Episode 139 - What is Marketplace? with Vip Vipperman
One thing that makes this show so special is the feedback we receive from listeners just like you. Today’s episode is the fruit of your feedback.
Many of you have talked about how helpful it would be to connect the Faith Driven Investor world with the Faith Driven Entrepreneur world. Well, we heard you. And out of that has arrived something we are beyond excited to share with you.
It’s called Marketplace, and it’s a space for like-minded investors to find faith-driven deals and funds that help them put real capital to work in a way that makes a real impact. On today’s episode, Henry will share the origin story behind it and you’ll get to meet Vip Vipperman, who is helping make it all happen.
Episode Transcript
*Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDE movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.
Yeah, I mean, we're very thankful to see over one hundred deals in the marketplace now and probably 50 or more above that that are going through the process right now. I get excited to see that there's probably 50 to 60 percent of the deals are US based. And so there's people out of the Bay Area, people in Chicago or Dallas or Atlanta, and New York's doing something exciting. But then you also have twenty five countries represented, you know, deals from, like you said, Romania and Bulgaria. And now pretty soon, hopefully Ecuador.
William Norvell: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, really grateful to be here with my great co-host, Mr. Henry Kassner. How are you today?
Henry Kaestner: I'm awesome, thank you. It's a beautiful day in Northern California. I feel blessed to be alive. And I get to hang out on the podcast with my esteemed co-host, William, and some really special guests where we're definitely down the best voice of the podcast, the Rusty today.
William Norvell: So that's a tragedy for all of our listeners. So we pray that you will not tune out right now just because Rusty is not here, you know? So stay with us. We think it's going to be great. And we do actually have a pretty special episode today. So we're excited, you know, throughout the last three years, which is kind of crazy to think about. I remember sitting on that exact porch I'm looking at with Henry when some version of this concept of a podcast edition and a website and I think I bought the Web address that day on your back porch for Faith Driven Entrepreneur, ERG was birthed. And we are just so fortunate to be joined by two other members of the team that Berman and Andrew Furman, who are going to talk a little bit about other parts of the ministry. So as you might have gathered, there is a a bigger ministry. Some people may have only met us through the podcast or maybe, you know, about our daily blog. Maybe you've been in different parts of it. We're going to bring you in to a little bit deeper of what the ministry is and the other facets of the organization where we are today, what we have, and then also what the future looks like and what we're building. And so to start with that, we probably haven't done this in a while. I would love to turn it over to you, Henry, just to give a little bit of a preamble of why do we exist, what are we doing and what is our goal and our mission?
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, so obviously it's a great question. And to some extent, I think over the last 150 episodes or so, we've taken some amount of that for granted that people understand what we're about. And yet it's probably good to revisit the mission. And every story's got a little bit of an origin story to it as well, of course. So William and I have both been on the sovereign's capital team. And the Genesis story for Faith Driven Entrepreneur comes from the fact that we, with time in the first four or five years, found ourselves with a problem. And the problem was that we had too much deal. I remember actually a venture capitalist coming to us as we got started. I actually had reached out to him for counsel and said, we're thinking about starting this venture capital fund that's going to have a differentiator and that we're going to invest in founders that are driven by their Christian faith. And the person said to me at the time, it's like, that's a terrible, horrible idea. And here's why you have to understand that 80 percent of funds can't beat the market and they can invest in anything they want. So how the world could you possibly do? Well, if you're only going invest in 10 or 15 percent of the different companies you might otherwise invest in? And I didn't have a really good response or rebuttal to then. And part of that was because I felt called to do it. And we're going to go ahead and do it because again, we felt called. But with time over four or five years, we came to understand actually that because we were different than the other three or four thousand funds, the Faith driven entrepreneurs started to seek us out. And the very thing that this person had thought would be our to our detriment, which is not having enough deal flow, only being able to have 10 or 15 percent as much as others actually accrued to our favor. So we