Building Wealth with Biblical Ethics: Lessons from Robert Netzley

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What does it mean to invest your finances in a way that honors your faith and builds your family’s legacy?
How can Christian men align their investments with biblical values and create real impact in the world?
What steps should men take to lead their family in financial stewardship and kingdom-focused living?

This week on the MOI Podcast, Ryan Zook sits down with Robert Netzley, CEO of Inspire Investing, for an eye-opening conversation about biblically responsible investing, courageous leadership, and thriving as a man of faith in today’s world. Robert shares his journey from Wells Fargo to launching the nation's largest Christian investment firm — an enterprise USA Today ranked #3 financial advisory firm in the country. Hear how he faced career crossroads, stepped out in faith, and discovered how stewardship of finances can transform your life, leadership, and influence.

Are you ready to take action? Discover free tools, resources, and biblical insights to help you invest, lead, and live without compromise.

#biblicalmoney #faithfulfinance #menofiron #christianleadership #familylegacy #stewardship #masculinity

Transcript

Ryan Zook [00:00:00]:
This episode of the Men of Iron podcast has been sponsored by Garmin Builders. Garmin Builders sets the standard in home construction. With more than 50 years of expertise, Garmin Builders has been building homes, communities and connections that positively impact the lives of others. By blending tradition with innovative building science, Garmin delivers a better built, more efficient home. Discover the edge@garminbuilders.com thanks again to Garmin Builders for sponsoring this episode of the Men of Iron Podcast.

Robert Netzley [00:00:27]:
USA Today just ranked our wealth management firm number three best financial advisory firm in the country. All sizes, all categories.

Ryan Zook [00:00:35]:
Wow.

Robert Netzley [00:00:35]:
And we happen to be explicitly Christian.

Ryan Zook [00:00:39]:
Hey, welcome back to the Men of Iron Podcast. At Men of Iron, we want you to thrive in your core five, that is your faith, family, friends, fitness and finances. We have all kinds of resources that can help you on that journey. If you could use some help in one of those areas, check out the links in our description. We'd be happy to help you. Hey, welcome back to the Men of Iron Podcast. Today we have a special guest, Robert Netsley, who is the special CEO of Inspire Investing. We're excited to have him here on the podcast because he's focused specifically on Christian based investing. So we're going to spend a little bit of time hearing his story and hearing his, his perspective on finance where we are in the world today. At Men of Iron, you guys already know we are calling you to thrive in your core five. Your faith, family, friends, fitness and finances. This is going to be a great conversation where you can just focus your lens on that finance piece. So we're excited to spend time with Robert. Robert, welcome to the podcast, man. Thanks for coming here.

Robert Netzley [00:01:33]:
It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Ryan Zook [00:01:35]:
Yeah, for sure. So before we dive into the investing angle, why don't you just tell us a little bit about your own story and what brought you to this point.

Robert Netzley [00:01:43]:
Yeah, and I love that those, those five points you're focusing on with me. And a little side note, I know we're talking about the finance, but I did hit a personal record on my bench press last week. So, you know, 115% of the body weight there. All right. And it's, I get to work out with my six year old. I got five kids and so he comes out there in the garage with me on a squat cage and likes to do pull ups and it's a great father son deal.

Ryan Zook [00:02:09]:
I love that we have that in common. I've got five as well. So yeah, I don't have him benching yet. I need to Catch up with you?

Robert Netzley [00:02:16]:
Well, it's not going to be too hard. It's a personal record. I don't know if it's a record anywhere beyond my garage, but anyway. But yeah, I got, you know, five kids, married for a couple decades, going on three decades now. And to one of my dreams. And man, God is just so good, right? And yes, I have running this business called Inspire Investing, which most people know us for being the world's largest provider of faith based ETFs, exchange trade off funds. And we do something called Biblically Responsible Investing, which is the title of my new book from Canon Press. And really the vision God's given us is to just really help to see and equip every Christian to invest for God's glory. Which seems like it should be an easy thing, but in today's world there's a lot of peculiarities that really kind of sneak up on you. And that's what we spend a lot of time here is educating Christians on how to actually go about doing that. It's a lot more than just looking at the financial returns. Obviously that's a big part of it, but there's a lot of moral considerations in biblical ethics that Wall street would have you just gloss over.

Robert Netzley [00:03:30]:
Which I think the church would do well to pay attention to. And her job is being salt and light. So, yeah, pleasure to be here this morning with you.

Ryan Zook [00:03:37]:
Yeah, thanks man. So when you got started out, just kind of back into your history. Like what, what has God been doing in your life to bring you up to this point?

Robert Netzley [00:03:47]:
Long story. I went to school to be a fourth grade teacher. Math is my work subject in school. Like, you know, I dropped out of my college my junior year because I was selling alarm systems door to door and made like $96,000 on the weekends. Yeah. And anyway, so God has his ways, right? And there was a youth pastor for a while and just sort of living like literally living in a hand built cabin on the side of the hill that my hippie pastor had built and the Jesus movement when he got saved in the 60s and you know, got married, starting with kids, you know, just. And then, you know, needed to have a little more money than 850 bucks a month. Yeah. Started having babies and like, hey, you know, gotta do something else. So kind of went back to work, quote unquote, and got back into sales. And long story short, the company I was with in 2008 went out of business.

