Do your investment dollars serve God’s purpose? As investors, it is our responsibility to ensure that the companies or sectors that we are putting our money into are engaged in businesses and practices that reflect our moral and ethical values and promote God’s kingdom. But, avoiding “sinful investments” is not enough. Shouldn't our portfolios be holy as well?
Investment advisor Don Simmons of Steward Advisors Group joins us today to talk about sanctifying our investment portfolio by integrating faith into how we invest our financial resources. We should go beyond simply shunning errant businesses and start pursuing God’s redemptive purposes by investing in “great commission companies”, he says. Listen now and find out how you can simultaneously achieve your investment goals while fulfilling God’s purpose and making Him known in the marketplace. Start building a holy portfolio now!
Key Points From This Episode:
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Faith in the Halls of Power by Dr. Michael Lindsay
About Don Simmons
Don is a thirty-year veteran investment advisor and CFP® Professional managing nearly a quarter billion dollars of assets through the boutique investment firm he founded in 1988. Don knows about the power of using investment capital to build people and communities through transformational businesses. He served with a London-based economic development fund where he coordinated a global management team that deployed dozens of mentors and coaches as well as financial capital to businesses in more than twenty countries among the most impoverished communities in the world.
For individuals, Don combines his expertise in portfolio asset allocation, his diligent study of the Scriptures regarding our role as stewards of God’s money, and his passion to teach people the power their assets can have when deployed to expand God’s kingdom.
Do your investment dollars serve God’s purpose? As investors, it is our responsibility to ensure that the companies or sectors that we are putting our money into are engaged in businesses and practices that reflect our moral and ethical values and promote God’s kingdom. But, avoiding “sinful investments” is not enough. Shouldn't our portfolios be holy as well?
Investment advisor Don Simmons of Steward Advisors Group joins us today to talk about sanctifying our investment portfolio by integrating faith into how we invest our financial resources. We should go beyond simply shunning errant businesses and start pursuing God’s redemptive purposes by investing in “great commission companies”, he says. Listen now and find out how you can simultaneously achieve your investment goals while fulfilling God’s purpose and making Him known in the marketplace. Start building a holy portfolio now!
Key Points From This Episode:
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Faith in the Halls of Power by Dr. Michael Lindsay
About Don Simmons
Don is a thirty-year veteran investment advisor and CFP® Professional managing nearly a quarter billion dollars of assets through the boutique investment firm he founded in 1988. Don knows about the power of using investment capital to build people and communities through transformational businesses. He served with a London-based economic development fund where he coordinated a global management team that deployed dozens of mentors and coaches as well as financial capital to businesses in more than twenty countries among the most impoverished communities in the world.
For individuals, Don combines his expertise in portfolio asset allocation, his diligent study of the Scriptures regarding our role as stewards of God’s money, and his passion to teach people the power their assets can have when deployed to expand God’s kingdom.
EPISODE 34
[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. This is your host Daniel White and today we get to interview Donald Simmons. Don is the founder and CEO at Steward Advisors Group. He has nearly 30 years of experience in the wealth management space. He has also helped facilitate a movement of millions of dollars towards charitable endeavors. Don wrote the book The steward investor, a book about investing God's resources for eternal impact. Without further ado, let's jump right into the show.
[INTERVIEW]
DW: Welcome to the Kingdom Investor Podcast. I'm your host, Daniel White. And today I have Don Simmons with us. Don, would you say hello?
Don Simmons (DS): Hey, how are you doing?
DW: So where are you coming to us from, Don?
DS: I'm from upstate New York, in a little city called Saratoga Springs.
DW: All right. And then we have David Clinton. How're you doing, buddy?
David Clinton (DC): Good, beautiful day here in the northwest.
DW: All right. So, Don, do you want to tell the listeners what you do? And what are some of the things that you're doing right now?