had significantly more. The challenge was that we end up find ourselves saying no to 98 or 99 out of 100 entrepreneurs that are coming to us for funding. And so for a bunch of guys that got into this space because we wanted to be an encouragement to faith driven entrepreneurs when you say no, that many times you're not being encouragement to anybody here, maybe to one one out of 100. But that's not a very good hit rate. So we got together and said there's an opportunity for us to have this ministry and to be able to love on others. What does it look like? And actually, there's a name behind it. There's a guy named Anatole Moulins in and it's all if you're listening to this right now. Thank you. And it all came in one day and I can't remember how I got connected to him. But he said, listen, I'm running this real estate type of play. I'm in Moldova and I'm looking for advice and capital. And I thought, well, it's going to be the easiest no ever. We don't invest in real estate. I can't even get a cap rate. And I'm not really sure or Moldova is or even if Moldova is actually really a country, maybe this is one of my friends plunking me. As it turns out, of course, Moldova is very much, of course, a country and it's always very much a really, really neat entrepreneur. And I said, I'm sorry. We're just we're not going to be able to invest in, you know, it's wrong stage, industry, geography. We'd gotten pretty good at talking about why we couldn't do things and we were ready to pray for him and then say goodbye, but he wouldn't let me go. And he said, look, you have to understand that there aren't a lot of Christian entrepreneurs in Moldova. And I need to be able to ask questions to people like, you know, how do I think about choosing the right type of partner? How do I think about hiring or firing or CENCOM plans or, you know, doing corporate social responsibility, all these different things. And my sense is you, because of your background and because of what you guys do, you can help me. And so I felt like I can't say no to that. So I scheduled a couple our time where I said to and it's all that I'd share with them, all the things that we had learned during our time at sovereigns. Up to that point and through the story that God wove through, David and I had bandwidth and. And preparing for that call, it came to me that, gosh, if I'm going to go do all this work, maybe we should just put it up on a website somewhere. A lot of it were some of the core values and principles that we looked at for Faith Driven Entrepreneur. So it's focus on excellence and it's a focus on identity in Christ, above all, talking about core to create, talking about ministry and word ministry and things like that. So that became the Faith Driven Entrepreneur website. But one of the things we also realized, of course, is that the best way to be able to convey principles like that is through storytelling. And so pretty early on, we decided we needed to have a podcast. And that was a long time ago, many, many, many episodes ago. And we've had a lot of fun doing that. You know, when people ask me how the podcast is going or that they like it, you know, it's become my love language, my vanity metrics that were being listened to and one hundred and forty plus countries. And I think that is super cool. And we've had a lot of fun with it. And yet at the same time, we came to understand that when an entrepreneur is looking for two hundred fifty thousand dollars, two million dollars of financing and you send them a link to a podcast, you haven't really scratched the rich completely. They like it. They listen to it. They share it with their friends, but they are still looking for a capital to be able to advance their journey. And they'd love to get that capital from faith driven investors, people who will be on their cap table strapped to the mass with him. They get why they're doing what they're doing. And so we collectively just informing our executive director at Faith Driven Entrepreneur on faith driven investor in our broader staff. And I said, you know, maybe there's a way for us to be able to serve the entrepreneur by introducing them, by creating a marketplace, if you will, to other investors. And it really started picking up steam. And, you know, when Justin I started working together as he came on board to lead and to take this nascent thing that God was doing through us, William, and really expanded scale it through his experience that right now media. But as we started doing that in the very early days, said, gosh, maybe at some point time there needs to be a marketplace, a place where people can come and find faith driven entrepreneurs that they might be in a relationship with. They can mentor that they could put capital in that, you know, something like an angel list or a crowdfunder or something like that should probably exist in the church. Gosh, I hope somebody else does it because it's going to probably be a lot of work. We'd have to do it. So for a couple of years, we just try to really seriously encourage other people to get out there and do it. And then a couple of things happen in rapid succession. And one of those things is that