The Kingdom Investor

23 - Doing Business Supernaturally While Acquiring $500 Million in Real Estate | Paul Moore

November 01, 2022 Daniel White Episode 23
The Kingdom Investor
23 - Doing Business Supernaturally While Acquiring $500 Million in Real Estate | Paul Moore
Show Notes Transcript

As entrepreneurs, you keep busy schedules, do many tasks simultaneously, and are constantly on the chase for profits and money. What do you pray for when you pray? Do you struggle to ask God for favors for your business or does it come easy? Is there a divide between your spiritual life and your business life?

We dive deep into the topic of merging secular business and supernatural business in this episode with Paul Moore of Wellings Capital. Having struggled for decades with a false dichotomy of his business life and spiritual life, Paul has come to the realization that doing secular business such as real estate melds and unifies the business of promoting God’s kingdom as it provides a unique platform for entrepreneurs to reach out to more people that any pastor can. Listen now and find out how with $500 million in real estate acquisitions, Paul has become even more passionate about doing business supernaturally. If you want to be inspired by stories of faith, successes, failures, and God’s faithfulness and constancy, this episode is for you!

Key Points From This Episode: 

  • Paul’s earlier notion of a dichotomy between the spiritual life and the business life 
  • Paul’s realization that business life and spiritual life coexist and should be lived fully and passionately
  • Paul shares his personal background - education, career, early businesses, and search for ministry.
  • How Paul pursued balancing his business interests with the supernatural business of pursuing God within the church and outside of the church sphere
  • The story of Matt McPherson and why God is always present in our lives if only we ask  
  • Paul shares about his business and how he became successful as an investor.
  • What does Paul think is the key to his business success?
  • What unexpected lessons did Paul learn along his business journey?
  • What’s the best investment that Paul has ever made with his time, talent, and treasure?
  • What is Paul’s biggest failure in his career?
  • Paul’s advice on how to grow in generosity
  • What’s one thing that Paul would like to be remembered for?
  • Paul answers the mentor-minute questions.


Tweetables:

“I want to be as passionate about doing well in business and doing business supernaturally inside the four walls of the church and outside of the church sphere.”

“God is really trustworthy. I stopped counting a long, long time ago the times that God bailed me out, that God bailed our family out.”

“I don't think God is a vending machine in the sky. He's not obligated to us, we're obligated to him.”

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Wellings Capital

Matt McPherson

The Inspiring Life of George Müller

The One Thing by  Gary Keller and Jay Papasan 

Exodus Cry

AIM Agape International Missions

Nefarious: Merchant of Souls | Human Trafficking Documentary on YouTube

Click to Find out more about our upcoming event: "Crafting Your Kingdom Investing Thesis" 

EPISODE 23

[INTRODUCTION]

ANNOUNCER: Imagine taking your generosity to the next level, impacting more lives, and leaving a godly legacy for generations to come. Get ideas and strategies to do just that when you listen to these personal stories from high-level Kingdom champions.

The Kingdom Investor Podcast showcases business leaders who have moved from success to significance, sharing how they use worldly wealth for Kingdom impact. Discover how they grew in generosity, impacted more lives, and built godly legacies. You'll find motivation, inspiration, and practical steps to grow as a Kingdom Investor.

Daniel White (DW):  Welcome to The Kingdom Investor Podcast. I'm your host Daniel White. And together with my co-host, David Clinton, we are interviewing Paul Moore. Paul is the founder of Wellings Capital. Wellings Capital is a real estate private equity firm that seeks to help high-earners and high-net-worth individuals protect and grow their wealth through passive commercial real estate investing. Wellings Capital has invested in over 17,000 self-storage, manufactured housing and multifamily units across the US valued at over $500 million. Paul is married with four children and lives in central Virginia. And now let's get right into the show. 

[INTERVIEW]

DW: Welcome to The Kingdom Investor Podcast. Today I have with me, Paul Moore and David Clinton. 

David Clinton (DC):  Hello, everybody.

DW:  Paul, will you share a little bit about yourself and where you're coming from?

Paul Moore (PM):  Absolutely. You know, I gotta tell you the truth, though. I lived with a problem for decades. I was a follower of Christ for the last 37 years or so but I spent the first, most of the first 30 with a problem. And it was right here between my ears. I really had this false dichotomy that there was the spiritual life which was great and important and powerful, and really mattered a lot to God. And then there was all that other stuff we had to do like business and making money. And I really had this false dichotomy. Like what I prayed, I think I would pray about, you know, God stuff, evangelism, missions and reaching, you know, all kinds of people and helping human trafficking victims. But when it came to praying for my businesses to succeed, well, I was just kind of a necessary evil. And I really thought that there was a difference, a big difference between, you know, like, missionaries, you know, up here, and then, you know, pastors, and then you know, like, other people in that worked on stuff in the church, then way down here, you know, second-class citizens, business people and investors. 

