Episode 228 - Investing that Makes the World Rejoice with Robin John
Robin John believes investing can help the world rejoice.
In 2007, he founded Eventide Asset Management, a firm that helps people invest without compromise. In this podcast, Robin shares the tension he felt early in his career while sleeping on a brand new bed in India as the guesthouse cook slept on the cold hard kitchen floor. While American management could have had a redemptive impact on the guesthouse they outsourced to, they chose not to, and that didn’t sit right with Robin.
At that moment, he felt a conviction that many Christian investors face at some point: that wealth can be more responsibly deployed and stewarded. The institutions we trust with our capital somtimes let us down, so he started Eventide as a way to offer an uncompromising Christian voice in the industry.
Robin joins the show to talk about how to identify ETF and Mutual Funds that align with your values, and what mafia wives have to do with Faith Driven Investing.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
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.
Rusty Rueff: Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Robin John believes in the power of investing. He founded Eventide Asset Management in 2007 with two Christians who were looking for ways to help people invest without compromise. As CEO of Eventide, Robin has helped the firm grow into a leader within values based investing. He and the team believe that investing rightly can help the whole world rejoice. Robin joins the show today to talk about Eventide's origin story, how he navigated the early challenges and why Christians should be conscientious investors. Let's listen in.
Rusty Rueff: Well, William, here we are.
William Norvell: We're back.
Rusty Rueff: We're back. We're back. And you know, it feels like someone's missing.
William Norvell: I know. I know.
Rusty Rueff: It does, doesn't it?
William Norvell: Who could it be? Who could it be?
Rusty Rueff: I don't know. I don't know, because anybody who listens to the podcast knows that you and I don't speak first. [...]
William Norvell: Well, maybe we could hide it. Maybe I could ask questions about ice cream, and maybe people would think Henry's here.
Rusty Rueff: That is possible. And I can talk about Dungeness crabs.
William Norvell: Yep. Yep. But, you know, we're unfortunately down a man today. Mr. Kaestner is not with us. We miss you greatly. Yeah. So, you know, we hope our audience sticks around and enjoys Rusty and I.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah. So it's the middle of July of 2022 as we date stamp this. Top where I am is hot where you are?
William Norvell: Not really. It's kind of nice here, but that's why, you know, we pay crazy taxes in California.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah. Yeah. So Williams on one side of the country, I'm on the other in Rhode Island. And we're welcoming our guest in today not far from me up in Boston. And get this, William, how would you like to be involved with a firm whose mission statement is investing that makes the world rejoice?
William Norvell: Hmm. That's pretty good. I know this is not a recruitment podcast, but Robin may be in trouble.
Rusty Rueff: They think so. Let's welcome him and Robin. John, welcome to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast.
Robin John: Hey, thank you so much, Rusty. And thank you, William.
Rusty Rueff: So, Robin, it's awesome to have you with us. We've been waiting anxiously for you to be on our podcast as we've had the opportunity to talk to one of your partners on the FDI podcast. But now we have you, which is awesome. And you know, we're excited for you to tell us all about Eventide Asset Management that you started in 2007 because you saw this need for a different kind of investing, one that makes people rejoice. And I can't wait to hear more about that. But you have a very unique story about why you left a big firm and started your own thing. Why don't you tell us about that story?
