Funding Christ-Centered Companies Globally (w/ Steve Adams)

On this episode, Darren sits down with Steve Adams (Founder and CEO of International Business as Mission) to discuss how IBAM has funded and discipled hundreds of entrepreneurs globally to break cycles of poverty and advance the gospel.

Thanks for listening, and keep partnering with God in your business.  

And don’t forget to check out our sponsor at HighBridgeBooks.com. And feel free to contact me directly at darren@highbridgebooks.com if you’re interested in writing, publishing, and selling a book.   

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to the Christian Business Leader Podcast, where Christ-following business leaders explore God's will and ways for business. This show is the ministry of the Center for Christianity and Business at Houston Christian University and features conversations with today's Christ-centered business leaders who are representing Christ faithfully in the business world. I'm your host, Darren Scheer, and if you want to make your work, leadership, and company's culture more Christ-centered, you've come to the right place. On this episode, we're joined by Steve Adams. Steve is the founder and CEO of IBAM, which stands for International Business as Mission. It's a global ministry that equips indigenous entrepreneurs to launch sustainable businesses that multiply disciples. With a background in corporate banking and entrepreneurship, Steve answered God's call to integrate faith in businesses one. And since 2014, IBAM has empowered believers across Asia, Africa, and beyond through microloans, biblical business training, and discipleship. And under his leadership, IBAM has funded hundreds of businesses and built a scalable model to reach 1 million entrepreneurs by 2035, breaking cycles of poverty and advancing the gospel worldwide. Steve, welcome to the Christian Business Leader Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Thank you, Darren. I'm excited to be with you.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Steve, when did you first realize God wants to be involved in the marketplace?

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Uh my, you know, um, you know, as we were talking before we came on in 2004, I went on a mission trip to the Hill Tribe area of Thailand. And that's really where God called me to missions, but it wasn't really on that trip. It was I got some training by a Michael Bear, who a lot of people know in the businesses mission world. I give him all the credit in the world for the structure we have today. Uh uh, I went to southern Russia and I met um Artur and Sergei. Uh, both were men who um uh you know survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, and both came out of the criminal enterprises in Russia post-Soviet fall. Uh, one was an assassin, and one was a uh just a you know Russian mob member. And both of them found Jesus and walked away from that life and had kind of like their own version of Home Depot uh in a town in southern Russia in the Caucasus. And so I came and did some training, and we really talked more about uh how what how do I do this as a believer in business than actually how to run their business? Because they were already doing a lot of good things. And it was on that trip where I realized um God really can use business people because we, you know, you spend two-thirds of your life in this, it's your neighbor in a way, who you can reach. And business literally disciples you every day because the challenges and the stresses of business, it really forces you to confront do I really believe what's in scripture and can I incorporate it into my life?

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Well, how do you measure discipleship? So if that that's the goal. Well, actually, let's back up a little bit. Just give us uh a clear understanding of kind of what the model is.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Sure. Uh, so I'm gonna give you our three fish metaphor and then give you kind of the four pillars of our model because usually people understand it at that point. So, what what the three fish are uh the first fish is we give people a loan to go out and start the business that they've gone through, a really extensive process with us to get. And that is going to help them be sustainable in their family, help lift them potentially out of poverty. Uh, but it also puts them out in the marketplace and a place to make connections. So that's the first fish. Second fish is we have a biblical entrepreneurship training model that we've refined over the years that really balances what are the few core things that they need to learn to be successful in business with what does the Bible say about all of this? Okay. And then the third fish is we teach a method of disciple making that just demonstrates to our students that how important it is that this isn't this is God's business, not yours. And your purpose is to become a disciple yourself, an apprentice of Jesus, to use John Mark Comer language, and also make disciples of others, introduce people to Jesus. You're not responsible for the results, but your life should speak volumes, it should draw people to your life, and then you should share the person of Jesus Christ with them through this business. So those are the three fish. What makes it distinctive? I've been in this for 20 years. There's a lot of BAM movements out there that struggle because they don't have all four of these. And um, and I didn't I didn't invent these. It's this is 20 years of working hard to figure it out. Um one is uh empowerment of indigenous believers, they are in a better position than anyone else to have a culturally relevant, impactful relationship with someone. Um, I'm not against foreign missionaries, I think it's both. Uh, number two, um, we have a lot of structure and accountability built into our program. We actually have a multimillion dollar web portal that controls every aspect of the process and gives us all the data we need to know how we're doing and how our partners are doing. Third is disciple making has to be in it. And it's not just winning souls, you know, we have to be disciples ourselves, you and I, as well as our students. And so for them to even get in our program, they have to have their church give them a character reference on are they someone who has demonstrated a pattern of pursuit of being a disciple first, um, uh, and then you know, of others. And then fourth, uh, we've taken the master or that we've taken the empowerment model to an extreme, we actually have given away our whole process now uh to our partners, and we train them as master trainers to run their own bank and uh deliver from A to Z our whole process, and we remain consultants. So that's kind of what IBAM does in short.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

