guess as Christians we've got the benefit of God who will lead us in making decisions
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but to the non-believers of our listeners who might be thinking of you know making a
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job switch they don't believe in God though like what advice would you give to these people
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like in terms of whether they should make a you know switch in their career or not.
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Well there's a in Proverbs again whether you believe in God or not there's wisdom and
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it says in Proverbs that if you seek wisdom like silver and gold that you will receive
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it you'll find it.
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We believe that God gives it to you whether you're a believer or not if you seek wisdom
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God will give it to you.
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He's trying to show you himself and ultimately I would say seek the Lord like seek God He's
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there and He wants to help He wants to be a blessing to you He made you for a purpose
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and so in all sincerity I would say seek after Him and test Him in that but definitely seek
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wisdom there's wise people there's wise counsel there's podcasts like this you know there's
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I'm happy to talk to people you know as much as I can and you have a busy schedule but
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I you know I love having conversations and help people out you know and if there's a
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way I could be helpful I would love to do that you can find me on LinkedIn.
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Yeah.
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Yeah I just again just do something right don't don't just sit and think.
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Sit, think for a little while and then go act right do something.
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Right really really inspiring I think so I've always been fascinated by you being a Christian
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but also being you know a wealth manager because these two terms might be an ox moron in terms
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of some people's you know viewpoints whether they are I believe either or not.
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How would you say how difficult would you say is being a Christian but also managing
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such vast amounts of wealth.
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Right yeah it is I mean they're not mutually exclusive right I mean you can be a sincere
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follower of God person of faith and be wealthy but it is dangerous there's plenty of warnings
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about wealth and there's perhaps few things in the world that will take our eyes off of
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God and off of the good pure and true and beautiful than money.
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Right the pursuit of power and money and greed and even if we don't think we're greedy just
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the desire to be rich you know is really deceptive and you know Jesus warned about
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it however money is not evil the Bible doesn't teach that it is the money is the root of
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all sorts of love of money is the root of all sorts of evil love of money but money
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itself is just is sort of a neutral thing right so that's it's a high calling as many
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other as many callings are we take that very seriously here and it is a sobering thought
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that you know as we're advising people on how to interact with money right how how to
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invest it certainly but even how to like what's our heart posture for its money like how does
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how does that control our life or are we in control of it right do we serve God with our
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money or do we serve money as our God do we do we help other people with our money or
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do we you know take money from people as often as possible you know there's a really there's
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there's two rows and man it makes a lot of difference how your life ends up yeah how
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you interact with money in the role of that place so that's how we how we seek to really
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with sober mindedly and really sincerely point people Christians and non-Christians to just
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a proper relationship with money where it's a blessing in your life it's a blessing through
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your life to other people and in a love of love your neighbor sort of way and not in
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control of your life it not an anxiety causing you know idle in your life which is just terrible
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way to live I guess you must have had you know temptations in the past you know being
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so involved with money on a daily basis like how do you prevent yourself from falling foul
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of these temptations yeah yeah there's I'd say like for me personally you know in
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the area of wealth and whatnot you know pride is always a temptation and you know anxiety
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worry I mean running a business especially in the startup days is like I don't know you
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know there's days out of days away from making payroll like I where's not money in the bank
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I don't know what's going to happen right and the Lord has been faithful we've always we've
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always come through it's just been you know story from the day but miraculous how God
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is provided for us yeah but in those moments right we all have them whether it's just in
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our family where we're kind of prone to worry yeah and be anxious about financial things
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for me I can only just speak for me is I just I just take those to my God you know I take
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them to Jesus and he says in his word to cast all your anxieties upon him because he cares
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for you and whether you believe in him or not he still cares for you you can cast all
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your anxieties on him and he proves himself faithful to help you just be at peace I mean
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because look who of you by worrying can change anything in your life you know add it into
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your life add a penny to your bank get worrying does nothing but cause pain and suffering
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in your life so that temptation the the the antidote to that temptation towards anxiety
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worry is really just having peace and trust for me and God I don't know frankly if you
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don't if you don't believe in a God who loves you and cares for you I'm not sure how you
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get around that anxiety and worry because there's not a whole lot else to hold on to
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sometimes and all the more reason to seek him while he can be found right I see so you
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know lastly before I end usually I'd ask my guests and how you find meaning and work aside
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from money so maybe could you first of all tell us a little bit about the most important
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you know soft skills that you think are important in her career yeah I'm a soft skills man I
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touched on you know learning about yourself and just kind of knowing yourself well that's
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that's incredibly important in a lot of different ways just your personality you know those
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areas where you kind of can continuously you know self-destruct perhaps you know to put
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it that way relationally or what have you it's being aware of those things and then working
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on those things depending on your career path you know various degrees of types of leadership
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training management styles I believe wholeheartedly that if we seek to be a blessing that we will
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be blessed again not just in a doesn't mean you're gonna be rich and successful right
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not that sort of blessing maybe but not it's not a you know it's not a math equation like
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bless others and you'll be rich that's not the thing but but you will have a blessed
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life and ultimately I think that's what we want right relationally and otherwise so you
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know cultivate a life of learning cultivate a life that seeks to bless and like love others
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first before yourself and I think it'll just be kind of amazed at how the way God has created
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this world how that just blesses you in return so I guess this ties into how you kind of
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find meaning in what you do as a fund manager so aside from money what would be the greatest
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source of maybe satisfaction from helping people manage their money the greatest source
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of satisfaction and there's a lot of that one of the greatest is when we get emails
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and messages and you know tweets and whatnot from people all over the world I've never
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met them I don't know how to hear about inspire investing or anything about what we're doing
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but they the way they talk about our business and our products our ETFs is not like people
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usually talk about a financial company or funds it they you know they got tears in their
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eyes and they're saying thank you so much for for doing what you do because I you know
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I've been wanting to be able to just honor the Lord yeah through how investing is money
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and I've had this like conflicting conscience for so long because I just know these companies
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are doing things that are just you know deeply opposed to my values and biblical values but
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I just don't know what to do you know you can just feel the angst and then along comes
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inspire funds and and now they have a solution and they it's more than just hey I found a
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new fund to invest in it's this this angst is gone I am free to worship the Lord and
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how I invest his money you know the money he's given me on his behalf and there's such joy
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that they have and it's like they're saying they're praying for us and they're telling
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other friends and family it's just to see the impact that something like an investment fund
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you know can have just in people's soul is so meaningful and you know and lots of different
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lines of work I mean you can have such an impact far beyond just sort of what your product
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category typically does for people you know if if you design it in a way to just really
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be a blessing so that's that's certainly meaningful for me.