DS: Sure, I've been a financial advisor for more than 30 years. The last 15 years of that has been spent specifically on investing in ways that align with God's purposes, and more specifically, investing in Christian owned businesses throughout the predominantly Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist part of the world. I believe that business is a is an excellent tool for ministry. John tells us in chapter one that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. I love the way that Eugene Peterson paraphrases it in the message. He said that, that God became flesh and moved into the neighborhood. And that's what we do when we do business with the desire to have an incarnation or witness among the world's least reached. So I believe strongly in business as a tool for mission and ministry. Capital is the lifeblood of business. So we need to have investors who are similarly aligned with using their financial resources to accomplish God's purposes by investing in redemptive businesses.
DC: Wow, I'm excited to dig into this a little bit. Before we get started, would you mind just opening in prayer for our listeners, your
DS: Lord, I thank you for this opportunity to use technology to have conversations that bring glory to the name of Jesus, I pray that today, we would be challenged to have a deeper understanding of what it means to be God's oil to know most his steward investor, his fiduciary managing his resources. So Lord, I pray for our listeners that this would just be enlightening to them and that they'd be challenged and stimulated to think differently than maybe they already have in terms of financial stewardship. Amen.
DC: Amen. Thank you, Don, you used the word “oikonomos”. Could you teach us about that?
DS: Yeah, the oikonomos was the household manager back in New Testament times and the oikonomos was really the fiduciary of a wealthy person's estate, they were responsible for everything, whether it was running the business, managing the resources, even down to care for children who were not yet of, of, of legal age. And so as we understand the full meaning of waken nomos I talk about in my book, it's it's it's very much like Alfred that some of us recognize From the Batman series, you know, Alfred was more than just a butler to the Wayne's estate. He was also a guardian of Bruce Wayne, the, the minor child, and all of the the business resources. And that's what we have to understand that God entrusted to us financial resources. And we tend to think that they're for our own use and for our own benefit, but the reality is an oikonomos owns nothing they manage, they are managing them for somebody else. So, I get disturbed by our current misunderstanding of, of the term stewardship, we've come to define it more as financial competence. A fiduciary must, as a given, be financially competent. But it's far more important to understand that ownership is really what's being defined by a steward. And the fact that a steward does not manage anything for themselves. So when we think that it's just about competence, we've really, you've really misinterpreted the biblical notion of steward.
DC: Competence is just table stakes. Right? That's a given that it's so much more than that.
DS: Yeah, exactly. You know, in my own business, I've been a fiduciary of other people's money for 30 plus years, we have discretion to trade their accounts were to have discussion of discretion to move money between accounts. I think that the the understanding of a fiduciary is that although I may be managing an account for a client to pay for college education, I could go to jail if I write a check on their account to pay for my own child's education. So you know that you could be a very competent embezzler, if all we think about is that it's competence and not ownership, that the resources need to be used for the owner themselves. So, one of the questions I love to ask when I'm speaking in front of people is what are the objectives for your portfolio? And I can tell you from 30 years, the answers are almost always the same. The answers will be, maximize my financial return, minimize risk as much as possible. And if possible, I don't want to pay any taxes. And then after those three things, people will list well, I want to plan for retirement or college education or to buy a house. Those are all well and good if we're managing resources for ourselves.
If I asked the second question, what are God's purposes? There's also usually a couple of different answers. One way to go and make disciples to the end of the earth and to love your neighbor. And that may be things like to bring forth justice and mercy to those who are most vulnerable. The obvious question is, if we are fiduciaries of God's resources, why is it that our financial objectives don't match his purposes? Sure. If somebody asked me to help them invest to let's say, buy a home in five years, that's the objective I have to accomplish? Well, if God has asked us to make disciples to the ends of the earth, shouldn't that apply to our portfolio? Well, absolutely. And can you as an investor point to something in your current investment plan that is distinctly and deliberately making disciples?
DC: Right. So did you always have this viewpoint of God's ownership, our stewardship, or where did it begin for you?