Robert Netzley [00:04:32]:
A car dealership, a Volkswagen dealership. And that's how I ended up getting into the investment business back then, looking for a family friendly schedule, you know, more of a career. I really felt the Lord that we were expecting our second baby and really felt God saying, like, look, here's your opportunity to, to really do something, to, to be intentional about what you're putting your professional energies into and how you're going to build a life, you know, for you and your family. And so by God's grace, got a great gig at Wells Fargo Private Client Investment Group. Started out just kind of as a sales assistant, but then I got licensed and went business, became a financial advisor and, you know, so here I am back then with this really just dream job for me. I was having a great time, nice little drive down the coast in Carmel, California there, and second story office, looking over the Pacific Ocean, and life was good. I wasn't looking to change anything in that scenario. And then I stumbled across this whole concept one day online called Biblically Responsible investing, where you're not just looking at the financial aspect, but the moral aspect of what a company is doing. So what are these companies actually doing to turn a profit that I'm profiting from and personally recommending to all my clients as an advisor? And, you know, I'd heard of like green investing or ESG or whatever, like from a more progressive, secular, naturalist, you know, viewpoint. But I never really considered biblical values like pro life issues and things like that. And so I was kind of curious, so I popped the hood on my portfolio, looked, started looking inside what I actually owned and you know, what I was recommending to my clients and their portfolio, Polios. And honestly, the Holy Spirit just gripped my heart on this issue because here I was president of our local pro life pregnancy center at the time, you know, volunteer status, very involved in our church and all the rest. And I'm. I own three stocks of companies manufacturing abortion drugs. And this, this truth hits me upside the head that every time a young lady goes to Planned Parenthood and has an abortion, I just made money on that transaction. I literally profited from that transaction. And I'm recommending all my clients to the exact same thing. And I'm totally oblivious, right? And I've never heard any. Anybody in the church or wherever, like, mention anything about this. And I'm thinking, man, am I missing something? Like, you know, but. And then you just kind of keep going on the list of, there's abortion drug manufacturers, there's also, you know, pornography companies, strip club operators, there's, you know, LGBT activists, like extremist group kept sort of companies. I mean, all sorts of stuff going on in this portfolio, in these portfolios. And, you know, two weeks later, I'm just dead in the water, right? I. I just could not do my job with a clean conscience. And honestly, I didn't know what I was going to do. You know, I go into more depth of sort of how the Lord brought me to that place in, you know, in the book here. And like this, this really the story of me wrestling with God, how he led me out of the bank to kind of go off on this journey. But it was incredibly frightening, you know, where I never met anybody doing what we currently do now. And, you know, I went home, told my wife, hey, honey, here's what I found. I think God's calling us somewhere else. She's like, we got two babies in a mortgage. What's the plan? I'm like, I don't know. And so we started praying. Right, and what else are you going to do? Was this close. Going to seminary, just being some sort of vocational pastor. Thought, you know, that was a nice run. Well, back to ministry. I don't know what else to do with my life.

Robert Netzley [00:08:04]:
The only way I could stay in the business was, you know, I was thinking, I have to leave the bank. Start some sort of independent thing that does, you know, some sort of biblical something or other. But that's crazy. I've never started a business, you know, I don't have ton of capital laying around or any of those sorts of things. And, you know, as God does, he made it abundantly clear that's exactly what he's calling me to do. I mean, one of those just unmistakably clear.

Robert Netzley [00:08:30]:
Just directions from the Lord through. Through prayer and confirmation a lot of different ways. But there was just nothing else I could do and. And know that I was being faithful. Like, I just. I knew that. I knew, like, this is what God would have me to do, leave the bank. So anyway, two months later, left, made the incredibly frightening decision. Left the bank, left my clients there with the team I'd been with previously. Started over from scratch. Me and a laptop, you know, less than two months of savings in the bank, fully prepared. Never to pay my mortgage ever in my life. Frankly, I had no idea if this was going to work out financially. Everybody's telling me it's a stupid, you know, what am I doing?

Robert Netzley [00:09:06]:
And, you know, but I just. This is what I had to do. So I'm like, all right, Lord, it's your turn to show up. Because I don't know how this is going to work. So I just started, you know, sharing the story with people, educating them about what I had found, what I was doing. And God did show up. I mean, I just, these people had the same reaction I did. Their eyes got big jaws, the floor, like, wow, how do I find out what I'd invested in? What does it look like to actually invest biblically? Is even possible to invest a different way? And so this practice just started booming to the point where I had to, a couple months later, I had to start looking for another advisor to bring into the firm. Never part of my plan. I had no grand vision to grow any sort of enterprise.