PM: Thankfully, I came to the conclusion that was completely wrongheaded. A number of years ago, I realized that, you know, in our role as business people, we get to touch more people than the average pastor could ever dream of. And it's not just putting money in the plate. I mean, we can do really important things in the four walls of the church. But you know, if you guys have heard of the seven mountains, there's six other mountains outside of the church mountain, or six other spheres as Bill Bright call them outside of the church sphere. And those other spheres are really, really important as well. And so I want to be as passionate about doing well in business and doing business supernaturally as I would, you know, doing anything inside the four walls of the church as well. And so I'm trying to get that down straight. I think I'm getting closer.

DC:  Are you familiar with the faith-driven entrepreneur? 

PM:  Yeah, I am. I just we just joined that group. We just added our Wellings Capital website and information to that platform about two weeks ago, and I'm reading I'm slowly going through the book.

DC:  Cool. That's great. 

DW: All right. Paul, would you open us in a word of prayer, just praying for our listeners in this time, that it would be edifying to Lord?

PM:  Yeah, Lord, I am so grateful for Daniel and David and I'm so grateful that you have placed these men with a desire and a passion to bless people and to glorify you and to let your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. So, I thank you for this amazing opportunity to be here and I pray that You would give me the words, give them the words and give listeners ears to hear what you're speaking to them, even if it's not something any of the three of us say. I pray that You would speak to them through Your Holy Spirit and that you would move their hearts to more generosity, more passion for Jesus, and more love to see your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. In Jesus' name. Amen. 

DC: Amen. Thank you, Paul.

DW:  So Paul, would you give us a little bit of background and backstory of you and kind of your journey and what that looks like?

PM:  Yeah, absolutely. I went through engineering school and my senior year, I decided to become a Mormon. And I wasn't in a town that had any Mormon churches, I guess they are called? And so I went out to Denver, Colorado for a summer job. And I told everybody, I'd be coming back as a Mormon. And if there are any Mormons listening, I have the utmost respect for you and I really, you know, appreciate God's image in you. However, it's not the path I chose to go down. I ran into somebody at work, like my second week there at work, who steered me on a different path. So I decided to follow Jesus and I was beginning that journey out, you know, from even having a church background, not even knowing the difference between the book of John and First John and had a really exciting summer that year in Denver, and I came back full of passion. We started a Christian rock band. I met my wife in this Christian rock band back in 1986. We got married in ‘87, we have four kids. I worked at Ford Motor Company for five years, have my own company, we sold to a public firm five years after the end of Ford.

And then I moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and tried to get into ministry. And every time I tried to get in and just hit a stone wall. And I think that that was part of that mindset, I had that, you know, if I was really spiritual, I would be in ministry. But God just kept opening up business doors and so I started in real estate. I thought I was a full-time investor. But I was more of a halftime investor, halftime speculator and I learned a lot of painful lessons through that. I had a podcast that Daniel, you know about, called "How to Lose Money” for 4 years. And anyway, I found through real estate, the kind of a transition from speculating into investing. I've written three books on real estate investing now. I write a lot for BiggerPockets. I manage six funds with my company, Wellings Capital, that allows investors, accredited investors, to invest in a variety of commercial real estate assets.

DW:  Yeah, that's good. Thank you for that. So I wanted to talk with you a little bit about just this secular-sacred dichotomy. And really, it seems like in my journey, that I've either been 100% business-focused, and you know, pounding the pavement, or 100%, kind of in this, like praying, spiritual waiting, trusting and reliant, and what is the balance between that and how do they integrate and things like that. So, I wanted to kind of preface the conversation with, if we look at Jesus's ministry, and how successful that was, and how he had, you know, five to maybe 20,000 people at one time, and he was, you know, for the feeding of the 5000, or 4000, Sermon on the Mount. These big, like, conference-type events where he's really drawing the crowds. And, you know, you look at the beginning of His ministry, and he did two things. One is he spent 40 days in the wilderness being tested by the devil, and growing in his relationship with the other. And then the second thing that he did was he gathered his team and started pounding the pavement and he went to I think, 200 different villages and spoke to, like, 300,000 people.

DC: What was that verse you were telling about, Daniel?

DW: Yeah, it's in Matthew chapter four. And it's in the end of the chapter. It says, And he went through all of Galilee. And if you look at the region of Galilee, it consists of about 200 villages. And the population is about 300,000 people. So he's really putting in the effort to build this ministry and launch this ministry. And so I guess, in your career, and looking back on some of the success that you've seen, and really the balance between you putting in the effort and the business logic behind it, and the supernatural side of, you know, praying and seeking the Lord and waiting on the Lord. You know, tell us about that. What does that look like? Do you have any stories to share?