DS: Well, like I said, I've been a financial advisor for 30 plus years. And I've been a Christian, all that time as well. So I've always understood that we are stewards of God's resources, but I don't think it was till about 15 years into my business that I started to explore the whole realm of impact investing. Investing so that you would achieve other outcomes beyond simply financial returns. And I attended Impact conferences all over the world. And what I found was that I in the impact investing realm, Christians were few and far between, that the secular world, a world of investors has a much better understanding of the needs to invest, to benefit multiple stakeholders, and not just the financial stakeholder. The secular world gets that. Christians, I'd say are a decade, maybe 15 years behind the secular world in this space.
DC: Why do you think that is?
DS: Well, I think it's because we don't have a complete understanding of, of stewardship, as I've already said. Generally, the stewardship messages that we hear at church are really around...
DC: Competence.
DS: Either competence or generous giving, which is, which is absolutely appropriate. But if God is a God of generosity, isn't he generous in the making of the money, not just in the donating of the money? I think the problem is that we believe we've come to think that donations are sacred, and investments are secular. And we need to dispel that notion. We have to understand that it is in the making of the money that we can accomplish God's eternal purposes.
DC: So how would you define impact investing?
DS: Well, impact investing is simply investing that is seeking multiple outcomes, not simply financial return. In the secular space, it might be environmental outcomes. You know, the UN Social Development Goals, the SDGs, there's a whole list of those from clean water to education, poverty alleviation, those could all be impact investment kind of outcomes. As a follower of Christ, though, we should certainly add spiritual outcomes, advancing the kingdom of God in places where Jesus' name is rarely spoken, to me is a very important piece of of my investment plan.
DW: Wow, yeah, that's really good. So do you mind going back and sharing a little bit of your story and kind of how you got into this and how God has developed your, your thinking and perspective around this?
DS: Yeah, I got involved with an economic development fund, Christian, that's based out of the UK, I got involved with them back in 2007, or 2008. They're really one of the first true investments in this realm of Christian impact investing, redemptive business investing, missional investing. There's a lot of different terms for it - business as mission, business for transformation. Now, we're using the term faith-driven investing. But that's not it, the concept is not new, although FDI is fairly new. But I got involved with this economic development fund. First as an investor, then as a volunteer with Ben as a mentor to some businesses in Central Asia, and ultimately, found myself working my way out of my original business so that I could join that team and serve as their Chief Operating Officer for several years. And it was really through that and extensive international travel and exposure to these kinds of investments that I got very passionate myself about it and started to share it with some of my investor clients, or followers of Jesus and saying, hey, you know, maybe we need to think differently than simply about accumulating financial returns and resources for ourselves. And it's been a 15 year journey to get to the point that I am happy and love just sharing stories and ideas with people and challenging the current mindset of how Christians handle their financial resources.
DC: Along the way in that journey, what are some of the things you learned that you didn't expect to learn?
DS: Well, I've been very well-schooled and trained in what would be termed asset allocation in order to get optimized rates of return with minimum risk in a portfolio, modern portfolio theory and the efficient frontier. I think the most important thing that I've learned as a financial advisor when you, when you have a mindset of risk-adjusted returns, I think as a Christian, we have to recognize that, in Christ, our eternal destination is secure. So the most important risk in life has already been taken care of for us. If God through Jesus has addressed the biggest risk in life, shouldn't we be far bigger risk-takers in the temporal here and now? So from an investment standpoint, I weigh the impact now, equally against the risk that I'm taking. And personally, I couldn't have believed 10 years ago that I would invest in the kinds of things that God is drawing me to today. Because, I as an advisor, I would have said, those are just too risky. Well, so, my understanding of risk, that it's really relative to eternal destiny, has changed how I think about how I invest in an earthly sense. Using these resources that really are temporal. They're not eternal, how can I use them to maximize return for the kingdom of heaven?
DC: So, we should be freer to take bigger risks for God because he's already handled the biggest risk there is.
DS: Well, I don't want to put words in people's mouths, but that's what I've come to believe myself. Yes.