Robert Netzley [00:09:48]:
My big plan was if I was really successful one day maybe I'd have an assistant or something just being a local hometown advisor. God had different plans, right? So one advisor led to 2 to 10 to 20 to hundreds of Christian advisors within the next few years. Reaching out, hearing from a friend of a friend what was going on in our neck of the woods and saying they were having the same kind of conviction experience I had had. Obviously God was moving his spirits, opening the eyes of his people to this huge problem and this huge opportunity to fix that problem. Some of those advisors joined our team. Most of them we just sort of helped at a distance. But there's not a lot of funds to use, not a lot of the tools, the picks and shovels, so to speak, of our industry to really build a practice and deliver robust advice and investment portfolios. And again, kind of longer stories in the book. But suffice to say that led us in 2015. So 2011 is when I left the bank. 2015 is when like me and my leadership team was kind of sitting around a card table in our office looking at each other blank stares, saying, I guess that's us. We got to figure out how to make some investment funds. So 2015 we started Inspire Investing, trying to build this low cost index based way to invest wisely, but also that would align with biblical values. And the idea was, what if we could kick out the bad actors, the abortion drug companies, et cetera. But then what if we could find the most God glorifying companies, Christian companies per se. It's not like hobby lobbies, you know, whatever else, but just businesses that are aligned with God's principles, right? They're, they're making products that help people's lives get better rather than worse. They're a blessing to the people who work there, right? They're a blessing to the communities. They operate in the sort of, you know, common grace wisdom, proverbial wisdom. So to speak. And I wonder what happened if we built low cost indexes based portfolios out of those companies. Results were great. And then in 2017, our big like 20 year goal, maybe before we die, wouldn't it be cool if we had, if we could somehow launch an etf, right? An exchange traded fund became a reality. In two years we had our first two funds on the New York Stock Exchange ringing the closing bell at the nyse. And like, it's amazing, right? The day after we launched our funds, we're on the front page of the New York Times business section, they're calling us bigots and whatever and thinking, you know, just kind of licking their chops to watch us go down in flames. Because certainly nobody believes the Bible anymore. And these guys are so weir. But then hundreds of articles are written about us. Wall Street Journal, Fox News sending satellite crews. We don't have a PR team. It's just again, God was moving, right? And we bring in over $100 million that first year.

Robert Netzley [00:12:24]:
To much of the surprise of the liberal media and ourselves, frankly, and then have been doubled, double doubled. Here we are managing, I think 3.8 something billion dollars today. We've been ranked in the top three fastest growing investment firms in the nation several Times. It's our sixth year in the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing, most successful private companies. USA Today just ranked our wealth management firm number three best financial advisory firm in the country. All sizes, all categories.

Ryan Zook [00:12:53]:
Wow.

Robert Netzley [00:12:53]:
And we happen to be explicitly Christian, right? And so just God's grace has been overflowing to us. And really we feel like we're trying to keep up with what God's doing.

Robert Netzley [00:13:04]:
But you know, the, the thing is, and I'll say this and then, yeah, I'll be quiet because it's your show, not mine. But.

Robert Netzley [00:13:11]:
There'S $22.4 trillion, 22.4 trillion.

Robert Netzley [00:13:16]:
Of stocks, bonds, ETFs, mutual funds, et cetera that are owned in this country, owned by church members, not just like professing Christians, but people who are members of a church, admittedly a broad category, but Christian church members, that's 49.7% of all investment assets in the United States of America. So even if a fraction of those are like faithful Christians or even remotely conservatively biblically minded, that means we should have a whole lot more influence over corporate America than what we see right now. Because that means we have about half of the votes for every board member who set policies, who hire CEOs, who do all these things. And man, there's this huge abdication of stewardship that we've just sort of, as a church, we've given over to the secular world and literally letting secular fund companies vote our dollars that God's given us to steward for him in alignment with worldly values rather than biblical values. And that's a source of a lot of problems in our day and age, I think. So we're trying to correct some of those things, help educate Christians, get us organized a little bit, invest for the glory of God, and really inspire transformation for his glory as we do that. So it's an exciting time to be doing what we're doing.

Ryan Zook [00:14:27]:
That's really cool. I want to dive into the investment things you're working on. But before we get there, you got my attention. When you were talking about you're working at Wells Fargo, you feel like God is calling you to take the jump. Can you give us a little bit more on what that experience was like? Because it's a tough thing that men wrestle with. Like, hey, I think God has given me, like, a clear calling. But that's going to be wild because I have a wife, I got a couple of kids. How did you process through that? I mean, it would be easy for men to see you today and be like, well, yeah, he's. I mean, he's doing pretty well. What was it like when you didn't have inspire investing and you were just jumping out of Wells Fargo? How did you process that and walk through that?

Robert Netzley [00:15:10]:
Yeah, I mean, the picture of our life, just for context, we were living in our first little start rent home. We bought it in 2008 as a foreclosure because I had a job at Wells Fargo, got this really good employee mortgage. You know, it's like, couldn't have done that without that.