Robin John: Yes, it was back in 2005. I was at a company, a large custody bank, and it was my first job out of college. I had gone to Tufts University to study economics, and I was spending a year in a place called Pune, India, which is near Mumbai, Bombay. And I was there to help them outsource a lot of the global securities services back office jobs to India. And while I was there, I was staying at a guest house and I am 25 years old at the time. And I remember staying in the guest house. There was a cook and a housekeeper, the housekeeper, his name was Amal and the cook's name was Kamal. So Amal and Kamal, these guys were probably about my age as well. And so I got pretty close to them and connected to them. I felt like these were just two of my friends and there were other Americans and British employees staying up at the guesthouse. And often when the guesthouse was empty, I would just spend time with Amal and Kamala to get to know them better, and I would hang out in the kitchen area while they cook. These guys would cook breakfast for me, dinner for me. They would iron my clothes for me, laundry, all of it. And so I just wanted to get to be friend them and get to know them better. So I'm in the kitchen talking to them while they are cooking. And I noticed, you know, behind the kitchen there's a pantry and there's like a prayer mat on the floor of the pantry. And I remember saying to them, Hey, do you guys sleep there? And they said, Yes, sir, we do. And I remember thinking, Man, it's so hot in this kitchen and humid and it's even hotter in that little pantry where the two of them are curling up to sleep. And there's no pillow. There's a hard like concrete floor. And meanwhile, I have a bedroom with an air conditioner. Beautiful, brand new bed. And there are lots of these empty bedrooms in that guesthouse. And I remember thinking to myself that night when I'm lying in bed, remember thinking just about Amal and Kamal lying in that pantry, and I couldn't fall asleep. And so I remember writing to American management, telling them, Hey, you guys got to give them a place to sleep. And the response I got was, Well, you know, we're outsourcing the guesthouse. There's a supplier. They're responsible for their own employees. And I remember thinking to myself, this huge American company could easily have an impact here and influence over this very small guesthouse company in Pune, India. And they chose not to. And a few days later, I remember sitting in the living room and there was an American employee walking out through the front door of the living room. And Kamal, the cook, was walking into the house. And the American employee said to Kamal, servants should not use the front door. And I remember sitting there, like, feeling terrible. And you know, I moved to the U.S. when I was eight years old on my eighth birthday. When I first came to the U.S., I didn't speak English. And it was kind of a difficult five, six years for me. I used to get picked on a lot. All the names like Habib and Apu. Where does your dad work? The Kwik-E-Mart or the 7-Eleven? So like, I think in that moment I kind of felt all that pain, that Kamal's feeling. And so then Kamal walks in, looks at the floor, looks at me and says, Sir, I am a human being too. And I didn't have words because I was feeling the pain that he was feeling. And the only way I think I could explain that feeling is from the Bible is when Moses is confronted with the Egyptian taskmaster beating up on the Hebrew slave. And though he was the prince of Egypt, there was something inside of him that identified as a Hebrew. And he felt the pain of that beating, and he needed to do something about it. And, you know, the book of Hebrews says that Moses, though he was the son of Pharaoh's daughter, chose rather to be afflicted with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of Egypt. So for me, you know, God has blessed me. This is many years later now, but I still would rather and I still do identify more with the Kamals of the world than what that American colleague of mine. So that was kind of my entry into the business world. And I think I was just disillusioned by business very early coming out of college and with my first job.
Rusty Rueff: Wow. So I would think that that was probably a scary moment for you too? Right. I mean, so take us through how did God speak to you or did you seek him out in prayer to try to make the decision to leave and that that was the right thing to do? And, you know, was it a scary move?
Robin John: Yes. I don't know that it was a scary move, but it was definitely a difficult move for me leaving that place. I felt that I was having a lot of impact. I really enjoyed my one year being back in India. You know, I was involved with various ministries in the evenings in slums, sharing the gospel. I really valued being there. But I had lost a sense of passion for the work. And I had fallen under this kind of framework in my own mind that business was bad and that if God was to use me, I needed to be in ministry, in church ministry. So I had this framework that, you know, many people would refer to as the sacred secular mindset, where if you're going to do something for God, you got to be in church ministry. A missionary in a developing country somewhere and everything else is just selfish and about making money.
William Norvell: Yeah, absolutely. And gosh. I don't think you're alone there. You know, I know. I've felt that before, and I. I mean, I'll share my own story. I feel like it comes from, you know, if you sit in the pews of a church, a normal church, I think for a long time, that's kind of who you see on stage, right? That's who they bring out to talk is the missionaries and the people running nonprofits. And, you know, I can't ever remember seeing a teacher or a doctor or a business person on stage telling their story of how they're serving God in their vocations. I think the church has to own some of that. It's almost by osmosis that that's what you would imagine is the highest calling.
Robin John: That is right. I'll give you a small story of that. So even a few years ago, I was in an Indian church and a visiting evangelist pastor was in the church and he was preaching that day. Afterwards, he came to greet me. I'm talking to him. He said, mone, mone mean son. What are you doing for God? And I started talking about the work I do through Eventide. He said, No. I asked you, What are you doing for God? And I had just come back from Tanzania. I have a first cousin who is a full time missionary in Africa. I had been to Tanzania twice that year. I was teaching Sunday school in that church. I was the youth director on the church. If I had mentioned any of that, that would have been a satisfactory response. Most pastors don't understand work from a biblical perspective.