PM:  Yeah, that's a great question. I think that this is not an answer to your question. But I think it's really important for us, especially for us who struggle with that false dichotomy to not answer the question, "What would Jesus do?" "What would Jesus do? You know, back in the 80s, late 80s, probably in the 90s, you know, WWJD became a big bracelet and a bumper sticker and something else based on that wonderful book "In His Steps" by Charles Sheldon, I believe from the 1890s. But the question is not "What would Jesus do? It's just slightly different, but I think maybe a little more applicable. I think the better question is, "What would Jesus do if he were you?" "What would Jesus do if he were you, Daniel? David? Others listening? What would he do if he was a podcaster? Or a real estate investor? What would he do in the situation? 

I mean, if we look through Luke 6, alone, in about 10 or 20 verses, we can see, you know, this incredible manifesto, to love our enemies, to forgive those who trample on us to bless those who persecute us, to actually loan money people and not money to people not even expect interest or principal in return. Those are hard things. But Jesus tells us to do that. And so I've found that as I work and learn, you know, to forgive people that are, you know, in my spiritual family, or my physical family, like my wife, we've been married 35 years. But let's face it, it's not easy. And it's not always easy, at least. We had about 25 of those years that have been really, really hard. And I had to learn, and she had to learn more to forgive you know each other and forgive our kids and people in our church and our sphere of influence. Well, I take those principles, and I find out that I'm way more forgiving at work. I'm way more kind at work. I'm way kinder to investors, and staff and vendors, and operators we invest with and all that. I’m way more willing and likely to give them the benefit of the doubt, and way more likely to love them and hopefully pray for them as well. 

So, as far as that balance between, you know, my spiritual, so-called spiritual and so-called work life, my business partner, for some reason he didn't grow up, even though he's only 29, he didn't grow up with that same false dichotomy. So it's really natural for him to pray for our business. He’s really natural way of and he's taught me a lot, because he has been way more willing and, you know, forthright about, you know, all that. I'll tell you what's been hard. And that is, I've been way more willing in one-on-one situations, in coffee shops, or gas stations or grocery checkout lines, to be very bold about my faith way, way more than I have been on investor calls, you know, in situations with investors. And so that's something I definitely want to grow in. 

And though I will say that when I have done that with investors, especially I think when I felt that prompting by the Holy Spirit, I mean, as far as I know, I don't know what they were thinking. But from what I could tell, it went really, really well. I mean, one guy was on the phone with, I said, hey, I just thought this is super unusual. I just had the sense there's something really wrong that you need prayer for. And, he was like, stunned. He goes, well, yeah, my cousin just died unexpectedly and I'm just distraught. And so that turned into a wonderful conversation, you know, gave me a chance to minister to him. I wish I would do that more often. 

DC:  That's awesome. If I'm hearing you there's not a divide and there's not a tension really to be resolved. Is that what I'm hearing?

PM: Yeah, I mean, that's what I want to believe. Can I tell you a quick story? Yeah. So, Matt McPherson is an amazing guy. Matt McPherson was a bow hunter. I think he's an engineer or mechanic and a tinker-type guy and he loved bow hunting. He loved Jesus. He loved his family, and so he would go out and do like these weekend worship events and evangelism events and he would get like $28 in the offering plate. And he had, you know, like five kids. And so that wasn't really working out for him so well. He also really liked bow hunting. Well, he felt like God whispered in his ear one day, just this thought, “I have the best ideas in the world for everything if people would just ask me.” Well, Matt didn't ask the Lord for a solution to world hunger or a cure for some terrible disease or the end of a war. He said, it sounds kind of snarky. He said, “well, God, if you have the best ideas in the world for everything, well, you help me build a better bow.” You see, this is a bunch of years ago. And the compound bow was invented in the late 1960s. But it had never been perfected because of the two cams on it. The top and the bottom cam would never fire perfectly at the same time, and he couldn't figure it out, nobody could figure out how to fix that. Well, after he asked that bold question, I think the Lord laughed. 

Two weeks later, Matt McPherson reports that he was sleeping, and he woke up and there was a piece of notebook paper floating in front of his face. He had the three-hole punches, the lines, and a schematic drawing on the notebook paper of a completely different kind of compound bow. So, after shaking himself awake, he gets a pen and paper and he starts copying it down. His wife rolls over and says, what are you doing? He says, I think I'm having a vision. Well, anyway, he copies it down, he wakes up, and realizes it's absolutely brilliant. Surprise. And he goes out and gets a patent on this. And I'll fast forward a couple of decades now. Now, Mathews, M-A-T-H-E-W-S, Mathews is the top archery company in the world, has dozens of patents. And, you know, Kia makes a lot of cars and they make a small profit on every car. Rolls-Royce makes a huge profit on a few cars sold per year. But Mathews makes the largest profit on the largest number of bows sold every year. And that McPherson credits God to getting him started. 