Robert Netzley [00:15:26]:
Back room. We used to be a math lab, you know, so it was definitely before closure in 08 in California. We fixed it up, my own two hands, my dad helping out on the weekends, you know, just. We had two little babies, just, you know, young family starting out. My wife was mostly at home working part time at Starbucks kind of thing. And yeah, we were doing pretty well, but we were just starting, so it's not like we were. Yeah, I wasn't making a boatload of money. We didn't have a lot in savings.

Robert Netzley [00:15:52]:
And so that kind of, in a sense, you know, makes it even much more difficult. Right. I mean, if you have a good gig, it's easy to leave a bad job and like, with the abnormal, no prospect for the future. But things that just really started clicking for us. Right. In a lot of the kind of the worldly ways. Right. The measures of success. And so I'd just been at Wells Fargo for just a couple of years when I just got this conviction from the Lord and so feeling like I was just hitting my stride in this, in this industry, and then comes to his preaching hall and the Lord's like, that's that, right? I mean, something else gotta, something's gotta die, right? And, and that, but that's, that is the Christian life, right?

Ryan Zook [00:16:35]:
Yeah.

Robert Netzley [00:16:35]:
The seed goes, dies and goes into the ground.

Ryan Zook [00:16:37]:
Yeah, Right.

Robert Netzley [00:16:38]:
It cannot sprout and produce a crop. And, and that's in a million different ways. And, you know, as men.

Robert Netzley [00:16:47]:
You know, my experience, how Lord Hewson using this experience and others like it in my life is as we.

Robert Netzley [00:16:56]:
Lay down our own dreams, our own visions, our own sense of security, our own sense of pride or self worth in our job or whatever else it is, and say, lord, I'm willing to follow you whatever the cost. Like, we die to ourselves in that we die to ourselves to serve and love our wives and to raise our kids to prioritize the things that Scripture says that we should prioritize instead of the things the world would tempt us to prioritize because it would make sense. Like, look, I'll provide for my kids. I'm going to stay here at Wells Fargo. Of course, God wouldn't want me to leave this good job. You know, I'm providing for my wife and kids, but I'm ultimately trusting in him. Right? What kind of legacy am I going to leave for my wife and kids if I'm disobedient to the Lord, if He's really calling me to do something and he's given me a conviction in my conscience.

Robert Netzley [00:17:47]:
He'S not going to bless me like violating my conscience. Like, that's not His. That's not his goal.

Ryan Zook [00:17:54]:
Right.

Robert Netzley [00:17:54]:
That's not his, his great plan for my life. And so the question comes down to trust. Like, do I trust God is good if he's given me direction, clear direction in His Word, and he's putting a clear compulsion on my heart through His Word and through trustworthy, you know, biblical men in my life and all the rest.

Robert Netzley [00:18:14]:
Even if there's no visible way that I can figure out whatever it is going to work or why this makes, like, rational sense, that's irrelevant, totally irrelevant. God calls me to do it, Jesus said it, I'm doing it. Right? It's kind of that simple. And what I found is that God is incredibly faithful. Right? He doesn't call us to step out in faith just so we can get run over by a Mack truck, you know, and no, he has a reason. And he has been. Yeah. And he has been so faithful. And look, it didn't have to work out that this business would have been a resounding success. It could have been a terrible financial failure, but it still would have been the right step of faith and God would have had something good on the other side of that failure. Right. He's going to use that in my life. So it ultimately just comes down to the faithfulness of God, my ability and willingness to trust him to follow in faith.

Robert Netzley [00:19:11]:
And you know, if you just do that, like living in simple faith, God will provide, God will bless.

Robert Netzley [00:19:19]:
And that's. And he's. His ultimate goal is not to make you rich and successful. His ultimate goal is to make you holy and acceptable. You know, a life that is a living sacrifice to him. And as a husband, as a father, as a man, that means washing your wife with the word and so that she can be spotless and blameless and raising your children in the fear and admonishment of the Lord and all the rest. And they will. I mean, your headship in that regard is how God has chosen to really sanctify your family. So if you're not going to take that step of faith and like, you're really keeping that from your family, right, There's a blessing you're keeping from the wife and kids. So, yeah, trust God. He's faithful and you know, praise God. That's the truth. We serve a God who never fails.

Ryan Zook [00:20:09]:
I love it, man. I feel like in the, in the United States today, men are offered so many tiny little compromises. And, and just like you said, like, I got a wife, I got kids, like, I'm sure God wants me to care for my wife and kids. Maybe I should just compromise a little bit. And when you look back, you don't, you don't realize how many small compromises you've made where you're just stepping further and further away from God and what's. What instead God calls us to, is just to jump fully in, right? Take up our cross and carry it and follow him every day. And that means no compromises. Full out commitment to Christ so that we can build his kingdom. And when we do that, I love how you're highlighting, like, it's going to help our wives do that, it's going to help our kids do that. And God is faithful. I love Your about the Mack truck. Like, he's not calling you out into something where he's just going to sit back and laugh at the failure you've become. He's going to give you what you need in the moment that you're in to bring him the most honor and glory and enjoy him the most. And obviously that's playing out in your life, man. It's, it's really cool. I appreciate you sharing that. You talked a little bit about your experience at Wells Fargo. You're, you're looking over these funds and digging into them for the first time. I'm assuming there was some period of time before that where you're just doing the gig. How many men listening today do you think are in a similar position? Because a lot of us have some degree of investments. I recognize not everybody does, but a lot of us have a retirement plan. Maybe we have some investments on the side or something. A lot of us are invested in different companies. How many of us do you think would look under the hood, like you said, and be shocked at what, where our money is and what it's doing?