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Right well that I think that's really amazing because it's I didn't really expect you know
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customers to send emails saying you know they have tears of joy in their eyes and I guess
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that must be you know quite a great motivation for you to keep on expanding your business.
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Usually I also give you know my guests an opportunity to maybe talk about how they recruit people
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in their company like I'm not sure if you're hiring or if you might have hiring plans in
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the future but for people who might want to get into wealth management or even into your
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company what's the typical recruitment process like.
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Yeah we're a fast growing company so there's opportunities you know often and if there's
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not one today then check back tomorrow you know that's the sort of thing.
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Oddly enough we don't have like a careers page or anything on our website still it's
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kind of like on our to-do list we should probably have one yeah but we don't and but how we've
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grown and have found the right people is really the right people have found us more often
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than not you know we're such a mission driven organization that we we receive a lot of inbound
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requests of people who just like love what they see going on over here maybe they're
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in our industry maybe they're not maybe the career changer and but they just they just
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reach out and sometimes you have a job opening right then and there other times not but you
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know if you for us it's just we want to hire for a cultural fit first someone who's just
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totally on fire for the mission that we're on here to invest you know in line with the
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biblical values right we call it inspiring transformation for God's glory throughout the
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world and helping every Christian in desperate for God's glory and so if that's like like
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someone's fire I want to know who they are and they should reach out to us at inspireinvesting.com
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and then we put them through a process and get to know them and you know of course we
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can't hire everybody but we that's the first step so if you see a company that you just
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love right and just whatever like what they do or what they stand for or whatever that
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is just call them email them find someone on LinkedIn like don't wait for a job to come
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up I would say just I mean just reach out and say here I am and I love what you do and
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I'd love to have an opportunity and you might be surprised.
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So lastly you're personally I'm really interested in you know investing how financial markets
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work from a personal point of view which sectors do you see growing in the next few years.
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Yeah well I mean there's a lot of different ways to answer that there's you know for time
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frames and niches and whatnot I mean right right now the second because with the recent
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like bank crisis yes do you think it's seriously impacting how you make investment decisions
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and do you see it you know having a contagion effect on the whole economy not just in the
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US but even yeah yeah yeah I I tend to think that there's going to be more contagion I
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hope not I hope not on the scale of 08 but you know recently with Credit Suisse and UBS
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being you know put together there Credit Suisse was failing that's their huge institution
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over here in the United States you've had Silicon Valley banks signature banks and others
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and as you know this kind of worldwide economic situation of inflation and you know I don't
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need to list all the issues going on for your listeners I think we're all well aware.
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Yeah there's a lot of problems and that's going to be a difficult situation now there's
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always opportunities and if you are an investor I think when there is widespread challenges
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in the markets and companies are under pressure and stock prices are down like those are typically
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the better times to buy right you need to be sure about when that is and how that is
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and if you know if you should somebody who can give you good advice about that like a
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wealth manager unless you're you know very studious on these these topics but there's
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opportunities there.
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Areas like biotech you know I think there's just there's a lot of potential in the future
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through biotech huge innovations life changing you know discoveries but it's it's a really
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tricky space to invest in it can be you know very risky just in general you know the the
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faith-based investment movement is is huge yeah I encourage people if you know if you're
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a Christian you know look at what's going on like do a Google search like just search
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be able to responsible investing to see what's going on millions and millions of people all
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over the world are starting to join this movement and it's it's a really exciting thing to see
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how we can just shine the light of goodness through the financial markets which offer
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an art place of darkness right so that's those are two of trends right there of course
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we're in the faith-based investing movement that's we see that every day but yeah for
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right now there's I think there's going to be opportunities in the market as different
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areas and sectors and you know companies continue to have challenges and so be prepared as an
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investor to take advantage of those get some advice be ready and then you know hold them
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for the long term and don't get shaken out when things get scary because they probably
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will yeah if not this year sometime in the future you know you've got to be hold your
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convictions hmm all right thanks so much for coming to my podcast and hope to see you soon
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again absolutely my pleasure god bless
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