thing that person is going to be somebody. I want to turn the mic over to here in a second. But March happen and Luke and one of my partners and sons call me up and recalling the experience of CloudFactory, one of our portfolio companies in Nepal, that when the earthquake hit was able to respond quickly and we were able to get some money into the hands of their staff in Nepal to help out real time. When covid hit, Lou called me up and said, gosh, maybe we need to get some money out in the hands of entrepreneurs. There can be a blessing to the community. And maybe actually we need to get some debt capital out to some of these Christian led businesses that are in some of these countries where there isn't any type of a government bailout and help them. And this is not a time to negotiate terms. It's just let's get money in their hands. The companies that had been flourishing pre covid are going to make it through. And so we put together a Google spreadsheet of the companies that are coming to us for covid funding that were in the far corners and far reaches of the world that might have found out about us through the podcast or something like that. And we said we want to be more intentional about trying to serve them in their time of need than maybe we had done before. And so started off as a Google shared spreadsheet where we shared it with some other investors as well. And then we quickly began to understand that there's an opportunity for this to be something bigger. We partnered up with Trubridge Global, which is a great ministry that helps people invest philanthropic capital overseas, along with the Impact Foundation that does the same thing, focusing on domestic givers. And we created the FDE marketplace. And pretty soon we looked and started seeing these entrepreneurs coming in and investors having an interest and said, you know, we really need somebody on board that understands the life of an entrepreneur that's got a heart to serve them. And instead, since we've now established that we want to be a blessing to the other 99, who's going to be the person who's going to lead us through that? And we kind of collectively put our heads together. And it wasn't long before we came on. The person has what I think is the most interesting name in Christendom, which is the department. And so we have ship with us live in the virtual studio, so to speak. Welcome to the program. Hey, Henry. William, glad to be here today. So what was it about yourself and your background? I guess it's awkward for us just to protect yourself.
William Norvell: Why are you so fantastic? That's what industry. That's right. If you could sum that up in 30 seconds or less. So we had what was it about? So William and I and Justin had known you from before and your experience with The Lion's Den.
And just a really winsome personality, you really serious about his Christian faith with a just a great energy and enthusiasm for entrepreneurship to tell us about that. Tell us about your experience at Lion's Den. What was it you were doing before we called you to tell the story of why I care about entrepreneurs?
Vip Vipperman: It honestly goes back to middle school.
And I was a chubby kid that got down a lot when I was, for those of you don't know, visit, I'd say tall and reasonably skinny, very tall and reasonably skinny.
Yeah. But when I was in public school, I got picked on and bullied a lot and I was really on the fringe. I never was a part of the in crowd. And when the Lord redeemed me, when someone introduced me to Christ, he said, hey, it doesn't matter with all those other kids say about you, it honestly doesn't even matter what you think about yourself, which matters most. There's a God in heaven who loves you.
And he sent his son to die for you on the cross and you come to know him. Everything's going to be different. And that like that choice and that conversation really began to impact me, and it just gave me a heart for that person who's left out or in need. So today, when I was on a call with an entrepreneur in Ecuador and he said, nobody around me can help me with my business and no one can give me like a Christian perspective of how to take care of my employees and what things look like going through covid. Now, I want to help that guy give him a solution to his problems, find somebody that will support him and a community that will come around him. And so Lion's Den and being a part of that for the last five or six years is it's been a joy. I learned about the world of investing and got a chance to see some cross-border deals happen in my career. And just when I got a chance to see the role of the entrepreneur and the things that they were going through, I just wanted to be a part of it, support it. I love hearing about the new deals. I love learning about new technologies. But I really just want to see these folks who have this vision that they've been given from God a lot of times and that they're working so hard to accomplish this. I want to see them get the funding that they need to go and to build that vision and to accomplish that dream and succeed. As you often I've heard you say before, and to compete and win for the glory of God.