Robert Netzley [00:21:45]:
If you own any of, like the, like, standard mutual fund that you're going to find in a 401k that invests in big companies in the United States, you know, any sort of S&P 500 index fund, or just you're exposed, like, it's, it's just. This is not a question.

Robert Netzley [00:22:03]:
So the question is to the degree of, you know, what degree is that exposure if you're not actively trying to invest in a way that, you know, avoids inherently immoral, you know, companies and industries. Wall Street's not doing it for you, right? I mean, it's all in there. So we put a free tool out, actually. It's a, that you can use so called Inspire Insight. Inspire Insight.com or you can go to Inspire Investing.com and find links to everything that we do there. But it's, it's a free tool you can put in your ticker, symbol of any stock, mutual fund, ETF, etc. You know, and it'll just show you.

Robert Netzley [00:22:42]:
All the nitty gritty, good, bad and ugly what's going on under, under the hood there. And you know, we're not the moral police. It's just education for you. And, you know, do with it what you will, but it'll show you like, hey, I got this fund in my 401k that owns this company that on this date gave this much money to Planned Parenthood or manufactures this abortion drug or Whatever, right? That kind of granular data so that you can be, you know, educators, a wise, wise steward. God's given you assets so that you can. I mean, there is, right? And he's given them in your hand. So we got to think, well, what does that. If it belongs to God, like, what does. What would he. Like, what would Jesus do? Right? Like, what would Jesus invest in. To put it in a, you know, cliche sort of way, but, I mean, it's true, right? I mean, would Jesus be investing money into the abortion industry, pornography industries? I don't think so, Right? The thing I just, again, going back to this story, there's this moment where I'm sitting at my desk in Wells Fargo and I'm like, wrestling through this and I'm thinking, I just. Like, this movie's playing in my mind, like, one day I'm going to stand before the Lord Jesus and, like, give an account for everything in my life, right? And just kind of see him, like, flipping through the book, like, all right, let's look at how you did with the portfolio management. And like, I just couldn't see myself saying, look, Jesus, all the money I made for you in the abortion pornography industry is like, aren't you proud? Aren't you happy with that? Like, of course not. You know, and of course there's grace and it's. But we. If God's opening our eyes to a big blind spot where we can. We've not been honoring him, we've been dishonoring him, and we have an opportunity to glorify him the more to the fullest. Like, we should be running towards that, right? Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. Even if somebody here's like, well, I don't know if it's really, like, mandated. I don't want to, you know, is it fair to say cool to say this like, you don't invest in Apple, but you have an iPhone. Like, I don't know. Well, there are answers in scriptures for all those things. But even just before you get to all that.

Robert Netzley [00:24:42]:
Shouldn'T be asking, what's the most God glorifying investment? If there's something better than neutral, like, let's try to find that, right? Start there. And then there's some just obviously inherently immoral things that I've already, you know, beat that dead horse already about abortion and pornography, etc. So. And, you know, as far as, like, what the scriptures say, six Proverbs 16, eight. Yeah, better is a little with righteousness than great gains with injustice, right? And this Goes to like our jobs. So, you know, me walking away from a company and a good paying job or people, you know, in similar situations where it's like, you know, there's some, there's some moral compromise sort of inherent in what they're doing or, or whatever that is, you know, better, there's a little better to go get a worse paying job with a clean conscience and righteousness than to make all the money in the world and lose your soul. Right. And same thing is true in investing. One of the first questions people have is like, well, if I invest in, if I invest a biblical way, like we sort of assume, people sort of assume that you're going to, you know, do worse financially because good guys always finish last or whatever. We've been taught that's not true, first of all. But even if it were, even if it was true that to, in a, to invest in a way that avoided sinful industries and that honor God, that we were going to earn a, you know, less than market rate, Proverbs says we should be willing to do that.

Ryan Zook [00:26:04]:
Yeah.