William Norvell: That's so good and sad at the same time? And and of course, I feel like some people are waking up here and there, but it's still not mainstream yet. So if pastors don't get it. How did you come to understand the biblical message of work and what led you to start Eventide?
Robin John: It was actually through a lot of prayer. So I left this large custody bank and I should have spent a lot of time in prayer at that point. But I took kind of the first job that came along. And ultimately, long story, I end up getting fired from that job within a few months. And that led me to a lot of prayer. And I was living in my parents basement in the Boston area at the time. And one half of the basement was finished and the other half was unfinished. And the washing machine and dryer and the burner, the the water heater was all on that unfinished side of the basement. And so I didn't want my brother or a first cousin that was living with me to see me late nights, kind of crying and praying. But that's what I would do. I would go to the unfinished part of the basement, kneel behind the washing machine where nobody could see me and just pray. And I would cry and I would just ask God to show me what I could do with my life. And at that point, I was really praying that God would call me into church ministry, because, again, that's the framework I had regarding, hey, if I'm going to honor God and do something for God, that is what I should do. And ultimately the cousin I was living in our house said, Robin, what's going on? I said, What are you talking about? He said, Where's your laptop? You've been coming home without a laptop. So every day I had been leaving the house in the morning, acting like I'm going to work and looking for jobs at the library, and then late nights I'm spending time in prayer. And so I ended up telling my parents and at that point I asked Finny. Finny is the co-founder of Eventide, along with me and my brother. And Jason was also involved very early on. Jason is the third founding member. He was living in Louisville, Kentucky, so he would join us by telephone and we started praying together once a week. We would fast all day and we would pray together. And the initial prayer was, what should Robin do with this life. And meanwhile, even as I'm praying by my washing machine, I would kind of meditate over Romans Chapter 12 together. That's a chapter I had memorized as a little kid. And we often think about Romans Chapter 12, verse two talks about not conforming to the patterns of the world, but. The verse also says that we have to renew our minds. So not conforming to the patterns of the world and renewing of mind should go together. So I had not yet renewed my mind. So I was still under that framework of thinking about serving God only through church ministry. So as I started praying with Finny and Jason and my brother, we started asking ourselves the question Can we do something together for God? Initially it was, Hey, what should Robin do? And there were some more short type ideas that we had nonprofit ideas, but then some business ideas impact. Business ideas started to come through as we were praying together and having these conversations. One of those ideas was to help Christians and values driven investors align their values and their investments.
William Norvell: Oh, that's great. And tell us a little more. So where is Eventide today to take us one layer deeper into, you know, what is aligning Christians and their values and investments mean? What did that mean when you started and maybe how what does that come to mean over the last 15 years to you?
Robin John: Yeah. So we have a broader framework at Eventide of avoid, embrace, engage, and really God took us through a journey in understanding that framework. So when we first decided to launch an investment firm, we were more focused on avoid. We saw scriptures like Proverbs Chapter one that talked about avoiding ill gotten gain. It says there are verses like my son if sinful men entice you do not go along with them. If they say come along with us. And then at that time I started reading those scriptures with the lens of an investor. And if they say, come along with us, we will get all sorts of valuable things, we will get all sorts of profits, dividends, capital gains, and fill our houses with plunder and fill our bank accounts. Our 401k plans, our IRAs with plunder, cast lot with us, invest with us. We will share the common purse and mutual fund, an ETF, a private fund. It's a common purse that many people are sharing in the prophets together. And the passage goes on to say, do not share a purse with such people. Do not go along with ill gotten gain or with plunder. And so. Passages like that really impacted our view so that avoid component of that framework of avoid and embrace and gauge came first for us. And then there was a man named Tim Weinhold that. I really believe that God miraculously brought to us because he came two weeks before the launch of the [....] funds to this house church that Finny and I were leading. And the House Church is mostly college students. There's about 20 people in the house church. Tim randomly googled house churches in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and he shows up at the house church. Tim had never been to a house church in his life. He still with Eventide. So he would tell you he had never been to a house church in his life. And Tim also was a student of faith and business, probably more than anybody else in the country, at least that I knew. There's a book called Why Business Matters to God by a person named Jeff Van Duzer, the dean of the Seattle