Finding Faith-based Investing | with Cassie Laymon

Transcript

Cassie Laymon:

I would say my desire to help people has really been a theme through my life, so felt natural to me after I got my MBA to help people with their finances. But I have to be transparent with you, I wasn’t feeling good about the work that I was doing necessarily. When I first heard the term faith-based investing, I wasn’t really sure what to think exactly what that meant, but I think I pictured only investing in Christian companies. And are these going to be companies that are well-respected companies, well-funded companies? I just assumed that there weren’t really very many companies that you could even invest in, so I was a little skeptical about that.

It took me a little bit of time to work through these different issues. And when I say that, I mean about a year. And during that year, all the questions that came up, all the things I was skeptical about, is this really going to work? And I was interviewing people and reading books. And once I really understood the values piece of it, that I am going to help companies grow no matter what I invest in and I really care about what I invest in, and that values alignment, I was in, but I still was so skeptical about the performance. I talked to people at different fund companies. I looked at studies, and that just gave me a lot of comfort that I was not going to be taking chances with my client’s money.

And I just remember one night so clearly. I was really scared about this move. I was afraid I was going to lose all my clients and I’ll never get another client. And I felt so clearly, God speaking to me that this is what I needed to do, whether I was scared about it or not, and that it was all going to be okay. That’s the one fear that I think that we all have is, “Oh, all my clients are going to think I’m kooky, that my clients are going to leave. I’ll never get more clients.” But once I decided that this is the way that God wants us to invest our money, I was pretty all in. And I had to have a conversation with every one of my clients and say, “This is where we’re moving.”

Interestingly, I’d never spoken to any of them about politics or religion. That’s trained into you very early on. And I said, “This is the way that we’re going to invest. And if this does not work for you, I completely understand. I will help you to find someone else to work with. And if you’re on board with this, come along. We’re going to do this together.” And I lost about two clients. It wasn’t very many clients. I still have many clients who are not Christian, but they really believe in what we’re doing and they have trust in us. And so, I’ve kept those clients for all these years.

I remember in the early years, all I cared about was getting the client. “I’ve got to get this client, I got to get this client.” Now that we have this focus on faith-based investing, I really know who we are. And I can stick to that no matter what. I just have great peace about our convictions, about what’s important to us, what we do. And if there’s somebody that’s not a good fit for, that’s okay.