Robert Netzley [00:26:05]:
You know, and again, that's not my experience. By God's grace, we're able to invest in ways that, you know, are just as good, if not better than any secular funds out there. It's not, it's not a required performance, you know, sacrifice there. But even if there was, again, getting our priorities straight, it is, you know, honoring God in all things first. And if that means that I am not going to, you know, make as much as somebody else, then okay, that's, then that's the, that's how it goes. Yeah, right. I hear you can make a lot of money like selling fentanyl and writing prostitution rings. We're not doing that. And of course everyone's like, oh, but it's illegal. Okay, but if the state you lived in all of a sudden made fentanyl and prostitutionary is legal, like, would you go do it if it was making you more? Of course, I hope not. Right. I mean, if we're going to limit our investment choices and returns based on the law of man, how much more should we be willing to limit our investment choices and returns on the law of God? Even if man says it's okay, like abortion, drugs not, not happening, pornography not happening, like these things not happening. Because God says he doesn't want that filthy money. Right. I'm like, right, he doesn't need any more money.

Ryan Zook [00:27:14]:
Right.

Robert Netzley [00:27:14]:
He wants obedience better than sacrifice.

Ryan Zook [00:27:18]:
I love this because one of the things that we teach guys in just a super simple way is that everything that you have is because God's given it to you and he's asking you to steward it. And I can see how investments, I'm thinking specifically retirement accounts and those kinds of things, they can seem like a passive thing. That's a gift that's given to you that you can't really do much with. You know, I got this plan that's with my employer or I have this auto draft that just puts a little bit away for me. What I hear you saying is, no, no, no, no. We can actively use that to build God's kingdom by investing in the organizations that are care about the things that we care about and you can actually make a tangible difference. Can you speak into what you've seen with that?

Robert Netzley [00:27:58]:
Absolutely. And I think there's a common characteristic, I think we can say that a godly man is not a passive man.

Ryan Zook [00:28:05]:
Yeah, right.

Robert Netzley [00:28:06]:
Like there's a, there's an inherent.

Robert Netzley [00:28:09]:
Active, proactive requirement for a godly man in a lot of ways. Right. We're not to sit back and sort of let the world go on around us. We're called to build into our families. We're called to build a career, build this. We're called to press in and take initiative. And so, yeah, we don't want to sit back and say, well, whatever is going on with my investments, my money, like it's c' est la vie, right? Whatever happens, happens. And no, we've got to be active. We've got to be an active steward of what God's given us. And I think it's something he expects of us. So in that regard.

Robert Netzley [00:28:47]:
When you, you really do have.

Robert Netzley [00:28:51]:
Influence through your investments, through your money, you might think it's not very much. You know, it's kind of like politics. You know, my vote is just one vote among however many millions, but it's still your vote. And God expects you to use it in a way that honors him. Right. Your citizenship. Same thing here with investments. So when you have a 401k or you have investments in an IRA or whatever you have, and you own stocks like you were an owner of that company, that, that is, you're a legitimate owner of a little piece of that business, whatever it is you own a little piece of Netflix or whatever company it is that's in that, that fund. When you invest in a, a fund, it's like a Vanguard or iShares or Fidelity or American Funds. Here's the thing, the, the fund company gets to cast your vote for you. You don't get to vote. You're saying, I'm giving my vote and my money, so my money management and my vote that goes along with it to that phone company. Now, that's okay, but you've got to really think is, is this the company? Is this company going to vote that? In a way that honors my biblical convictions in a way that God has called me to do it. So if you think about politics, I just mentioned politics. So.

Robert Netzley [00:30:04]:
Say you're a Republican, conservative, whatever, and like, would you ever just say, I'm just going to give my vote to, I don't know, Act Blue or the Human Rights Campaign or some, you know, crazy leftist Democratic socialists of America or whatever and let them vote it for me? Of course not. And they would never do the same in the other. Like, why would they do such a stupid thing? Obviously they're going to misrepresent your vote. Sadly, that's exactly what Christians have done. Because I think we can say BlackRock, who runs iShares Vanguard, I mean, those are secular businesses with secular agendas. And they, you know, they may not be like the evil empire, you know, sitting behind their desk making all these evil plans, but at least they might be. I don't know, some of them might be, but at least they're thinking from a secular worldview and their priorities. When they vote for boards and policies and DEI things and all these different things, they're not wondering how, what God would think about this. They're just thinking, what in a worldly way there. And the fruit shows, right? You look at corporate America, guess what? That's exactly what we're getting. And Christians have put those people into those in power. We've done that. And so there's a couple ways you can take back that control. One is not investing in the fund companies to invest directly into stocks yourself, which is more difficult and takes a lot more effort. Then you get to vote those shares directly yourself and should be doing that. The second would be to choose an investment fund company like Inspire Investing, like several of our colleagues in this industry who run their fund families in a way that is under, under the authority of scripture. Right? And we vote policies and we, and we actively engage with companies. And by God's grace, we're finding a lot of success doing that. So there's, there's a lot of these stories in, in the book, kind of behind the scenes, you know, peek behind the curtain conversations with executives at some of the world's largest businesses. But like just recently, a couple years ago, Joe Biden had opened up The. The ability for retail pharmacies to start dispensing mifepristone, the abortion drug mifepristone, for the first time because it's. The FDA said it was too dangerous to do without a, you know, in a doctor office and all this because women go to the hospital and it's terrible for everybody involved. But he said, you know, let's make quote, unquote, women's health care, you know, abortion, murder of the unborn, more easily available. And so he did this thing. So Walgreens and CVS jump on board. You know, they start doing this. We saw that and like, oh, my gosh, this is going to be terrible. We got to make sure we stop these other pharmacies before everyone's just on the bandwagon. So we started with Costco. We've had. We've got a history with Costco, some engagement efforts, and we started a petition. We started reaching out to the investor relations department. We, you know, started building a shareholder resolution campaign. Long story short, we got a coalition together, like, including some red state treasurers and other people involved, to fight back against.