Matt McPherson to this day still walks around the mall in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, according to his friend that I talked to still doing evangelism, still leading worship, still passionate for Jesus and crazy thing. He also invented a completely new kind of, are you ready, acoustic guitar, and bass guitars. The McPherson guitar is sought after and it's now like it starts at like $7,000 and up, if I'm not mistaken, my friend got one. And it's just a completely amazing guitar. I think that just kind of shows, you know, hey, look, if we're willing to invite God to work with us, you know, I think, he'll do amazing things. And I have stories that are not quite that dramatic but I have stories like God has showed up for me too when I've asked him boldly.

DW:  Wow, that's cool. Paul, can you share a little bit about your business and what you guys do and how you've been successful as an investor?

PM:  Yeah, so we, for, I imagine centuries, commercial real estate has been the playground of the rich and famous, the insiders. You know, the people in the world who have, you know, the connections, who have the money, who have the ability to call the bank and get a multimillion-dollar loan. And, you know, a lot of real estate investors for a long time have wished they could get into commercial real estate, but they didn't know where the on-ramp was, they didn't know where to start or who to trust. And that changed a lot in the last 20- some years I've been in real estate investing, with the advent of syndication, and of course, you guys know what that is.

But syndication is an opportunity for people to trust one person or one operator or syndicator, or asset manager, whatever you call them to do the heavy lifting and then have a whole lot of people passively participate by investing. Well, social media came along the same time a major law change happened in 2013, the Jobs Act, and it just exploded, the syndication opportunities to the masses. And so now, it's the opposite problem. Now, there's so many opportunities that investors don't know who to start, where to start or who to trust. I mean, they could go online and find Hundreds of potential deals to invest in, but they don't typically have the time the knowledge or the expertise to figure out who to invest with. And you know how to do due diligence. So our company Wellings capital, we put together a fund of diversified, diversified across asset classes, diligence, operators, geographies, strategies and properties that allow investors to get into a recession-resistant fund that has all this diversification. We give them the priority, of course, on returns, and then at a certain level, we get paid, as well. But that's the summary of what we do. We have about 650 accredited investors investing with us right now. And we're on our sixth fund.

DC:  What do you believe, what were some of the keys to the success you've seen in this? 

PM:  I think the rising tide has lifted all boats, let's be honest. So it's really been very common for people to make a lot of profit, a lot of cashflow, a lot of appreciation on real estate deals over the last decade. So the problem is, you know, as Warren Buffett said, the rising tide, sure, has lifted all boats. But someday that tide is going to go out. And then we'll see who's skinny dipping. And the problem is, it's really hard to tell who the best operators are from just their returns. In fact, in a rising, quickly rising market, those who take the most risks have the highest returns, right? So the problem is you can't see who's really taking the highest risks unless you’re really skilled, and you can dive deeply into the back room more, until there's a downturn. And of course, the easiest way is when there's a downturn, then we see, you know, who took those, you know, who got those 85% LTV loans, and who is now in trouble.

DC: And see who's shaken out, so to speak. 


PM: Yeah, that's exactly right. And so, to answer your question we've gone to great lengths to find operators who are going to do well in every market, there's no guarantee they'll do well in any market, of course, but they have so far. And as we look to the potential downturn, as we record this today, with the interest rates just going up yet, again, a lot. We see that, you know, the assets and the operators we've invested with are likely going to be just fine, and maybe a year or two from now doing even better, as they have investment opportunities that are inaccessible in a boom market. 

DC: Do you focus primarily on residential sector? Or when you say commercial, you know, as far as the industry, or are there other sectors too that you guys delve into?

PM:  Yeah, we invest in commercial real estate assets. Specifically, we invest in self-storage, mobile home parks, RV parks, light industrial, open air shopping centers, and multifamily. 

DC: Wow. Almost the whole gamut there. That's awesome.

PM: There's a lot. We can't be, I mean, think about the Olympics. Imagine you'd be Jim Thorpe 110 years ago when he won the Olympics just I mean, won so many gold medals in the Sweden Olympics in 1912. He was able to diversify and do Javelin, high jump, shotput, disc, you know, all kinds of different things, discus. But that's not like a really good strategy anymore. Imagine Michael Phelps would have tried to diversify like that, we'd never would have heard of him. But instead, he won 28 gold medals because he was hyper-focused.