Henry Kaestner: So that is awesome. We can almost just end the podcast right there. But you mentioned Lion's Den. Just take us through just a quick autobiographical sketch. Take it from middle school, because your journey has had you go to China, it's had you run the lion's den. It's had you in real estate. Just give us an autobiographical sketch and then camp out a bit on what is this Lion's Den? What was it that you're running in Dallas? That guy, Justin, William and I so fired up.
Vip Vipperman: Yeah. So grew up in Richmond, Virginia, moved my senior year of high school, which was a huge change. But it just really taught me to trust in the Lord and got me an interesting cross-cultural experience moving down south. They told me if I was from north of the Ettin line, I was a Yankee. That's a whole lot of people, man. And so I got a chance to experience cross-cultural walking early on. And so I ended up staying in school in Louisiana, going to LSU. And during my summers, I had the chance to travel a little bit and so did some mission projects, started doing work as an intern at a local church with some youth, and then got a chance to go overseas and serve one summer in Taiwan and got a chance to truly experience cross-cultural immersion for a summer, learning the language a little bit, get exposed to the people, play some ball in another culture and just really had a heart for it and so got invited back. And after I graduated, I went and served in Taiwan for three years. So great experience worked with college students. So again, just getting a chance to be in the lives of students and those people who were looking for something bigger than themselves and to feel a part of a community and getting a chance to introduce them to Christ ended up meeting my wife. They're coming back to school and doing some seminary in the US and my cross-cultural work, and then went over and served in East Asia for about six years. So got experience in the Chinese culture and had a great time working with the underground church. There started a small business in my work in China, but unfortunately didn't have a whole lot of business experience on my work and my experience was in the ministry.
And so at that time it wasn't a very successful business. We had a chance to talk to some Chinese business leaders about the work that they were doing and about the work that the Lord was doing in their lives. But the business itself didn't really take off. As it turns out, knowing that your clients will pay or not for your services is pretty important and starting a business. And our clients at the time weren't willing to pay for the consulting work that we were doing. So when I came back to the States in twenty twelve, I had the opportunity to work in the real estate industry. I got invited by a man in Dallas who'd been successful in real estate to come work for his firm and to use my experience in the Chinese culture to work with Chinese who are looking at investing in the US market. Hundreds of millions of dollars was coming into the US real estate markets from China, and he wanted a piece of it. And he was a believer. And I was like, well, let's go for it. And so the Lord was very generous very quickly. We had some opportunities to go from single family houses to master plan communities to investing in seven hundred unit apartment complexes in L.A. with family office money out of Shenzhen. And so got a chance to really see the investment world from a unique perspective and doing those cross-border deals. And because of my passion for mission and because of my experience now in the investment world, I got invited to the Lion's Den events in Birmingham, Alabama, and Mark Ouessant and Chuck Welden and Andrew Clark, some of the guys there. We're just doing an incredible job bringing in deals and what we like to call a shark tank for Jesus type of office, where folks would pitch their deal in front of a group of investors and get a chance to get some financial support. And so I worked with a group from Dallas, about eight, nine other folks, to bring the event to the DFW area and started here. And so for about six years, we've run that event and just been getting entrepreneurs on the stage to share their story and to make a pitch. So that's where I got to. Chance to hear about FDE for the first time, meet guys like Justin, do the right now media work his worship conference and, you know, be a part of that ecosystem. And it's just been exciting to support companies. And I mean, we thought, hey, maybe someone who invest in a few of them. And within five years we saw ten dollars million invested across the ecosystem and 20 or more companies get funded. And we're like, man, there is something going on here that we can't control. And that's really amazing. And the thing that amazed me the most honestly were the times when someone would show up to the events, invest, and it happened a couple of times over a million dollars in a company and then leave. And we didn't know who they were or where they came from because it was a live event. They could show up, buy a ticket the day up and walk. And it took us a few months. But tracking down that person and just being like, how in the world did you find out? Like, where did you go? And they would just say things like, hey, I was seeking to find out where God was moving, you know, how to connect business and faith. You know how to make an investments. You know, that goes along with things that I hear at church. And I heard about the Lion's Den and that's how I got here. And those are the same stories we're hearing now about FDE where people are. Man, there's something amazing is happening there. God is on the move and we want to be a part of it. So how do we plug in?