What's one of your favorite stories, one of your favorite examples of the impact of this model?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Oh, yeah, sure. Um, I'll use um one is um so we have a guy, so our partner in Africa, so we're in we're in Indonesia, we have a partner in western China, we have a partner in Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and we have a partner in Central Asia. Okay. Our partner in Africa is awana, I wana worldwide. A lot of people in America go, what? They're like 12-year-olds down to three-year-olds, and my kids went through it. Um, in Africa, they go to age 35, and they have four million participants, 27, 25,000, 27,000 leaders. And their whole vision is to use the IBAM model to get into churches and villages that they're not in, but also to be self-sustaining apart from Western aid, which is very unusual in Africa, right? Uh uh it's a hand up, not a handout kind of thing. Um, so I mean, I read a book when helping hurts years ago, and so I this whole ministry has been about not making those mistakes, creating codependency. But anyway, um, Elijah is the board chairman of Wana Africa. He went to our master trainer program. Uh, we've we funded an expansion of his transportation business. He has a taxi business in Lusaka, Zambia. And um uh he went through the whole process, took the money, expanded. He's already mostly paid back his loan. But he has like five or six people at all times that he's mentoring in this process himself. And our the our the way our process works is if you get a loan, you have to have a coach for the duration of your loan who documents your progress both spiritually and professionally in our system, but also you commit to becoming a master trainer yourself. So it's basically self-replicating generationally, and so he's always has people, he's he's been a successful recipient himself, and he's equipping master trainers who then equip master trainers who equip master trainers. And what they really are becoming is that I haven't called them this, but they're becoming loan officers. Uh, because we raise money in the US and we grant blocks of money to our partners who set up a fund with their ministry at a bank separate from all their other ministry funds. They have a little board around it, and then they run their own loan committees. And it's like we so we have empowered them to have their own bank, if you will, in their culture. And then they Awana has their own disciple making model they use. We don't impose ours, we just partner with people who have a proven record of doing that. So that's how we get that. And then we publish their annual impact statement on our website. So that's how we know we're getting fruit on both.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Got it. So just to simple it, simplify it down for guys like me. Uh, so let's say that here in the states, I I give or you you take donations, and that's what funds the right.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

We have an international loan fund in the US, we receipt the person, so they're they're tax deductible, and then so they're not getting a return on like a financial. It's a donation, right? Yeah, we're not running like a Christian private equity group, right? Yeah, yep. And then we grant, we grant it, we don't loan it, we give it to our partners, and then um the loan cap is a thousand dollars and it has to be a service business. Over 20 years, we've learned service businesses have a high repayment rate, product businesses don't, and we like it because they have to really do much with the product business for a thousand bucks anyway. No, you're right, yeah. You have to buy inventory and all that. So we took all the complexity out and said, just serve people, but that gets them out in the marketplace, engaging in relationships, and now they can work as if working unto the Lord and show them what it looks like to deliver a service as if working under the Lord, onto the Lord. So uh that and that creates the disciple making opportunity. So, I mean, all of this sounds neat now, but it's take it took us decades to figure this stuff out.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Yeah, let's say uh Joe Donor in the US gives to the IBAM fund, IBAM then will decide whether or not that that which which local fund it's gonna go into or local bank essentially, right? Correct if it's managed by a group of Christians.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

You know, and they're all Christians.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

We don't we don't do this process with lost people because we don't want to exchange money for the gospel, and then that$100 they decide which entrepreneur, which service business they're gonna fund. Yep, and then that money will that$100 will then get paid back into that fund. Yep, that same original fund, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Okay, it's actually up to a thousand, so somewhere between usually$400 to a thousand dollars. Yep, and it gets repaid back, yeah, and can get recycled to the next borrower.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Okay, and then the the entrepreneur is expected to basically be uh helped to vet the next entrepreneur, correct?