DC:  Literally stayed in his lane.

PM: Yeah, so he literally stayed in his lane, very well done. But seriously, we try to enjoy these different asset classes, like a viewer would enjoy the Olympics. They can watch all of them from their couch with a bag of Doritos in their hands. And they can, you know, they can get the fact that, you know, they can benefit from the fact that every Olympian is highly focused on their asset class. That's our model as well.

DC:  Right. Okay. That's awesome. So I wonder on this journey, what are some of the things you've learned along the way that you didn't expect?

PM:  Oh, where do I start? I learned the difference between investing and speculating. You know, investing is when your principal is generally safe, and you've got a chance to make a return. Speculating is when your principal is not at all safe, and you've got a chance to make a return and I really believe that true wealth, which is having assets that throw off cash flow, true wealth is more reliably, and predictably built by investing than speculating. Of course, the books and the podcasts are about the people who speculate because that's a fantastic exception. You know, the Facebooks and the Googles. And, you know, the people who invested in Bitcoin when it was $1, and sold it at $50,000. But, at any rate, those are speculations and not something I would recommend for most people. That's one thing I learned. 

Another thing I learned is, you know, God is really trustworthy. I stopped counting a long, long time ago, the times that God bailed me out, God bailed our family out. Because as a serial entrepreneur, which I'm not proud of now, but as a serial entrepreneur, our backs were against the wall financially so many times. And if you remind me, I'll tell you a detailed story about that in a few minutes. But our backs were against the wall. I mean, even building our company Wellings Capital, like I said, I think I mentioned earlier, no, I didn't, there were about four years there where we didn't do anything except spend money because we couldn't find multifamily deals that made sense before we transitioned over to this new model. And so, as such, our backs were against the wall multiple times. 

I can remember sitting in this exact chair on a Saturday morning, a number of years ago, and I was reading a book about declarations by Steve Backlund, B-A-C-K-LU-N-D, I believe from Bethel out in Redding, California, and it was talking about making declarations. So I said, okay, Lord, well, I mean, the door's locked. I'm alone in here. I'm kind of embarrassed to do this, but I'm going to try it. And so thankfully, I journaled all this in great detail. And on that Saturday morning, about 9am, I declared that God would bring us a certain thing. I mean, like that hour, like, I mean, it was like, okay, really, but basically, I said, Please tap on the shoulder of someone, somebody somewhere in America, well, I'm not going to be mysterious. I'm just going to tell you what it was. While I was building Wellings Capital, I had another business that sold leads to realtors. And so I prayed that God would bring a multimillion-dollar buyer that day, tap him on the shoulder somewhere in the country to buy and so I could get some commission, so I could keep Wellings Capital going. And I needed like $50,000, that's gonna be a huge commissio, I mean, once that a $2 million sale. And anyway, literally, I finished declaring that out loud. I journaled it, thankfully. 

I went upstairs and about an hour later, this guy reaches out to me on Facebook. Now, I don't even use Facebook. But somehow or another on my iPhone, I got this message flashed across my screen, you know, how they do that? You know, I'm showing my ignorance right now. And I tapped on it really quickly, because I recognize the guy's name. And this guy said, hey, Scott here. I don't know if you remember me. But you sold me a property at Smith Mountain Lake, like way back another decade ago, you know? Anyway, it turned into, literally I called him back. He literally said, my wife and I were having coffee an hour or two ago, and we decided we just out of nowhere thought of your name. And we want to possibly come buy property in Maryland? Well, I'm in Virginia. But he said, but we might stop in Virginia on the way. Well, as you can imagine, it led to a property sale of almost $2 million. And I made $53,000 in commission. And that was just amazing. Now, here's the question. Why don't I do that more often? I don't know.

DC:  My wife and I are fond of saying after a rough patch learning the real estate game, that God is seldom early, but never late. Yeah. I don't know where these 17 mortgages are coming from next month, honey, but God will provide anyhow. He always has.

PM:  Yeah, it's yeah, that's good. It's so true. I lost count between 2008 and now how many times the Lord, we were really close to not paying our mortgage, and I don't mean this last year or two or three. But I mean, there were so many times when I didn't know where the money is going to come from. I started laughing about it because I just realized, well, it's going to come from somewhere and then I would get this completely unexpected $5,000 check or whatever show up. I mean it's just over and over and over again.

DC: That's awesome.

DW:  So Paul, with your experience and everything with real estate in different investments, what is the single greatest investment that you've ever made?

PM:  Well, I mean, do you really want to limit to real estate and not sound, try to sound spiritual here?

DC:  I would say with your, maybe the best investment with your time, the best investment with your talents and influence, and maybe the best investment you've made with your treasures. 