Henry Kaestner: So, William, Justin, you and I find VEP, we get to know the work that he's doing in Dallas Lion's Den and say, gosh, there's an opportunity for this to happen 365 days a year. There's that many entrepreneurs that are looking for assistance. And actually, we know through our work it's sovereigns and just generally the faith driven investor ministry that there are a large number of investors that are looking for deals like that to see if there's going to be somebody to serve entrepreneurs at scale year round. We got our guy right.
William Norvell: Definitely what I said, and I think it's worked out, it's been six months. I think we're doing good. We're about to find out.
Henry Kaestner: So why do we think it's going. William, of course, you're talking tongue in cheek, but if you tell us, walk us through. So the audience is heard up until now. You know, we get this idea in March. We start this Google spreadsheet. We go ahead and we think maybe there's an opportunity to do something a little bit more formal in terms of introducing investors, entrepreneurs. And if that's going to be a case, it needs to be in HTML. It needs to be up on a website. Walk us through that. You come on board in the summer. We have kind of like an Alpha launch in September 10th there. But why are we encouraged enough about the progress of the marketplace to actually think it might be worth having a podcast on it?
Vip Vipperman: Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's been amazing. What am I most incredible experiences was a week ago when I had a conversation. So I didn't realize that there were 30 or more Christian business accelerators around the world. And it's been awesome just to partner with those groups like Praxis and Synaptics and Tarrega and so many others that are doing amazing things. And one of them referred in a company, an organization called Bluefields in São Paulo, Brazil. The other day I had my very first entrepreneur interview where we were kind of looking at this guy's deal and it was completely in his language, like we had to have a translator to talk through the deal the whole time. And so, I mean, I've traveled to different countries and been a part of some different things. But I just thought it was amazing that we're doing a deal review in a language that requires a translator to go through it. I'm sure there's folks that have been doing that for a long, long time. But most of the folks up until now all spoke English because it had some sort of English education. And it's been exciting. But, yeah, I mean, we're very thankful to see over one hundred deals in the marketplace now and probably 50 or more above that that are going through the process right now. I get excited to see that there's probably 50 to 60 percent of the deals are US based. And so there's, you know, people out of the Bay Area, people in Chicago or Dallas or Atlanta, and New York's doing something exciting. But then you also have twenty five countries represented, you know, deals from, like you said, Romania and Bulgaria. And now pretty soon, hopefully Ecuador.
William Norvell: Tell us a little bit about somebody. Listen to the podcast. They may be thinking, oh, this is me, right. I'm looking for faith and capital. I'd love to figure that out. What steps would they take? What does it look like to get on the marketplace? You said over 100 companies. I think it's going to be a hundred and fifty soon. Tell us a little bit about what that process looks like and how somebody might think about whether this is the right fit for them or not.
Vip Vipperman: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's been a blessing that a lot of our deals come through referrals. So organizations have referred them in. But if you're an entrepreneur that's in a part of the world, you just never connected with one of these other organizations before. You can go to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur website, click on the Find Investors button, and there's an app that you can fill out real quick just to enter some basic information so that we can follow up with you. So it's a pretty easy process so that we can connect and kind of learn the story of the entrepreneur and what they're trying to accomplish. And then we normally try to take a little time interviewing them to hear their story and to get them plugged in.
William Norvell: And that's great tip. And just to clarify in, you know, we also have demo days, as you might imagine. So, you know, certain companies we feature by themes or certain. As we bring investors together selectively, we're not an accelerator, as we mentioned, we're a marketplace, but we do try to come alongside some of these companies and showcase in a little different light. And we've had many investments happen through the marketplace. We've had much community been built as well. And the other thing that you may contribute a little bit, but as of today, you know, definitely across the spectrum, too, we have people raising two or three hundred thousand dollars. We have people raising five million dollars. We have people raising debt. We have people raising equity. We have people doing real estate deals. I mean, probably 70 plus percent of the deals are technology based at some level, but a good number or not. And then we also have deals internationally. You know, there's preschool's and Kenya, there's moringa farm agricultural deals in Africa. There's coffee shops and retail businesses in Southeast Asia, as well as a large number of gas companies. But anything else you would add on sort of the make up of what type of companies are already on there and just maybe what entrepreneurs can expect if they show up at your doorstep?