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Because they've lived the process, so you know how to teach the process, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yeah, got it. Well, give us another story uh to help.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yeah, well, I've got one that's guy's name. I can't well, I can't give his name because he's in Indonesia and there's a lot of government oppression of believers, especially Muslim background believers. Uh I'll just say S. Um, it uh he's on one of the major islands in Indonesia. He set up a business across the street from a university. Um, the university uh um these students have scooters, they're all over Indonesia, and his business is cleaning helmets and shoes. He reconditions them because they get really dirty being on the scooters. And uh it's a successful business. And he's got a very simple, it was so profound. I thought to myself, you stupid man. I'm learning this from a 27-year-old kid at 61 years old, or 60 years old is earlier this year. Uh, and he said, All I do is I build a relationship, they tell me their problems, and then I say, Would you like to know how God helped me with my problems? And they go, every time they say yes, and he goes, and then I lead people to Christ. Isn't that simple? I love that. Oh my gosh, I know it's just and he's a 27-year-old kid taught all of us IBAM guys who were all in our 60s, and at this event where we were helping train our partners, and we all we all left that night and like cried in our room, like, thank you, God, for teaching us such a simple lesson.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Yeah, wow, wow, like how how many employees? I'm sure a lot of these entrepreneurs now have employees. So you said they're hundreds. Like, could you estimate like how many people are on the payroll of these businesses that are that have been funded?

SPEAKER_00 13:48

What I'm gonna tell you primarily is that probably eight out of ten are gonna be the entrepreneur and maybe a family member only. Okay. But occasionally we get some that break through and they go to the next level and they start hiring more people. I don't have stats on that. We've worked really hard at just tracking the actual success, both from an entrepreneurship standpoint, paying back the loan, and then their spiritual formation, development, and disciple making. That's what we focus on. And we tell them look, when you get to the point where you're going beyond us, uh, you're you're gonna have to work with your local network and find investors and people to help you grow. That's we don't do that. We know what our space is, we stay here. That makes sense, yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Yeah, and so um, yeah, like how do you have you you studied you study them over time? And is there sort of like a way to to track their the their spiritual development over time? Like what is that what does that look like look like?

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Yeah, yeah, it's um it's gradual. Like I said, when for the life of the loan, they have to uh have a coach, and they have to have a coach when they come into the program. We won't even let them go past first base if they don't demonstrate that they have somebody lined up. And IBAM gives the coach templates to use, and we're fine if it's once a quarter, you know, because you remember they're they have to validate through a character reference from their local church leadership that they are all of these traits that we're looking for. And one of them is they're actively engaged in their local church, and then before they exit the program and get the money, we rerun that character reference. Say, is that still true or have they grown? And as long as it's true and or they've or it's true and they've grown, we will proceed. If they say no, they've slipped back, we cancel the loan and say you can't, you got to go work on your part first. Uh so we really empower and leave to the local church that they're in the accountability of their spiritual formation because we really cannot do that from the US, from the West. We build it into our curriculum. We actually have in a phase one, there's two phases to this. There's six separate Bible studies where we're demonstrating. We you know, we use disciple making um DMM, disciple making movements training. They don't have to use that, but that's what we use in our training. And then the coach, when they interview them, when they meet, they have to document how they're progressing spiritually and put it into the notes in our system. So that's as far as we can go. That's our last mile, and that took like five years to figure out that. Um, but we got that now, and we're excited about it. And then we ask our partners to put their impact statements on our website every year. So we feel like that's as much as we can do. And I was just with a missions pastor in Houston this week, past week, and he was asking me all those questions. And I said to the guy, I said, I got I'm asking this as respectfully and kindly as I can. But when people ask us this, I ask them to step back and say, What are we doing about asking our entrepreneurs the same questions in America? And they always go, Oh, you're right. We're not doing like well, not even one third of what you're doing, right? So I and I don't do it as a gotcha, I do it as a okay, give me some grace. We're trying, right? So we're tracking all the metrics on them, the loan, everything. So we know that they fulfill their commitments, but we are not gonna give you something that's like, oh, they had 14 salvations this month and all of that. Like, don't even ask because we can't ask that. We're relying on our partner who has shown over 10, 20 years that they make disciples and trusting in that, yeah. Because we do have the Holy Spirit, remember, and so do they, yeah. So that's how I address that.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Yeah, and how do those uh how do those pastors respond when you really well?