Pacific University. Tim was on his advisory board. And so Tim somehow shows up at our house church in Cambridge overhear about this Christian mutual fund we're about to start. And then he said, okay, I know what it means to be a Christian. I know what a mutual fund is. Put that together for me. And we don't use our language Christian Mutual Fund anymore. We say values based mutual fund or values based investing. But we explained to them we would be avoiding ill gotten gain. He said, You know, that's great, but if you're investing capital and you're allocating capital, where should Christians allocate capital? And that's how we started studying the Bible even more deeply, starting in Genesis one and two of creation and God calling good the things that He creates and creating us in his image. So the work that we do and the things that we create and partner with should be things that God could call good. And then the second great commandment in the Bible to love your neighbor as yourself. The Apostle Paul in Galatians said that all the commandments are summed up in that one commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. So we started to ask ourselves, who are the neighbors to a business? And in Leviticus Chapter 19, when we read to love your neighbor verse, it's actually speaking to business people. Vineyard owners, farmers, how they should treat their hired servants, how they should treat the employee, the poor and the community. So we asked ourselves, what are all the neighbors to a business? And we came up with six neighbors, stakeholders, customers, employees, supply chain, host communities, environment and society. So ultimately, that's where the embrace component comes into the Eventide story. We seek to invest and partner with companies that are loving their neighbors, that are serving well, these six stakeholders.
Rusty Rueff: That's really good. I'm glad you dove into that embrace component because it was a little hard for me. I get avoid and I get engage, but trying to figure out, you know, who should we embrace and how should we embrace. And that's a great litmus test that you just took us through there. So thank you for that. You know, when you decided to get into investing, you've talked about you saw two major problems. And I think you borrowed from Randy Alcorn. And you call these the Mafia wife problem and the Godfather problem. I'm interested, you know, can you unpack those two ideas for us?
Robin John: Yes. Randy Alcorn in his book Money, Possessions and Eternity has a chapter on investing. He talks about the Mafia wife problem. I think I probably created the term The Godfather problem. And in all honesty, I only saw the movie The Godfather for the first time about a month ago.
Rusty Rueff: No. No
Robin John: Yeah, I've only seen part one. I'm looking forward to seeing part two. And so the Mafia wife problem, I think, is well captured in the final scene of The Godfather movie. I don't know if you remember. Al Pacino's character takes over and he's a new godfather or the new Don. And there's a scene at the very end. He kills his own brother in l aw, and his sister is crying and saying, Why would you do this? But his wife, the last scene of the movie, Al Pacino, is with his gangsters in one room of the house. And you can see the wife at a distance standing in the other room. She could see what's happening in the other room. But she's close enough, but not too close. Right. And then the movie kind of ends with kind of the door closing and kind of she kind of fades away or he fades away and like he finishes with her face at the very end. So it's this idea that the mafia wife, she knows something's happened and she enjoys the fine clothing, the fur coats, the jewelry, the gold, the pearls. And she knows her husband is involved because she's close enough to the situation, but not too close where she's asking the meaningful questions. If she got too close, her conscience would be pricked. So the movie kind of shows her close, but not too close. And she's benefiting from all of this. And so the Godfather problem is really, you know, what I think of in terms of, you know, Don Corleone, you know, the first godfather, Al Pacino's father. He was especially, I think, even more likable as a character. Al Pacino, towards the end becomes kind of mean in that movie. But his father, like people liked him. They would come to him for help. So it's this idea that The Godfather, he beats up people. He's got gangsters he's involved in, like alcohol business and doing a lot of things that's really ill gotten gain type businesses. But then other people are coming to him for help and he's a hero to some. And I think sometimes unknowingly Christians fall into that trap where we are profiting from things like tobacco, where the poorest children in the world are being exploited, but then we feel good about it. One, we don't even know that we're profiting from tobacco because these things are being hidden inside of mutual funds and 401 K plan and things. So I'm not blaming anyone. But then we feel good about that profit because we're not giving away ten, 20, 30, 40, 50% of that to the poor. And, you know, in the Bible, there is a principle. Of not bringing tithe from ill gotten gain into the temple.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of us don't look below the surface when it comes to things like mutual funds or different investment vehicles. Do you have like some practical advice about what we can do? Should should we be peeling it back? And then what do you do with that mutual fund when you see that one company or maybe a couple of companies that make you uneasy?