DC: That's awesome. So risk. And then the other side of that is financial return. You know, there's a lot of Christians who talk about a financial finish line in their financial lives. That they set a point where they'll try not to have their standard of living increase beyond that. Well, certainly, if you've reached that point, I think you can mathematically take incredible risks with the resources that you have. But I challenge that line of thinking. I think God wants us to serve him from the start of the race, not at the end of the race. So the idea of a financial finish line, after I've gotten everything that I want for myself, that's almost like I leave the leftovers for God. Shouldn't I be giving him all of my time and energy and resources in a holistic sense? I'm not saying that everybody needs to become a pastor or missionary. But if you're a taxicab driver, or a teacher, your parish or your congregation is the people that are in your life. You still are called to your vocation, the ministry, that's where you're to expand the kingdom of heaven. So, you know, it's very holistic, and certainly includes our financial resources as well.
DW: So on a practical level, can you talk a little bit about the risk-reward as you explained it in the book, and, and what that even looks like when you're developing a portfolio as far as taking some of those returns into account and the risks and what that looks like?
DS: Yeah, you know, too many times investment. People investment advisors, people like me, think that they have to get a market like return and I use quotes for market because even that in and of itself, what market are we talking about? Is it always a Western market that we have to match those reasons? But first, we, I think, have to dispel the notion that we always need to get market-like returns. That's a very self-centered approach based on what I need for myself. But let's take a mathematical example because I spend a lot of time in the book talking about concessionary returns. These are returns that are below market, right? Let's say that the most concessionary is something that earns a zero rate of return. So we invest $10,000 And we expect to get $10,000 back with no earnings on it. And most investors would argue with me that that's an investment; that's a topic for another podcast.
But if we are seeking these other outcomes, redemption of people who don't know Jesus or poverty alleviation or those kinds of things, if you had a portfolio that was $100,000, and you allocated 10% of it to a concessionary investment, earning zero, let's say that your target was 6% out of the overall portfolio, if I've now reallocated 10% of that to zero, my overall return now it's 5.4%. Because a financial advisor, or somebody who's looking at this, from a financial planning perspective, can I meet my temporal financial goals with a 5.4% return, as opposed to a 6% return, so that my entire portfolio accomplishes that, but now it's at least carved out 10% that is distinctly Great Commission focused to accomplish eternal objectives. You know, it's just looking at the numbers differently. You don't have to get a market-like return. We have to set our goals and objectives to align with a return that also accomplishes God's purpose. Too many times we start with - this is what I need. Well, no, there's a lot of different levers in the financial plan. And one is how much you save, two is how much you're going to spend, three is the rate of return.
DW: So in the book, you have a chart that you kind of explained that, could you walk us through that?
DS: I can't remember exactly which chart we're looking at.
DW: Yeah, the one that talks about the risk and return and concessionary return, and where you should look at.
DS: I think, I'm not exactly sure which chart but one of the illustrations that I use that most financial people would understand is, is the rule of thumb that we use for fixed investments versus variable portfolio. And a general rule of thumb is that you put whatever your age is, into fixed-type investments, those are the safe things. So when you're 25 years old, it'd be 75% stocks, 25% bonds. But when you're 75 years old, in theory, and this is just a rule of thumb, you might want to be more conservative, so you'd have 75% of your money in bonds rather than stocks. I use that same kind of methodology, thinking about how we could start to deploy money into kingdom-focused investments based on our age. And I suggest that maybe when you're in your 20s, you can allocate 10% of your savings to these kinds of investments. And then each decade after that, you add another 10% of what you're systematically saving into, into these, obviously, higher risk, perhaps lower return, but they're eternal focused investments.
So it's the kind of thing that you don't do all at once, but you work on over time. Part of what we're doing at Steward Advisors Group is helping to build these kinds of holistic portfolios that balance both traditional publicly traded investments managed on a risk-return basis, but then integrating into that portfolio, a larger and larger percentage of private placement alternative, distinctly missional investments, whether those are in Africa or the Middle East or Southeast Asia. But we can do this and we can build portfolios that accomplish both our temporal needs here, and our simultaneous need of meeting those eternal objectives that are important to God. I hope that was the graph you're talking about or the chart.