SPEAKER_00 18:04

This one responded really well. He made a five-figure commitment right at the table to us, so uh, and the other thing that's really I mean, in terms of like how they recognize the calling to disciple their own entrepreneurs and they do it it it helps, it just puts that little extra chutzpah to do it, but we also now have a tool for them because um we now have created a domestic version of our whole system. Uh, on our website, we have something called the Impact Membership. It's$10 a month, it's a way for somebody to they can consume our curriculum online. Um, they can basically what their learning overseas, you can go through on our learning management system. It's a separate system that is more Western and what people in the US would enjoy. Um, because we don't want non-international people in our overseas system. Okay, I want to keep that separate. Uh, so they get that, and they get, you know, they get, you know, um, we have a guy who's a was a missionary in North Korea. He set up a mission agency in Singapore to China, Chinese people. He's amazing. He's got an MBA, you know, great. He was he mobilized missionaries for several years for pioneers, amazing missiologist. He teaches disciple making in the marketplace and puts that into that impact fund uh membership portal where people can learn from him. So, what we do with the church, we say is you give us the X amount of investment, everybody in your church gets that free. And and two-thirds of the church won't care because they're not business people, but your entrepreneurs, if they consume that, they're gonna get excited about missions, which is a win for the church. They're gonna get excited about making disciples themselves. So, in a way, we're starting to disciple their people for them so they don't have to do it, do all of it. And then this church in Houston is so excited, they're planting a church and they're gonna bring the IBAM model to that church plan. And so, and then if they want to, they can go overseas with their partner and do it there too. They're gonna say they're not ready for that, but so basically, for us to reach our goal of a million, Darren, we're not gonna do it with a team at IBAM. We have to have the church engaged globally.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Yeah. What's one of the the main practices that you teach these entrepreneurs to adopt that would distinguish them from their non-Christian peers over in the places that they're operating?

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Well, one of them, one of them, well, we we you know, one of the fundamental core things we teach are uh business is a calling. Okay, it's not you're not doing this so you can do ministry. This is your ministry. Okay. Uh, secondly, the concept. So the rest of the world in the Muslim context, in the Asian context, plausible deniability, like situational uh truth and honesty kind of are pervasive in business. And we're teaching them that there's absolute truth, there's absolute, you will you will follow the letter and the spirit of your contracts with people, you will fulfill what you say you're gonna do, even when it hurts. And so the integrity piece is really where people show up different overseas. Now, in the US, we have a lot of cultural Christianity and a lot of social pressure, and a lot of people who are not believers have great integrity in business because they know it pays off. But that isn't necessarily true in a lot of these other places. A lot of our Muslim background believer students tell us that their top referral sources are like imams. Because in the Muslim world, they know Christians are honest, believe it or not. And it was like a big surprise to me when I first got in this. So that's one, and then

SPEAKER_01 22:00

um you know we teach them you know these success and failure factors and a lot of that is is character related so they're they're showing up different out in the marketplace than what their peers are who are not believers and so that that's my best answer I mean there's a lot of other things we teach them but to answer your question directly that's it yeah well you will show up different I mean just the accountability aspect right uh the to to help these entrepreneurs maintain that perspective that I'm not just running this business and serving these customers to to get something from them uh to to make money but I'm here on a much bigger mission to glorify God and that yes the way that I conduct my business and the quality of my service and and the the ethical practices of my um my agreements and yeah the promises that I make all of those things are either going to be leading those people toward or away from Christ.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Yeah it's really well said and well that the other one you just touched on we teach is um excellence is a biblical principle and doing everything with excellence um when they sign the contract for the loan we you they they commit like if I my business fails I'm getting a job and paying this back because this is God's people's money that donated it and now obviously we're not gonna go chase somebody down and put them in bondage if they just can't do it. But we we tell them like you need to pray about this before you take the money because you are signing up with a real commitment that you're gonna honor because you know that that that's a muscle okay and you can either be in the habit of keeping your commitments or you can be in the habit of breaking them because we teach our kids you know this stuff you can't quit because you it becomes a habit. And so uh so those are the things we do. Are they paying back with interest or it's not interest. We so um we used to charge 10% and now we charge 10% this was the idea of one of our partners actually from Africa. If they we'll go up to three years on the loan but you're gonna pay a 30% loan fee for three years 20% for two or 10% for one. So it it motivates people to build a lower cost business plan that's less risky that they can pay back in a year. Some people still take the deal uh and unless you think that's usurious rates it's not because over three years that loan fee is about 10.5% when you do the imputed interest calculation it's about 9.5 for two years and 9.1 for one year. And everywhere we work standard rates are 27 to 32% if they use the societal banking system. So we're creating a that doesn't work like nobody can pay 30% and make it like they're in and their margins aren't good enough in business to pay back 30% interest that's like loan to own. So we're giving them a banking system a shadow banking system that's legal we make sure of that that will actually work for them.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