Vip Vipperman: Yeah, as far as the make up, one of the coolest things we've done is to partner with National Christian Foundation to take some of the top 30 things that people give to. And so we have that list that people give to work in the anti trafficking space, anti slavery, space, poverty, those types of categories. So we're always talking to entrepreneurs like what about your company is affecting somebody in one of these categories. So are you helping people get jobs in a place where there's poverty or are you helping women that have been trafficked to have a career? Are you helping people that have been ex offenders to get a new start to life? And so it's really fun to see some of these impact opportunities come through the businesses. So we love to see deals with those kind of things. One of the conversations I have often with the entrepreneurs is how their faith integrates with their company on the marketplace. We look at it in four simple ways. So personal, internal, external, and what we like to call beyond so personal would be the faith of the founder. I want to build a business to the glory of God, have a quiet time each day, and is dedicated to spending time in the word internal would be ministering to my employees, giving them a chance to hear about the good news, whether it's an open door policy or a Bible study I do once a week, then external. Am I reaching out to my users of my app or the consumers who buy my product? Those who I serve you, my service business. And then finally that beyond category where it's wow, did you go to that country in order to start a business to help plan churches or help to redeem lives, help to give opportunities to those in poverty? And so we're not saying that a company has to go up different levels. We found that some people in the business that there end is really perfectly set for internal ministry. But for others, there's an opportunity to go above and beyond where they're already now. So that's a fun part of the conversation we get to have with each and every entrepreneur in the way that they're serving and how they're leveraging their business experience, but also how their faith kind of plays out within their work.
William Norvell: Yeah, I love that. And, you know, yeah, there definitely is not necessarily a you know, the next year is better, as we say here, often one size fits one.
One of the goals of our ministry is to really come alongside you as the entrepreneur and try to help figure out what is God doing in your specific business and your specific industry with your specific employee base in your specific geography. And God works through different ways, through all of those. And one of the things we love to highlight a couple of other podcasts we have here, if you're sitting here listening and you may be wondering to yourself, should I even be looking for capital? I think there's two great podcasts we've done, woman with Jessica Kim that you should be able to find and we'll link to in our show notes just about investors and how to think about whether that you should even take capital or not, if that's even a good idea for you as an entrepreneur. And then another with a gentleman named Jake Thompson, who also works with the sovereign capital just on fundraising 101, what it looks like, what are some pitfalls?
What are questions that in this case, VEP and or Andrew are going to ask you or any investors going to ask you? And hopefully that can arm you to be a little better equipped when you come into this conversation. So as we think about this, anything else you would love to highlight about the ministry? Potentially? I know we do some things like flight school, we do some other things. Is there anything else that you would like to highlight that the entrepreneurs can get plugged into? Because obviously the marketplace is exciting. We're excited about it. But content, community, those types of things are very exciting to us as well, whether dollars actually flow into the company or not.