Robin John: So the biggest problem is there are so many layers in the public markets that hide the actual investment. So somebody might have an account at a large custodian and they may choose it could be a 401k plan, it could be an IRA, it could be a regular investment account. It could be a target date fund, a target risk fund. It could just be an asset allocation fund. But they would just choose their risk profile, moderate, aggressive, conservative. And then they're done. They check off that box and then they don't know anything more than that. But then if you peel under the layer and look at what is this asset allocation fund or this target risk fund investing in, it will be a list of mutual funds, ETFs, generally mutual funds and ETFs. Then what you have to do is go to a website like Morningstar.com or Yahoo finance and put in the ticker symbol of the mutual fund or ETF and look at the portfolio holdings. It will often tell you the top 25 holdings. And then there are screening binders. There are many of them that tell you what these companies are involved with. Or you could just look at the company website. So, for example, a company like Philip Morris International is an obvious example. You know, that's a tobacco company. So there are some of these obvious examples that might pop out at you. And my recommendation would be write to the mutual fund portfolio manager, write to the Investor Relations Department, and tell them what your values are and say, I'm investing with you, but your investments don't align with my values. Start voicing that feedback and ultimately search out portfolio managers whose values do align with yours.
William Norvell: Now, that's really good. And, you know, I think I'm going to ask a personal question because and so when I hear that, I just think, you know, so let's say I don't have a ton of assets, you know, what's the first step there? I mean, just be candid, right? There's a lot of work going through the stages, emailing a portfolio manager. Is that the first step? Is it finding a financial advisor that understands your needs? Can you do this alone? How do you think through that?
Robin John: My recommendation for most people is to find a financial advisor, and the best place to find a financial advisor is Kingdom Advisors. Their annual conferences draw about 2000 Christian financial advisors from across the country. That is a good place to get started. Connect with a financial advisor. Tell them what your values are. They will help you build a portfolio that aligns with your values. They will look at your existing portfolio and help you to better align your values within your existing portfolios as well.
William Norvell: That's great advice and I've been on one of their companies yet and just so people know that organization. They don't have financial advisors, they get accreditation. And so those advisors are from Merrill Lynch or American Express or Morgan Stanley. They're from all over, but they have self-identified into understanding the biblical message of investing, and that's a great place to start. Okay, so flipping back to your entrepreneurial journey, I'm guessing creating a new category of investing was not the easiest thing in the world. Could you tell us a bit about some of the early challenges you and Finny and the other founders had getting started, and what kept you motivated as you were starting to build a business?
Robin John: Yeah, we had a bunch of early challenges and I'll give you a couple of examples of that. But let me just say throughout all of it, because we started with lots of prayer, we would fast once a week for many months together. We would then pray in the evenings and then break our fast late night. So we would do this. And so because of this, we felt a high level of conviction that we were doing the right thing and that God was leading us. And I mentioned the Tim Weinhold example, so like God started bringing the right people to us and we really felt that we were following God's will in our life. So our path was clear to us because of that, whether or not we were successful by worldly standards or not, we believed we were being faithful. So. When Finny and I first started, like I remember, the first hurdle was Finny's concern, Finny, said Robin. Christian Mutual Fund. Are we guilting Christians and investing with us by using the Bible? And that's the last thing we want to do. And. I am so proud of the team that we have at Eventide today. Our marketing director, Sherry. She has that same conscience and that is such an ongoing conversation at Eventide is how do we make sure that we don't say, does says the Bible therefore invest with Eventide. So that was an early struggle for us. Another early struggle for us was. What if we underperform? Is that going to bring dishonor to God? If we're leading with biblical principles and we underperform. Does that somehow bring shame to God's word? So that was another big concern and hurdle that we had to overcome. You know, as we were praying before, we said, okay, let's go, we're going to do this. Ultimately, we decided that if we could lead with excellence. And lead with our mission and values. Then both Christians and non-Christians will find it appealing. And that has been the case. Eventide, both our employee base and our investor base is very diverse. The Kingdom Advisor audiences, those financial advisors tend to invest with us more heavily. But we, I remember one of our first investors, those Moslem investors and Hindu investors were early investors with us because they loved the fact that we were leading with values.