PM: Okay. Well, in real estate specifically, by far, it was growing our company Wellings Capital. I mean, it's like nothing else, everything I touched on over the years, it just seemed to all point to this. And so, and I love it because I mean, because of the influence I'm able to have now as a blogger, a podcaster, speaker. I mean, we were able to raise June 25th, we were at a conference and we raised $255,000 to fight human trafficking and rescue its victims. And then $25,000, again, about a week ago today, I think, at a similar conference and so that's just been a nice cherry on the sundae. But I mean, I think the real joy for me is seeing, you know, 650 or so investors have a great investment experience and be able to, you know, do well with that. With my time, it's certainly been with my family. I mean, I have to say. I've got four kids who are all doing remarkably well, considering the massive, massive number of mistakes my wife and I made. We were just so so amazed at how well they're all doing. They range from 17 up to 29. And so we're really thrilled with that. Like I said, marriage was challenging over the years, but the time I've spent with my wife has just been fantastic and we're doing really well now. So, that's another one. Did I answer it? 

DC: Yeah, you did with your time your talents and influence, and then with money. That's great.

PM: Whew, tough question.

DW: You know, we learn a lot from success, but we learn typically more from failure. What is one of the biggest failures, if you don't mind sharing that you've had over your career?

PM:  There's so many. 

DW: Just pick one. 

PM: Okay. Well, I mean, this actually merges with the last one you asked me about investment of money and time. You asked me about failures, you asked me about God showing up in our business. This one story, which is a little detailed, answers all those. And so here it is. In 1997, I had a couple of million dollars in the bank after selling our company to a publicly traded firm. Ten years later, to the month, October of 2007, we had two and a half million dollars, in debt. And it was all connected to real estate every bit of it. But it was quite painful. As you can imagine, we didn't know we were sliding down into the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. We knew it was bad. But we were always hoping that you can somehow remember what it felt like, David, to be sitting in 2007 hoping the worst was over. We didn't know the worst was coming, right? So anyway, I was meditating on a Sunday morning. And I had this idea of like, God, we're in real trouble here. My partner and I have two and a half million in debt. A lot of that's mine personally. What should we do? And the idea struck me out of nowhere, what would George Müller do? 

Well, George Müller is not widely known among the young generation, I found out when I spoke at Liberty University recently and found out that nobody knew who he was. I was talking to a business group. So, shame on them. I'm kidding. But anyway, this is George Müller. One of the few faces you'll ever see from the 1800s, who's actually smiling, and you'll see why smiling because he actually took care of 10,000 orphans in his lifetime that spanned almost the entire 1800s. But George Müller had a lot of radical beliefs. In fact, some are a little irritating, but he didn't believe in marketing, sales, anything like that. He just thought God would bring you all you need. Well, he also believed you shouldn't raise money for ministry, you should just trust God and ask Him and pray. And so Müller recorded for something like 74 years, I think, he recorded every prayer he claimed that you've recorded every prayer in journal, and he said he only had one unanswered, and that was for the salvation of his friend's son. And that son got saved at Müller's funeral.

But at any rate, that's pretty amazing. But anyway, any of us who know the story know, you know that he would pray, and then money would come in to fund these orphans, you know, taking care of these orphans. We've heard about the stories. You know about them sitting around the table, hundreds of orphans, and then they would pray, and thank God for the food, but there was no food. And then a knock would come at the door within seconds of people providing bread and milk and all this. Just crazy things. But anyway, I thought, What would George Müller do? WWGMD. And I thought, well, he would do something really, really radical like, well, I'll tell you in a minute. So, that Sunday morning, I went to church and our pastor for the first time, in my recollection in 14 years there, preached on George Müller. And so I thought, well, that could be the Lord. And so a couple of friends of mine, including my CPAs husband, and another friend, and I got together for lunch over breakfast a few weeks later, and they said, "What are you going to do? You're going to declare bankruptcy, right? What are you going to do?" Because I forgot to tell you that my business partner right about that time, quit. And he actually signed all the debt and the assets over to me. 

DC: Oh, thank you very much. 

