Episode 21 - Breaking Barriers and Better Narratives For All with Julian Kyula
Rev. Julian is an internationally accomplished business leader, serial FinTech entrepreneur, and the founding senior pastor of the Nairobi-based Purpose Centre Church. From his unique vantage point, he speaks to the backdrop of history and education that has set the stage for kingdom businesses to grow in Africa.
In 2010, Rev. Julian founded the MODE Group; a highly successful multi-million dollar international fintech company that went on to become a global leader in cashless microservices with a presence in over 14 African countries and 26 countries globally. Since then, Rev. Julian has become Chairman of Beulah City Ltd, a housing development company operating across Africa. He sits on several boards across the world and continues to interact with global leaders in various sectors towards the development of his business ventures and the African continent as a whole.
In this episode, Rev. Julian shares his experience of raising capital, scaling businesses, and teaching others to do the same as an apostle of Jesus in the African marketplace.
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.
Jacktone: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Africa podcast, where we spotlight the voices of entrepreneurs and innovators shaping the marketplace across the continent. This week we are featuring Rev. Julian Kyula. Reverend Julian is an internationally accomplished business leader, entrepreneur and pastor based in Nairobi. His wide ranging experiences give him a unique perspective on how our faith influences and shifts the work we do as entrepreneurs. In 2010, he founded the MODE Group, a fintech company spanning over 26 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He is also the founder and chairman of Beulah City which help establish 100,000 affordable homes in Kenya. Julian's work has been recognized by various media outlets and awards throughout the world. He joins us today to talk about the power that comes when we live out our beliefs in our spheres of influence.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Africa podcast. As always, I'm joined by my co-hosts Ndidi, Ndidi. Good morning. Good evening.
Ndidi Nwuneli: Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Great to be here, Henry.
Henry Kaestner: And we were all of those things today because we are with Julian in Nairobi and I've been really looking forward to this. Our guest today, Julian Kyula. And Julian, welcome to the program. And help me to make sure that I'm not mispronouncing your name as I fear I am.
Julian Kyula: You did perfect.
Henry Kaestner: Okay. All right. You're very, very gracious, Kyula. So this is a great guest. I mean, in the early stages of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, I think it's so important that we get the guest on that really exemplify what we hope to get across as we speak to an audience, mostly of African entrepreneurs and business owners, to be able to have somebody who's been as successful as Julian has and yet also be very, very serious about their faith, so much so that he is a pastor of a church. He's a reverend. And what a great example of somebody that I think that we all want to be when we grow up, including myself, So Julian, thank you very much for joining.
Julian Kyula: It's a joy. Henry Thank you so much for having me.
Henry Kaestner: One of the things we like to do with all of our guest, in addition to as we close out, we'll ask you if you're hearing something from God in his word recently. But one of the things we love to do, of course, is just to get an autobiographical flyover. We've got a whole bunch of questions that Ndidi and I are really eager to ask you. But just give us a flyover. Who are you? Where you come from? And then how did faith enter into your life? But bring us through childhood. Right through your professional career, please.
Julian Kyula: Okay. So, Julian, brother to four sisters. So I grew up in a home full of girls, and my father moved a lot. He was in the banking sector, so I moved a lot with him and finally settled down at a much later age. I did my schooling mostly in Kenya, left for the US right after my high school, and I was in Houston, Texas for about 12 years and I just felt very passionately I needed to come back to Kenya, which I did, and I had been working a lot in that data analytics type of environment in Houston, and my heart's desire was to come and build that here. But I came home, I got married, I've got three amazing boys and that's been my walk and I've been both.
Henry Kaestner: How old are your boys?As a father of three boys whenever I hear someone else says three boys, I want to know.
Julian Kyula: 14, 12 and seven, seven going on 21. So it's been an amazing journey. God's been good. And just being here and settling here has been an amazing, amazing miracle for me.
Henry Kaestner: How easy was it to come back to Nairobi after Houston? I think about Houston. So many lovely people, great food there, not great weather. I think of Nairobi as having the perfect weather. That must have been nice to come back to.