William Norvell: So that's amazing to me and it's encouraging. Right. I mean, when I hear that, I get encouraged because I think that's a beautiful picture of business. Could you for our audience, I'm curious if you would mind sharing. I don't even know how to ask this question. I want to be clear, but how does that practically play itself out into the business? So you have a diverse workforce. We've had Finny on the podcast as well. I'm certain lots of your employees listen to these podcast and know that you are open about how your faith is it. Does it come out and how you treat people and how you love them well. Like, how are they on board with the vision? Does that make sense? Sorry, it's a bad question, but.
Robin John: No, I think it's a very good question. I would love to have one of my non-Christian employees on the call. They would tell you that Eventide has high integrity to our mission, and Eventide is a place that is highly, highly inclusive for Christians and non-Christians. Our purpose statement is Eventide strives to honor God and serve its clients by investing in companies that create compelling value for the global common good. And when it comes to even on negative screens, we do have screens that are very faith oriented. For example, an abortion screen. But all of our people, as they go through the interview process with Eventide, I make it very clear to them that working at Eventide is not about faith alignment. It's about mission and values alignment. And I would say, sadly, Christians push back on our mission as much or more than non-Christians do at times. So we really lead with mission and values and not with faith. Even though our mission and values come from our faith, our why for Finny and me and Jason is our faith, our our belief in Christ and the great commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.
William Norvell: Can I ask you to go one layer deeper? What specifically to Christians push back on often? I'm curious.
Robin John: Yeah, there's a bunch of different areas. And so broadly the biggest area I would think is a lot of Christians are still under a mindset of make all you can to give all you can. And there's this there's an assumption that aligning values leads to underperformance. And I often say to people, I believe that biblical principles are good for us in this life and in the next life, right? So into eternity, but also in this life of the Bible is full of wisdom and following. The biblical commandments are good for us. And so that is one big push back is does make all you can to give all you can. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, preached a sermon called The Use of Money. In that sermon, he said, Make all you can to give all you can, but make all you can without hurting yourself or your neighbor in body or in soul. So I think that's a good principle for all Christians. And I would also say that for people that really buy into make all you can to give all you can. I would also say that, first of all, if you look at the dominant 400 index or there's a group called the PRI Institute, they have an index that they've tracked. And what they do is they do negative screening. And just from a negative screening standpoint, there isn't any evidence of outperformance or underperformance over a long period of time. But at Eventide, we believe that the positive screening and partnering with companies that are creating compelling value for the global common good, in fact, does lead to better performance over the long term.
Rusty Rueff: That's great. That's absolutely great. So we're going to transition now to our Lightning Round, which is where we ask William. And I will ask you, you know, really quick questions. You can repeat them back if you if you'd like, and we'd like you to answer in less than 30 seconds. Most of them won't take that that long, but it's a way to just to get to know you. So if you're okay with that. You going with that? All right. Good. Yeah. All right, here we go. Veg or non-veg?
Robin John: Non-Veg. But Finny is a Veg. Finny's a vegan.
Rusty Rueff: Finny is a vegan.
Robin John: Yeah, but I eat pretty much everything if you put something in front of me, I'll. I'll eat it.
Rusty Rueff: All right? Okay. All right. I wish Finny was here because I would ask him the difference between there's, like, impossible or beyond meat, and I'm a vegetarian, so I always find that an interesting question. Okay. Best Indian food in Boston.
Robin John: Best Indian food in Boston, I would say probably Punjab, which is a restaurant in Arlington, Massachusetts. But all the Indian restaurants in Boston are north Indian food. Lots of cream. I prefer South Indian food. Unfortunately, I can't find any South Indian Kerala restaurants. Kerala is the state I'm from in Massachusetts.
Rusty Rueff: Okay, great. Make note of that and this.
William Norvell: Business opportunity if anyone's listening. Business opportunity.
Rusty Rueff: There you go. There you go. Okay. Is there a sector that you regret not investing in because you've seen it just blow up in a positive way?