PM: We're still friends. I had the full two and a half million dollars in debt, not just, you know, two-thirds of it. But at any rate. So, my friend asked me, I said, no, we're not gonna declare bankruptcy. We're gonna get our way out of debt. And that went over really well. And then I went and told my wife and family the same thing. So, anyway, we started giving a set amount, which was kind of reckless, maybe. The first week, we decided to give a set amount every single week starting January 1st 2008. It wasn't just randomly giving. It wasn't just tithing, it was giving a set amount every week until God allowed us to be bankrupt, or till he came through. Well, four weeks later, I was at a Subway restaurant and I ran into this real estate developer that I knew. I can't actually remember how this all came about but I met with him and I told him my story. And I told him how serious, I said, I have this one piece of property that's worth almost a couple of million if I could sell it but I can't. And he gave me a random idea about - I had to subdivide it to sell it - to be clear. He said, Well, you ought to try this. And this random idea turned into this light bulb moment. I ran out in a day or two later met with the county planning and zoning people and said, hey, I've got this five acre waterfront parcel, I cannot subdivide. I already know the rules. I know I can't subdivide. My surveyor standing behind me with his face in his hands, he was so embarrassed. And I said, what about this? What if I turn your rule on its head? I had nothing to lose. And what if I could do the subdividing based on this twisted thinking? And this lady looks up over her glasses and she just shakes her head at me. And she goes, Mr. Moore, I've been working here for about 30 years, and no one has ever come up with such an outrageous plan to circumvent our law. She smiled. She said, but you did. And you're right. Somehow or another, there's a loophole in the law. I see it now. And nobody's ever seen it ever. So yes, you can subdivide the land. 

Now, there were all kinds of hard work you asked earlier about, you know, God's work and our work. Well, God's work, God did His work. Now, I had 13 months of heavy lifting to do calling, meeting with surveyors still giving a certain amount of money out of our pocket per week while we were still in debt, meeting with soil scientists, meeting with realtors, and subdividing this property into five parcels. And I had to get a bank on board to do something that is absolutely ridiculous. If you knew the whole story, you wouldn't believe that a bank would ever do what we asked them to do, but they did. And, you know, we sold three of those five subdivided lots in the very worst weeks in the fall of 2008 of the great recession. And we were completely 100% debt free in 13 months. We even paid off our house.

DC:  Wow. That's in the middle of 2008? That's great. That's phenomenal. 

PM:  Yeah, it's an amazing story. And I actually went by there on a boat with my family, my kids last month and showed them that spot again. I sat out front of those five lots and showed them what God did. And they were so grateful to hear it.

DW:  Wow, that's a good story. So, in your experience, what do you think the key to growing in generosity is?

PM:  Well, you know, I just want to, I'm just gonna answer that in a second. But I'm going to tag on to my story. I don't think God is a, you know, a vending machine in the sky, I don't think, okay, I put in the certain amount of giving every week and therefore he had to come through. I might have had that idea off and on over the years. I certainly had that experience. We kept giving that large amount, that same weekly amount for the next nine years. And we still are generous but we stopped that weekly giving thing after nine years, for some reasons I won't get into for time's sake but I don't think he's a vending machine, this guy. I don't think he's obligated to us, we're obligated to him. And so I don't want to give that impression. 

I think the key to growing in generosity is realizing I mean, there's so many answers for that that are helpful. But I mean, realizing it's all his, realizing that we, you know, we're not really sitting here on this podcast in our costumes, as Ted Dekker says, the novelist. We're really seated in heaven with Christ right now. And really just the faith to believe what Jesus said in Matthew 6, you know, "Do not store up treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven" and really, really believing that, which is a battle every day. I mean, I looked at that again yesterday, and thought, you know, do I really believe this? Yeah, I do. But do I, you know, and just continually battling that out. And I think the bottom line in one word would just be, faith.

DC: Yeah, I think as you bring up, you know, that God's not a vending machine. And it's an interesting tension, we can see between the type of theology that believes quid pro quo. If you give, you will receive versus the idea that when we're faithful, and we do what we feel God is telling us to do, like, give a larger sum every week, that makes sense. God loves to reward our faithfulness. And I, as a father, I see this as my own kids.It's not like, I'm going to give and give them reward every single time they act a certain way. But when I see that their character is growing, when my, you know, my boy loves his sister, and he's kind, I overflowing with joy to bless him. And I learned so much about my relationship with God, by my relationship with my kids.

PM: Yeah, absolutely true. Love it.

DW:  So one more question before we go into the Mentor Minute. So as we're trying to invest in things that are going to matter for eternity, and really leave godly legacies, is there something that well, I guess, is there one thing that you would like to be remembered for? And what would that be?