Robert Netzley [00:33:02]:
A lot of Democratic congressmen and people like that were pushing Costco to start dispensing with Prestone. We were pushing the other way, saying, look, this is a bad business decision. Just stay out of it. Just this past few months, I guess we got in writing from Costco that because of our efforts, they made the decision not to sell mifeprista. So over 500 pharmacies, all the Costco pharmacies around the world now will not sell this abortion drug, not dispense this abortion drug because of Christian investors taking this mandate seriously to, like, not just hand over the rains to the world. And Walmart made the same decision. Albertson's made the same decision. Kroger's made the same decision. Thousands of pharmacies from some of the world's largest retail pharmacies have been influenced just recent history, right? Because Christian investors, we've seen the same results with Exxon stopped giving money to abortion philanthropies. Chevron stopped giving money to Planned Parenthood. The list goes on. And the wind is really at our back right now in a way that has not been before. We need to take that ball and run as far as we can with it to again, if we own 49.7% of all the assets, like our vote matters, right? So we gotta. We gotta wake up and kind of realize what time it is, you know, as Christians and making the best use of the days as we have them.

Ryan Zook [00:34:29]:
Here, it's a phenomenal example of how we actually have much more authority than what we assume we do. I mean, first of all, we have authority from Christ to build his kingdom right now. I mean, we've been placed in this moment in history to carry his cross right now. And I think we have a lot more opportunity than what we believe. Maybe we're, maybe we're misled on purpose. Maybe we're just not as active and engaged as we should be. But it's a great testament to what happens when you can say, hey, I actually care about what Christ has called me to do, and I want to make sure my money is supporting the things that we care about and believe about because it makes a tangible difference. And you can see you're already alluding to it like people that have interests that are against the kingdom certainly have no problem aligning themselves to put active work into preventing things that would move God's kingdom forward. We've got to be just as aware and just as engaged. And if we have 49% of the votes in these shareholder meetings, we need to use them. And we need to at the very least, entrust some of this investment to people that do care about the things we care about. I'm curious. You said earlier about how you were on Wall street, you're ringing the bell, you're introduced as this bigoted CEO that's going to go down in flames. What has it been like personally being, you know, like, I guess, the Jesus investment guy in a world that probably doesn't care about that as much as we would think?

Robert Netzley [00:35:53]:
Yeah, yeah. I've had a lot of interesting conversations with reporters, you know, as you would expect. And it's. Yeah, for me, it's kind of fun. Like, I don't know, I enjoy having those conversations and engaging.

Ryan Zook [00:36:07]:
Yeah.

Robert Netzley [00:36:07]:
Most of my world is like, I just talk to Christians all the time, run a Christian company. A lot of Christians work here. I'm in Christian schools. Like, you know, media interviews is like one. One of the times I get to like really enjoy the world. So it's kind of like my, my missionary mission field. Right.

Robert Netzley [00:36:24]:
But it's interesting. I, when especially those early years.

Ryan Zook [00:36:27]:
Yeah.

Robert Netzley [00:36:28]:
This was like an unproven thing there, there been a couple fun family, mutual fund families that have been around for a while, but not, not low cost index. And, and like it was, what we were doing is pretty new.

Ryan Zook [00:36:39]:
And.