DW: Yeah, I found it it's on page 154. And it talks about the QBL impact versus the financial return. And so whether it's a market loss or market rate or above market? And then what the impact is? Is it destructive, neutral or positive?
DS: Oh, sure, this is just a typical three by three grid with impact on the vertical axis and financial return on the horizontal axis. And, you know, typically people might think that something that gets a, well, charity would be 100% loss, it would be at the farthest end, the financial return, but it's QBL by Drupal bottom line outcome might be through the roof. So that would be a top and to the left. But on the other end, you know, I talked about a fund that used to be called the vice fund. Basically, it has incredible financial returns, meaning the market consistently was very good during recessionary times.
The problem for a faith-filled investor was they invested primarily in casinos, pornography companies, and alcohol and tobacco companies. You have to say, okay, is it worth getting that financial return with, let's say, negative social impact. So, we should measure all of our investments based on this kind of a grid. What is their spiritual return on the vertical axis? What is their financial return on the horizontal axis? And a good portfolio would want to have a combination of good financial returns, but also not going into investments that are compromising our Christian worldview.
DC: I've heard this concept in the financial services world about investing in virtuous companies having a lower return. And then other studies showing that that is not actually the case, that you can make just as good a return, staying away from vice-type of things. In your 30 years experience, what do you find is the case with that?
DS: Yeah, I think that's a huge debate. That is still open for discussion. What I do know in the secular space, with impact investing, there is a broad range of differing opinions there also. There's a report put out by GIIN, I think it's the Global Impact Investing Network that looked at impact investors and what their objectives were. And if I recall the numbers correctly, I think it was about 25% of impact investors would consider an investment that gave them a zero rate of return acceptable if it was accomplishing their other impact objectives. You know, almost a quarter of investors are comfortable with that. The data I've looked at, I think those who argue that you will get a better rate of return, probably, it's because they're cherry-picking industries or locations where that's possible. The kind of investing that I do in frontier markets, which are the most impoverished, most corrupt, least reached with the gospel. I think it's going to be hard to say that you're going to get outsized returns, or returns there compared to investing in IT companies in the US.
DC: Okay, that leads me to another question. What would you say for yourself is the best investment you've ever made, whether with your time, talents treasure, you know, in a return in whichever way you would define it?
DS: I think the biggest decision that I ever made was I have to restructure my financial planning practice in order to join the fund that I talked about. And those who are in the financial industry will understand this. It required me to leave the broker-dealer that I was with, had been with for 20 plus years operated under FINRA regulations and an outside business activity with an investment firm in the UK would not be an acceptable outside business activity. So, I needed to restructure the firm, so that it would operate under SEC regulations as a registered investment advisor. And my colleagues who had considered that before all said that it would, it would take me two years to make the transition and that I lose a significant portion of my assets under management. I said, well, if God's in this, I'm going to do it in six months, and I don't intend to lose any assets. And to everyone's surprise, we did that transition in less than six months and ended up with 20% more assets than we began the process.
But more importantly, I needed to leave behind the majority of my retirement resources, which were in a deferred compensation plan. And that was, it was really a step of faith, because it was the majority of my retirement resources that I didn't think I'd be able to replace. But as the numbers said, you know, just adding the assets in six months, the Lord increased the value of that financial planning practice within a year to more than make up for any losses of deferred comp, and tax consequences. All of the reasons that you shouldn't make a change like I did, the Lord was faithful. And so I don't know if you'd call that an investment or not. It was a decision, it was, I believe, the riskiest decision of my life to go from full-time employment to basically full time volunteer as the chief operating officer for this fund at an age, that was 15 years before I had planned to retire. There were just so many things about it, that did not make financial sense from a worldly standpoint, especially as a financial planner. But I think it's when we, when we ultimately put our true faith in Christ, and are completely dependent on Him, that that's when He comes through. And I'm not a health and wealth gospel person that says you give to get but in my experience, anytime I've taken radical steps of faith in this area the Lord has, has provided for us to continue to do so.