PM:  You know, I have always wanted to swing for the fences. I invested that way. I did entrepreneur stuff that way. And now I know that that is not always the best thing. I've got a treadmill desk right over there. And when I decided to get in shape again - yesterday - I decided, you know, I need to walk 20 miles a day, my record day is 19 miles. And if I start like at 8am, and walk till six, I can get that. But that's probably not the smartest thing to do. It's a good way recipe for burnout and pushing restart, like I did yesterday. But at any rate, I want to be remembered as somebody who loved people. I mean, I love it to be you know, I gave a billion dollars to fight human trafficking and rescue its victims. I love it to be, you know, I did some great thing that will be remembered, you know, and books written about. But I think, you know, my son and I, my son has just had incredible success in real estate investing this last four years. And he and I were talking the other day, he's like, yeah, I realized, you know, like, this money is not really making me any happier. And I said, yeah, that's right. Isn't that a hard revelation and a strange revelation? And we both agree that loving people like, you know, talking kindly to the cashier, or praying over the old man in the parking lot, or you know, praying for healing for the woman on crutches and many times not seeing her healed, one very dramatic time seeing somebody healed. You know, those were the things that have been most meaningful. We both agreed to that. And so I want to be remembered as somebody who loves God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength and loves others as I love myself.

DW: That's good. 

DC: That's awesome. 

DW: All right, let's move into the Mentor Minute. Who is the most influential person that you know and how have they impacted you?

PM:  Hmm. Do I have to know them personally? 

DW: Yes. 

PM: That's really tough. I would say, my friend Bob who loves people very well, who takes time to listen, who cares about people, who prays, like I said, prays for healing and believes in miracles and believes he's going to hear from God. And he expects to and he does. That would certainly be one of a few people I would choose, as, you know, at the top.

DW:  What book or podcast has changed the course of your life? 

PM:  Yeah, you know, there's been several but I'm gonna give an answer. Gary Keller and Jay Papasan wrote a book that we're mostly all familiar with called "The One Thing" and because I was a certified shiny-object chaser, and because I spent so many years, you know, trying to be a serial entrepreneur and all the stuff that I chased, that book really helped me set my sail in one careful direction, sort of, like going back a half an hour to what we talked about Michael Phelps staying in his lane.

DW:  Yeah. Absolutely. What's the greatest lesson you have learned about leadership? 

PM:  I mean, I think it came straight from Jesus. I mean, you know, the fact that on the night he was betrayed, He, you know, washed His disciples feet, which I think is a pretty nasty thing to do. And, of course, he went on and did something even greater in the next 24 hours. But, you know, just humility. I mean, just the humility, to say, I'm wrong, the humility to own stuff. One of my employees made a mistake with one of our largest investors yesterday, and it wasn't, wasn't huge. But yeah, I was able to email that investor within the hour and say, that was 100% my fault because I did not communicate to him what you would actually ask me very clearly. And just being able to have that posture all the time goes a long way toward helping investors and all kinds of people soften if they're irritated or love you if they're not.

DW:  Alright, last question. Is there anything that we or our listeners can do to help you accomplish what you're going after?

PM:  Yeah, absolutely. Do you know if you took the record profits, not the average, the record profits of Apple, General Motors, Nike, and Starbucks added those record profits together and doubled that number, that's the estimated annual profits generated by human trafficking right now? It's a horrible thing. There's more slaves than any time in history right now. And since we started this podcast, approximately 500 people have been captured or sold into slavery. It's a horrible thing. And so I would like to recommend that people go out and get the movie, it's free online, called "Nefarious" by Exodus Cry, or also that they would check out Exodus Cry's website and give to them or another organization we really love called "Aim", AimFree.org and donate generously to fight human trafficking and rescue its victims.

DC:  Thank you for sharing those resources. I'd look into them right away.

DW:  Paul, how can we be praying for you and your family?

PM:  I really appreciate that question. You can just, you know, all four of my kids 29, 26, 21 and 17 are still single. And they're all good-looking, smart, wonderful kids. And so I would love to pray that, you know, I'd love for you to pray that God would bring each of them the right spouse if they're supposed to marry and they all think they are. That would be one great thing and then the other would be to find the right investment opportunities for our company, Wellings Capital. We only take investor money when we have a place to put it. And we have more money coming in than we have places to put it even now during this downturn. So, that will be a good prayer for us. Thanks.

DW:  Absolutely. Well, let's pray right now. God, I thank you and praise you for this time that we've had with Paul. I thank you for the work that he's doing and his family. I pray that you would bring spouses for his children, if that's your will. God, I pray that You would help us to invest in your kingdom, that we would put you first, put your kingdom first and glorify you in all that we do. In Christ's name, I pray, amen.

[END OF INTERVIEW]]

[OUTRO]

ANNNOUNCER: What if you could take your generosity to the next level, impacting more lives in your community and around the world, creating a godly legacy for generations to come? 

Now you can. Your first step is crafting your kingdom investing thesis. Reserve your spot in our next online workshop where we guide you through the process of discovering your passions, create a strategic plan and connect you to opportunities that will help you fulfill your God-given calling as a kingdom investor. Register today by clicking the link in the show notes. 

Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and we'll see you next time for another episode of The Kingdom Investor Podcast.

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