What percentage will will get behind on their payments?

SPEAKER_00 25:25

So uh historically we were depending on the year 35 to 50 percent is what would pay us back so 50 to 65 percent would fail. Now before you think we're idiots 95% of businesses in the US fail in the first five years. So we were doing okay but we had 10 years of data in our software system we created and we looked at it and went how can we do better and what really forced it was our new partner in Indonesia was on the horizon and we're like guys they have like 5000 islands. They can't pull people to central locations how are we and all of a sudden we realize we need to give it away and basically we said we want a bam practitioner in every village of the world well the way to do that is do a master trainer program give it away empower them and then they'll train people who will go village to village across Indonesia and it was really Indonesia that forced us to come up with this model. The the repayment rate so far after about two years of seasoning is 90 to 94 percent repayment rate.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

90 to 94 percent now yep and and they're doing it not us they do it better because they have all the incentive like we're not gonna get more investment from IBAM if we lose money in all these things and so they ask really hard they're harder on their own people than we are yeah yeah and I mean what a sweet deal to also get coaching along the way it's all embedded in what lender is going to give you that I mean to spend spend time of course you have to have those who are blessed by the system then turn back around and go teach others I mean you have to and they become coaches too.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Yeah and um you know it's you're not gonna be compensated financially for doing that right it's just no they don't know the uh so the what's really interesting is you just said something there I used to be a regional bank president and if I were to start a bank again today I would hire business coaches and everybody that got a loan over a certain amount because you have to have the scale of the net interest margin to be able to pay the coach it would be so easy the average bank makes tens of thousands of dollars profit per loan they would probably improve their their earn their uh repayment rates and they would differentiate themselves like crazy if they did it yeah like if you had a choice between two banks and one's gonna give me a business coach you take that bank every time and the bank can charge higher rates yeah so I actually it's you just made me I'm gonna tell my friend here in Waco he know he's the president of bank I'm gonna tell him you should do this.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

Yeah and they would they would speed up their repayments to where you know the the business would probably start looking for their next loan a lot yeah quickly.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Well the whole goal in banking when I was a banker is you you can't outperform the quality of your borrowers or the quality of your local economy. Well you can't control your local economy but you can you can build up better borrowers and that would be a way to do it. Yeah yeah yeah so so yeah hey you just came up with a big idea for bankers it is that is huge.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

I mean that's as an entrepreneur myself I mean I know the value of that so especially from people that you know it's one thing to have a coach that's sort of a disinterested third party but to where you know that the fund that you you've depended on that you have benefited from is at risk if this person is making unwise decisions in business. I mean and knowing that it's not just the the pot of money that's at stake but the the disciple making engine that's at stake.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