In one of Paul's verses in Second Corinthians, he talks about the seed for the sower. And he says, As I provide seed for the sower and bread for food, so I will supply and increase your store so that you can be generous on every occasion. It's not so that you can buy a bigger house, so that you can buy a Tesla, so that you can take nicer vacations. We are blessed, so that we can be generous on every occasion. And, you know, I stand on that verse and provide testimony that that is what the Lord has done. He's allowed my wife and I to be generous on every occasion. Even if we don't think we can, we do it. And the Lord provides for the people we're blessing and he refills our store of seeds so that we can be generous on the next occasion. So it applies not just to donating, but I look at investing now with the very same lens. That comes to the risk, you know, are we willing to take the risk?
DW: Can you tell us more about the financial firm that you have started and what your vision is for that?
DS: Yes, Steward Advisors Group, you could find it online at www.stewardadvisorsgroup.com . Our tagline is "Investing for Eternal Impact". We intend to be a distinctly different kind of investment firm. There's a lot of Christian investors, Christian financial advisors who do what would be called biblically responsible investing (BRI) filtering out those companies that don't align with Christian values. But I'm not aware of any other financial advisor firms that are doing what I would call proactive values investing, that's investing in these private placement investments that aren't publicly traded that may be in foreign countries. But basically we are setting about to provide that kind of portfolio guidance to people. Some folks are doing this inside of their DAF accounts, their donor advised funds. That makes perfect sense because it's money they have already given away. But we're using self-directed IRAs to invest in projects in Ethiopia, and Romania and Vietnam, using IRA dollars.
Some of the statistics are that everybody thinks that the DAF and private foundations are where the resources are to fund these kinds of projects. And there are several 100 billion dollars in Christian donor-advised funds. That's a lot of money. But there's close to $7 trillion in the hands of Christians, IRA and 401K accounts. And I just challenge our listeners, look at your own IRA and 401k and please point to one investment that you own that is bringing Christ to people in a location that is closed to missionaries, or even an investment that is helping to deal with the plight of human trafficking and exploitation around the world. So I'm not just talking about, we need to eliminate things that are offensive to a Christian worldview, but what are we doing that proactively invest in the values that are important to you?
DW: So can you give us an example of an investment in Ethiopia or investment in the Middle East that is doing this?
DS: Yeah, one of them that, and I can't tell a lot of stories, because many of them are in closed locations. But one of the stories I tell in the book is about an apple orchard in Ethiopia that we started a number of years ago, the land that was leased, or that apple orchard just a generation ago was basically the killing fields between three warring tribes. In this particular region of Ethiopia, you probably don't think of Ethiopia as a as an apple climate. But in the in the southern part of Ethiopia, there are high lands where they have been growing apples for decades. And so to make a long story short, we have about 40,000 apple trees now and employ 100 to 150 full time workers from all three of those different tribes who previously were fighting with each other and killing each other. Now they worship together in the orchard, they are planting and harvesting crops we just harvested this year. 30 tons of apples, that was our first harvest yet. So you know, that's one that is economically viable. We believe that in the next 10 years, we with our project and the co ops of farms around us, we believe we can take Ethiopia from a net importer of apples to a net exporter of apples. So economically, this is a change at the National country level, not just a small community, at the people level. A number of folks who have been transformed with the love of Christ and have come to meet Him as their Savior. As I said they they hold weekly worship there at the orchard. It's just it's a project that I'm very proud of and thrilled to be a part of.
DW: Wow. Yeah, that's a really good example. I love that.
DC: We often learn more from failure than from success. Would you share about any of your failures or regrets, maybe that you learned a lot from along this journey?