Vip Vipperman: Yeah, some of the things I'm excited about that we've got going on for those who are coming to FDE looking for a little bit more business help, we're doing a month on month session where Henry is hosting a different venture capital investor, a different successful industry leader CEO, and they're going to do thirty minutes of talk time talking about what they've learned, some experiences they've had that will help entrepreneurs that tune in. But also 30 minutes of Q&A time that will really give entrepreneurs a chance to actually ask questions to Henry and the team. So. I know a lot of people love the podcasts and downloading the information, but some people want to give some feedback and get some questions answered so there'll be a chance for those entrepreneurs to really engage. They are looking for business help. We also have this amazing Bible study series. It's a partnership with JD Greer really connecting to the people in the pew, as well as to entrepreneurs that are out there that gives a chance for folks that have known FDE for a long time to go through this now eight week long Bible study. But it's also a chance for people who've been a part of this FDE ecosystem, are learning about it, to then take it and do it locally where they are. And so we have ones ran by our team where you can get a chance to hear and to listen and be a part of it to join that community. But you can also go use the content for free and start something where you are, especially with this virtual world we live in these days. You can have people from your city or two or three countries away to be a part of that with you. And so it's been exciting to be different ways. We're trying to help build, like spiritual the side of the entrepreneur walk, but also the business side of the walk to think so much that this is awesome.
Henry Kaestner: So a good chance as we come to a close.
And we'll and we'll ask our last question just to kind of revisit the purpose of the ministry. So Faith Driven Entrepreneur is a ministry. It's not a for profit platform. We're not taking a promote or anything like that or not taking two percent. We exist to serve you. And then as we serve you, as we hopefully encourage you by bringing in a community and helping you understand some of the stories and hopefully serving you in other ways through what we've just rolled out. Our hope is that you might in turn encourage and look to equip and maybe even activate other faith driven entrepreneurs that are in your community. Now, we're in a really special time in history where there's never been as much division in the marketplace as there is. And yet we're uniquely equipped to really love on maybe even as many as a thousand customers in a month or one hundred employees, or maybe it's just dozens. But in each case, we have an opportunity to love our neighbor. And, you know, ours is a ministry that hopes to see a time when there are a million plus Faith driven entrepreneurs who are awoken and activated and encouraged to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to love their neighbor, to be a great cultural witness, to come up with and solve the problems that they see in society and land opportunities with new products and services and just the way they do work. And that could be for somebody who's doing a software as a service business all the way to people to have more of a social entrepreneurial business that was talking about before. So join us in that. That's our hope is our hope is that as we serve, you will equip you to serve and encourage others that there's a multiplication effort of this to the time where hopefully there will be a million plus Faith driven entrepreneurs worldwide that are bearing witness to their faith and that a real revival happens because of that. William, I want to hand it over to you. We are in a Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast and we close out every one of these with the same question. What is it?
William Norvell: Absolutely, that we love to see how God's word is alive and breathing each and every day, and it's fun to see where God's word impacts our guests like yourself and how it transcends and our listeners whenever and however they may be listening. And so we'd love to invite you if you wouldn't mind sharing with us something from God's word. Could it be something you read this morning? Could be something you've been meditating on for a season of your life or this specific season just invites you to share with our audience where God has you in his world today?
Vip Vipperman: Yeah, absolutely. First, John to 14, I read this morning it talks about and I wrote down in my journal, May we truly know you, Lord. May you and your word abide in us. May we overcome the evil one? May we be strong in you? You know, as I've been working with entrepreneurs this last year, it's been really exciting just to talk to them about their lives, what God's doing and what God's teaching them. But realizing the entrepreneurial journey is difficult, especially these days when there's sometimes more people in your house than you're expecting to be a part of. Some people are lonely and they're all by themselves because they're single and they don't have other folks taking the journey with them. And everybody is going through so much more than just running their business right now. And so it's as much as any time ever in our history. It's not abiding each day with the Lord that helps get us through. And we would encourage any listener to turn back to take some time at first, John, to draw back close to our King Amen Amen.
William Norvell: Well, thank you for joining us. Thank you for your passion for entrepreneurs. Thank you for your humble pursuit of serving them. We are so grateful to have you in that position. And I hope so many people listening will be able to get to know VEP and he'll be able to point you in the right direction in the funnel, in the ministry to wherever God might be leading you and wherever you might need help with content, community ideas, investment, whatever that may be. So grateful for you.
Henry Kaestner: Indeed, indeed. Grateful for our audience. Grateful for our guest. Grateful for my co-hosts. God bless you all.