Robin John: That would be a better question for Finny. We have been pretty diversified in our mutual funds. I'm sure there are plenty of companies that we haven't invested in that have blown up in a good way. But in terms of sectors, I'm not sure that I could give you an answer to that.
Rusty Rueff: Is there a company you just say, we just missed it?
Robin John: There are many companies that I would say that about, and there are companies in the biotech space even that I know that we were tracking. And I got to be careful in naming companies. But I'll give you an example. Very early on, Chipotle was a company that I really liked a lot personally. This was back in 2008. But Finny had concerns about two things. One, we don't invest in meat at all at Eventide. And so that was one of the concerns with Chipotle. And second was they do serve alcohol and we have an alcohol screen. Right. But that company has done really well since that point.
William Norvell: Wow. Okay. That's really interesting. What is and we talked about one of them with Kingdom Advisors, but maybe there's another one. I'm going to ask it again. What's one thing that Christians can do to become more conscientious investors? So if someone's sitting here today and wants to do one thing, what would you do?
Robin John: Do one thing. Look at your portfolio. The biggest problem Christians have is they don't know what they're investing in. So go to Morningstar.com or Yahoo! Finance, put in the ticker symbols and just click on portfolio. You could see the holdings that will be eye opening to you.
William Norvell: Okay. Last one for me. I've heard that you and the team at eventide, keep an extraordinarily low traveling budget. So we're interested. Advice for entrepreneurs who also don't have a budget because they just don't have that much money. How do you make a business trip fun on a low budget?
Robin John: You must have heard that about me in the early years. I don't do that to our people anymore.
William Norvell: Okay.
Robin John: So the first couple of years, we were struggling just to get any assets under management. And so Jason and I would travel and we kept a budget for ourselves of $50, including taxes. And we made an agreement among ourselves that if the room for the hotel or the motel is from the inside, it's good enough for us. And there were a couple of times my wife could not believe it when she would travel with me. But that's years like one, two, three, four. Nowadays, I don't even look at the expenses. Our team, I want them to be comfortable and well taken care of. And so, yeah, I think those stories are from the very early years of eventide.
William Norvell: Wow, that's amazing. Well, thank you for doing that, Robin. And now we're going to move to our close. And what we love to do is ask you about something we all hold dear, which is God's word. And we would love to invite you to share something from God's word that impacted you. It could be something you read this morning, could be something you've been meditating on for a season, or could be something he planted in your heart a long time ago. But we'd love to invite you to share from God's word with our audience.
Robin John: Yeah. I mean, there's so many scriptures that has impacted me over the years. For me. I love the Psalms, especially the Psalms by David, because David is a person that is a person that in many ways is just a fallen person. Right. Just, you know, had sins in his life. Yet through the Psalm, you could just see the the love that he has for God. And so like as a deer panteth for the water. So my soul, longeth after you psalms like that I just, it just moves me. Psalm 63. I don't think David wrote Psalm 63, but he talks about how the Psalmist, this longing for God as in a dry and weary land. And He says that he wants to experience God as with bone and marrow. And I think for most Americans, that doesn't even make much sense. Bone and marrow. So the NIV translation says, ask what the finest of foods and but me being from India, if you're eating like a beef curry or a goat curry with bone in it, you suck on the marrow. The marrow actually makes the curry taste much better. Even a chicken curry with a bone in tastes much, much better than just a chicken curry without the bone in. And the taste out of the bone is just so rich from the bone marrow. So I think often for me, I long to experience God the way that David experienced God and David, even though he had everything from a human perspective, he was longing for God as though he was thirsty in a desert and longing to taste God as with like bone and marrow. And so that kind of a desire to love God and to follow God's commandments, even like Psalm 119, it just talks about just the commandments of God are just so good. How can a young man keep his way pure? Oh, how I love your law. Reading the Psalms just makes me realize just how much more in love with God these men and women were back in those times. And they are longing for God. And I, you know, my prayer is that I would long for God in such a way.
Rusty Rueff: Robin. That's a fantastic close. We so thank you for being on the episode and thanks for investing. That makes the world rejoice. We need more rejoicing, that's for sure. So thank you so much. And we wish you the best. And God bless. And we'll have you back on again sometime soon.
Robin John: Hey, thank you so much, Rusty. And thank you, William.