DS: Well, yeah, obviously, when you're operating in difficult parts of the world. There's potential difficulties in cross-cultural communication. There are issues of political risk, currency risk, there's all kinds of economic risks. There's the difficulty of getting qualified workers who can who have the level of experience or training to do what's needed to be done. So in terms of specific examples, I can think of one project right now that have we let go We have our Chief Executive Officer earlier this year, because of a number of different issues that couldn't be resolved. But, you know, some of those were financial in nature. And this was a huge setback, especially on the heels of COVID and a couple of years of difficulty in business anyway, to have really put the business on sabbatical for a year to regroup, restructure. And now we're in the process of looking for a new CEO. But you know, our ideal is to find somebody who is located in that country, as opposed to bringing in an expat to run it. We really believe in as much as possible to have local ownership and local leadership. By all means this kind of investing is not easy. It's not for the faint of heart. There needs to be patient capital, or something like this, where our timeframe for investors might have been seven years, it's probably pushed out now to 10 years, or maybe longer.
DC: Right. That's tough.
DW: So are there other things in the book that you can walk us through that really steward investing revolves around or maybe the key tenets of that?
DS: You know, something that's not in the book, but that has really become top of mind forming recently is, is the issue of holiness, that God calls us to be holy as He is holy. And I just did a talk for the New Canaan Society of New York last week. Came down to New York City. And I talked about, we probably have never heard a sermon about how holiness affects our stewardship or should influence our portfolio. But especially in our day and age, it is, it is very obvious that large corporations are using their clout and their muscle and their influence to advance their specific agendas, which in many cases don't align with a Christian worldview, Christian values. So as investors, we are owners of the things we invest in. If we own a mutual fund that owns the S&P 500 stocks, we are indeed part owners of those 500 companies. And if you've heard something on the news about a particular company that's exploiting Uyghur people in China and exploiting them for slave labor, should we be invested in a company like that? Or a company that is using financial resources to support or hinder life you know, before it's born? These are important issues from an eternal standpoint.
And as somebody who's trying to be sanctified, in order to be more holy and more Christ-like, should we apply the sanctification process to our portfolios as well? Which means evaluating what's there, eliminating the things in our life or our portfolio that don't align with a holy God. And then refilling that portfolio and refilling ourselves with things that that are more Christ-like. So that's, that's the chapter for another book. It's not in the current book, but the more that I think and talk about these issues, I think we really have to address this idea of sanctifying our portfolios. If we are called to be holy, shouldn't our portfolios be holy as well? And I'll close this particular concept with we've all heard in you know, the verse in Revelations that talks about, "As you are lukewarm, neither hot and cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." And I have always kind of thought of that relative to oh, you know, those must be the church at Laodicea has backslidden. They're not going to church as often or they're not reading their Bible. But I never heard anybody really talk about the next verse, which is the key to it. So the reason that Jesus is about to spit them out of his mouth, he says, you if you say, I am rich, I have acquired wealth and don't need a thing. You don't realize that you're wretched, pitiful and poor. You know, it's an economic condition that made that church lukewarm. And I think we can look at ourselves in America and have that same attitude that we say, I am rich, I don't need a thing. You know, we're no longer dependent on God. We think we've solved it all ourselves. We do great financial plans so that we can be financially independent. Now, I think we're supposed to be God-dependent more than we are supposed to be independent. Yeah, so those are my final thoughts.
DW: That's really neat. I haven't thought about it that way before. Because, you know, I think about how like, how great is our Savior, when our sin is great, like in our lives, when we see our sin is small, our Savior small. And the same thing applies to dependency, right? So anytime we feel like we're not really dependent on God, our God is kind of small. But when we're really dependent on God and trusting Him, then He is who He is. And that's interesting. All right. So, before we enter the mentor minute, is there anything else that you want to share with our audience?
DS: I think I've given them an earful.
DW: All right. So who is the most influential person that you know, and how have they impacted you?