Robert Netzley [00:36:41]:
You know, they're, they're having these interviews with me and, and we're very explicitly biblical, obviously, but the things we believe about marriage and sexuality and abortion and you know, etc. And inevitably in these, in these interviews, the journalist who's typically a 20 something, sure Manhattanite, you know, from wherever they kind of stop and you know, they physically like actually tilt their head sideways and they look at you, but nobody actually believes the Bible anymore. Where do you think you're going to find investment dollars? Like they would say that multiple. I mean, they're not comparing notes. It's just like that's their actual frame of reality. They really believe that. And I'm sitting here think, saying, you know, I think there's a different reality than what you're experiencing. And we need to prove that there's still a lot of people here who believe the Bible and that believe a living God who rose from the dead has all authority over heaven and earth, actually wrote it and expects us to follow it. Right. And so to see that play out where, I mean, obviously there are a lot of people who still believe the Bible, want to invest money that way. It's been this huge testimony. We had a Bloomberg reporter actually fly out. Wonderful lady that I've gotten to know. She's from the UK originally, grew up in an Indian family. She went to some sort of Catholic parochial school. She's not Catholic, but just went to a private ish school in uk, you know, so some exposure. But you know, she's been in Manhattan writing for Bloomberg for a long time and she flew out and did a very long piece on, on us and, and interviewed people on her staff. She actually, you know, came to our life group at our church that night and like shared testimonies and she, you know, shared a meal with our, you know, faith family. And you know, it's just like huge witness to this lady. She's, you know, gave her a copy of Mere Christianity, says she's reading it and you know, it's just, it's interesting. You know, there's these, I don't know what God's gonna do with that. Yeah, but it's, it's a witness, right? It's an opportunity for witness and individual Christians even as we do something as simple as ask our employer, like, hey, I have these convictions as a Christian. I'm noticing all the funds in our 401k involve things that violate my convictions. Could we add some, something in here, like an option for me to invest in a way that doesn't compromise my deeply held faith convictions. And there are ways that can happen. They can open up little brokerage windows to allow you to pick Funds that aren't on the menu. And there's a lot of options these days in 401ks. Even just doing that is a witness as a way you can just testify that things matter. In fact, you're willing to put your money where your mouth is, right. And can open conversations in big ways, small ways. But of course, we just sit in our hands and don't do anything about it. Then that's exactly what the enemy would have us do. Just keep letting him have his way and just stay out of the battle, stay out of conversation.

Ryan Zook [00:39:46]:
If you don't get engaged, then everybody else is going to move forward with what they have in mind rather than what we have in mind. And building God's kingdom, it's phenomenal, man. I, I really appreciate your time. Just, just one more point. Is there anything that you would have that you would want to speak just directly to our audience and like giving them direction in this area of their lives?

Robert Netzley [00:40:03]:
You know, when it comes to finances, you know, I know that there can be a lot of fear, a lot of greed, right? There's like the two things with money like fear and greed, which both are disastrous. Yeah, don't be greedy. And an interesting thing, both of those, fear and greed both lead people to choose unbiblical paths. Greed will lead you to say like, look, I'm not going to invest in that Christian fund or I'm not going to consider biblical values. I just want to find the highest paying investment and I'm just going to go with that. And I sort of want to keep my eyes closed to just like, don't tell me where it's coming from. And I'll just give money away and you know, some sort of spiritual money laundering scheme. If I can make enough and give it away, like God will be happy with me. I don't think it works that way. The other way is fear, like, well, if I invest differently in the world, I don't know, maybe it won't work out. And hand wringing, like I just need to follow my secular financial advisor advice and just, you know, God will understand. Both of those things are a complete distrust and lack of faith in the God of the Bible who actually owns all the money, is in control stock markets and in control of your financial future. He promised to provide for you and he has given you some clear instructions to honor him in all he's given you. Right? Whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, including investing, do it all for the glory of God. So.

Robert Netzley [00:41:21]:
My exhortation is just don't Go get into fear. Don't give into greed. Give into like follow the path of faith, right? Faith in a faithful God and courageously look at what that means for your investment, work, life, everything but in your investment life. So pop the hood. Read the book. Pick it up from Canon Press. It's on sale right now. It's a quick read. A lot of great exciting stories as well as like biblical, you know, exegesis on what does the scripture actually say about this in detail, you know, consumer versus owner. And then. And yeah, pop the hood in your investments. Go to our free tool online and, and see what's going there. Go inspireinvesting.com. find our screening tool and you know, type some tickers in and just see what God would show you. There is what I would say. Just don't do nothing.

Ryan Zook [00:42:08]:
Yeah, we encourage guys all the time. You don't have to go from 0 to 10 right now. Like, take small steps in the right direction. All those small steps, capitalize. You'll be a better, stronger man. You'll be more effective for Christ. You'll be building his kingdom. So you said inspireinvesting.com. that's where we can find you. And where do we.

Robert Netzley [00:42:25]:
That's the all things Inspire through there. InspireInvesting.com. it'll be your launch CAD for everything.

Ryan Zook [00:42:30]:
And is the book on there or.

Robert Netzley [00:42:31]:
Is that somewhere else you can find references but just canon. You can find anywhere you buy books but can impress the publisher. Wonderful Christian publishing house. Just. I encourage you to get it straight from them great people. It's on sale there on their website right now. And so, yeah, cannonpress.com for the book and inspireinvesting.com for everything else.

Ryan Zook [00:42:49]:
Fantastic man. Thanks for your time. I appreciate you being here with us today.

Robert Netzley [00:42:52]:
Thank you, Ryan.

Ryan Zook [00:42:53]:
Thanks again for listening to the Men of Iron podcast. We hope you enjoyed this conversation. It really should strengthen your financial life. We want to encourage you to use the finances that God has entrusted to you to build his kingdom. You're the steward over the things that God has given to you. Use those wisely. We encourage you. Go check out the website, look into these tools that he's recommending. Check out the book over at Canon Press. It will help you and it will just help you to become more and more like Christ and to be an effective leader in your own life, in your family's life and in your community. Thanks for listening. We'll be back again next week.