It's at stake all of it yeah that's really well said yeah I mean some other ways we prop up the strength we in each one of our partnerships we help fund half to 100% of a salary for a local fund administrator um these are high quality individuals and they hold all the trainers accountable for following the process because if you try to shortcut it it falls apart and and so I added also I get volunteer retirees to be the liaison with a partner. So I have a partner I have a friend of mine retired from the automotive industry he goes he calls on my Indonesian partner every two weeks flies there a couple times a year builds a long-term relationship I've got another one for Africa and I'm recruiting one for Central Asia so now our partner is getting the wisdom of a 60 plus year old godly person. The administrator in Indonesia is a former finance trade official in the government the guy in Africa is a who is a university professor of business quit his job to do this and I I'm looking for that person in Central Asia. So we've just learned over the years through lots of mistakes and losing money what are the pieces we need to build to keep this thing strong on every level uh and you still have the human condition you're still going to have losses but we seem to have so far anyway um limited them and the whole question now is going to be can we maintain that quality as we expand? So we're going slow now so we can go fast later. And so people can donate at IBAMibam.org right yep there's buttons all over it and they can look into like the impact fund you can go in there and either do ten dollars every month or there's single amounts like a hundred all the way up to I don't know is some big number uh whatever God puts on your heart you know um and we're constantly upgrading that we'll have more stories on there but our whole goal is probably by the end of the year we're gonna have a link right at the top of the pay home page you click on there and you can go see our dashboard with how all of our partners are doing.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

So how much has been donated at this point?

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Well uh since 14 probably two and a half million um but like we run the ministry really lean like uh I think our general fund budget's like 175 grand. Um we we have one development guy that is paid pretty well that consumes a lot of that and then we have uh compliance stuff accounting IRS stuff uh it's about 50 or 60 grand to run a ministry just that's the table stakes to do it properly and not be in trouble with the IRS and then um we uh I'm not paid because I I donate my time I'm the founder I've been doing this for 20 years we've had other presidents that also volunteered their time so in the next three years what my goal is is um going to continue to grow the board get the general fund up to probably around a half a million so we can pay a president full-time development guy and the beauty is as we scale we don't have to add many people because our partners are doing all the work yeah you know where we need people we have an outsourced company it does all of our back end will never change because they've got redundancy and all of that is we need operational support people to support our partners with BizTools which is our platform that's where we'll have to put people uh but but you know it'll be you know we can add tens of thousands of people and add maybe one person so it scales really well in our favor financially yeah well that's uh that that's really phenomenal impact i mean to think two and a half million dollars invested and I know it it wasn't always a 95% um you know payback rate but that's general fund and rent and everything yeah that's where things are going is is constantly improving and to know that you can donate toward a fund that is going to be perpetuating this kind of impact all over the world is you know and it and it's it's very it's very tangible.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

It's very tangible that I mean it's it's harder to measure like if you were to you know sponsor a missionary going overseas to to go teach English or something you know there's there's ways of measuring things but if they're if they're making money you know they are out there interacting. Like they are out there. Yeah they have to be they have to be and to have that that coach that is in their corner checking up on them and keeping them accountable the I mean these entrepreneurs are are leading their communities. So I just uh commend what you're doing it's very exciting iBam.org is the website everybody Steve it's been a real pleasure to have you on the show today and let me give you two statistics real quick is like a single gift of a thousand essentially gets recycled nine times so it's a gift that keeps giving so it's very efficient and secondly for the cost of a missionary family now I'm not like I said I'm pro-missionaries but for the cost of one family over five years it's around four to five hundred thousand we can fund like five to six hundred indigenous missionaries for that same money yeah have you read anything by KP Yohannan I I I haven't actually heard his name in many years but there was a book that I read uh probably uh 20 years ago it was about the indigenous missions movement going on in India yeah and um and that was a real paradigm shift for me because I mean he started right out just contrasting the cost of sending you know your your 20 something year old to no India in the plane ticket the cost of the plane ticket compared to how many indigenous missionaries you can support who already know the language they're already rooted in the communities uh to to just make the journey to the next town over like that it just there's just no no compare from a cost from a cost standpoint certainly there's you know there's yeah yeah there's there's impact on the person that goes I mean then you'll never forget that experience but in terms of just long-term sustainable missions the marketplace is is where it's at um and particularly with equipping and resourcing the the entrepreneurs that are already in the countries that already know the needs they know the language they have the relationships and that what what they don't have is the capital or the trade and the coaching and the and the you know the insight into how to how to grow business. So yeah well thank you that's kp ohannon uh kp yoannan oh yeah like I said i i don't know i haven't heard his name in many years yeah i'm gonna read it i don't even know what's uh what's going on with him gospel for asia well hey thank you for having me on thanks team thanks for listening to this episode of the Christian business leader podcast be sure to subscribe leave a review and tune in for the next episode as we continue exploring god's will and ways for business