DS: There's a couple of different ones. But I think in this context, I use his pseudonym, my friend, Peter Charcot, who founded and led for many years, the economic development funds that I worked with, I think, in terms of the realm of this kind of investing. I think he's probably the most knowledgeable and most influential person in the world. And, you know, I appreciate his mentorship and his friendship and the iron sharpening iron that he and I have had for, what, 15 plus years now. But I know that I would not think the way that I currently think except for long conversations with with my friend, Peter, and how we've sharpened each other to think about things differently.
DW: Is there a particular book or podcast that has really helped you to shape your thinking?
DS: Yeah, you know, the book, The Steward Investor, the book that I wrote, really spills out all of what I have learned over the last 15 years, but they're, you know, great resources. If somebody's new to this, Mike Baer has a book about BAM, Business As Mission. Well, I'd have to look through my shelves here. But, you know, some of the authors, I would say, Amy Sherman, wrote a great book. I can't think of the title right now. Michael Lindsay, faith in the halls of power. Great book. You know, I'd simply encourage people to get beyond the typical stewardship books. And I love Randy Alcorn. And I think his writings are fantastic. But he doesn't get it at this kind of investing. He's not an investor. He's a pastor. And while I love Ron Blue, and Kingdom Advisors, wonderful, wonderful organization, again, they don't really get to this proactive values kind of investing, probably because 75% of financial advisors operate under a FINRA-regulated system, and they really can't even talk about these kinds of investments.
DW: So, you're doing both alternative investments and market investments, right?
DS: That's right, because I believe that to build up a true, properly allocated portfolio that can accomplish both temporal and eternal outcomes. You have to have both, so you don't throw away everything that you know. But if all you're doing is publicly traded investments, it's really hard to accomplish God's eternal purposes in a proactive fashion, you can screen out the things you don't like. And maybe you can. There are some private funds like sovereigns Omega funds that invest in publicly traded companies that are led by Christians. That's proactive. And those companies have good spiritual impact. But you're not going to find FINRA approved products that do that.
DW: Don, if somebody comes in and asks you, is there really that much opportunity out there in this space? What would you say to them?
DS: I'd say, yes, there is. But it's hard work. It's hard work, find it, it's hard work to connect with it. I wouldn't be starting a firm to do this, except for 15 years of, of building relationships around the world. I helped to start a fund that does this. So you know, we've got a pretty good network, and I'm very well connected to the previous fund that I used to work with. So there are opportunities for investment out there. It's just not easy. Yeah, yeah, that's good to know.
DW: All right. Is there anything that we can do to help you grow, grow the firm or make connections or anything like that? Or? Or is there anything that we can pray for you or your family about?
DS: Yeah, I'm, the firm is growing faster than anybody anticipated. And so I am in need of a financial adviser to join me. The ideal person would be somebody with a, you know, doesn't have to be long experience. But you know, three to five years, a little bit of experience in the financial services industry, if you've found that you don't like the sales side of the business, needing to find clients, I've got clients that need financial advisors. And I'm really looking for somebody who aligns with what I've talked about today, that I can help to train but also put them right to work with families who we have money that needs to get deployed, and I need a financial planner to help me come along and do that. Somebody who's, let's say, analytic, so they don't have to be sales oriented, but they can do the number crunching in the relationship piece. Maybe a CPA background or accounting background or anything like that, you know, blast that out. And let's see if anybody calls me.
DC: Yeah, absolutely. So our listeners know where to find you. The Steward Advisor Group is that right, dot com. And your book, it can be found on Amazon or other platforms, I assume? The Steward Investor,
DS: The Steward Investor, yeah.
DW: Okay. Excellent. David, would you pray and close us out?
DC: Absolutely. God, thank you so much for this opportunity to talk with Don. Learn about the many things you've taught him and how we can grow with our impact investing, paying attention to where you would have us invest our money, not just give our money. Help us to view our money, quote, unquote, as yours; we're just, we're stewards, we're managers for your purposes. Thank you for this opportunity again. In Jesus’ name, amen.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[OUTRO]
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