Julian Kyula: Yeah, someone lied to me, said, you know, Texas weather is very close to Nairobi weather and I got there in the summer. Yeah, it's not. So it was look, coming back was a big risk because I was not doing too badly in the US. I was quite advanced in my young career. I was in my mid-twenties doing quite okay and you know, late twenties, being mentored by an amazing guy. I just felt this very urgent call to come back home. And when I landed back at the airport, I was sure I'd made a mistake. It's hit me in the face that, I don't know, this was the right move. But I did put on a brave face and I started understanding the market better and learning it a lot more. I had a friend who'd come back and I was asking him a lot of questions, so it was quite a big move at that age. But I was young enough. I was young enough to go back if things didn't work out, but I don't think I came back with an intention to quit. And that's when my journey back in Kenya began.
Henry Kaestner: So tell us about that journey.
Julian Kyula: So I got back. I did a stint with the group where I quickly got a job as a general manager. For East Africa. Again, I was in the data world. So I worked as a general manager for a credit bureau. We were trying to get credit bureaus registered in to Eastern Africa. We didn't have credit bureaus back in 2006 at all. So understanding what was going on in the US, understanding where the world was going with data, I had an obsession with data driven type of thinking. I had studied a lot on big data early in the day. I was very keen and I knew that something was going to happen in Africa with data for those who are ready. And I didn't know how that was going to happen. So I went into the credit bureau world hoping that that would stop. It was a very, very uphill task because banks were very, very skeptical about it. But thanks to.
Henry Kaestner: Tell us about what Credit Bureau is a good number of us aren't familiar with.
Julian Kyula: Sure it's a system that enables banks to share positive and negative data about customers and how they take on their profiles and loans and those that are paying back. Well, those that are paying back badly and those that don't pay back at all. And this way they get to sniff out any negative data early enough and are able to give our products as a bank based on your good or bad record. That means you could get a mortgage at a better rate or you could get a loan at a better rate, or you could just get better banking services because of your credit profile. Those who didn't have a negative profile are given chances to improve that profile and are taught on how to keep working on a better profile. It also brings about proper statistics around financial inclusivity for those who are not in any banking system whatsoever to be able to start being educated about why it matters, to have some form of credit with some institution not necessarily for taking loans, but just to have some credit history. So that's where it was coming from. So you can appreciate none of that existing to try to build out that entire infrastructure. It was not just for Kenya for about six East African countries.
Henry Kaestner: So you're a pastor now. Faith is presumably been a part of your life for for some period of time. Tell us about that.
Julian Kyula: Yes. God's been an amazing inspiration for me. And of course, I've been very guided by the word. I can tell you it's been easy. And what that's done since 2007, when I got back to Kenya, I said to my wife that I'd been involved in churches a lot in Houston, very much involved. I had served for almost seven years in the church, and I did feel a strong urge that we wanted to give back to society. So I told her, look, I'd like us to do this, but I'm not going to take any pay from the church ever. I want it to be 100% charity. It's my way of mentoring, raising, discipling. You felt very strongly about also helping those that are in the marketplace. For me to be in there with them, to understand the challenges they go through and therefore, as I speak to them, you know, it doesn't take away from anyone else. But I'm not theoretical about the experience. I'm very practical about understanding what happens on a monday morning, versus a Sunday date with the church. So again, a big risk. So I got married, started a church, we got pregnant, and I started my business all in the same year. I don't advise that to anybody. I literally started three babies at the same time.
Henry Kaestner: So it sounds like all three of those babies are going really well. So you had the first baby and you had two other boys. The baby on the business side has done extraordinarily well and has been remarkably successful, of course, in Africa. But then also it's global, I think 26 countries or something like that taught to us about. And let me just go back on one thing that you said. I want to make sure we don't gloss over. There's something amazingly powerful about a pastor who understands the role of the marketplace and the entrepreneur as a cultural change agent. And your platform to be able to be intentional about that is unique. Before I go back to some of the lessons that God taught you through the business, can you go back to that just that one thing real quickly, because I think there's something really magical about that. What is some counsel that you might give pastors that might listen to this or maybe it's entrepreneurs listening to this is more likely entrepreneurs listening to this that might share this podcast with their pastor as a way of understanding them. What would you say to those pastors that might otherwise just be intimidated, maybe the wrong word, but just not comfortable enough with being able to minister to those in the marketplace? What would you say to them?
Julian Kyula: I mean, I'd say, you know, 99.9% of your church are in the marketplace. And I think there's been a disparity in our teaching as though people are two different kinds of people. Right. And so the humble for I'd like to put in there is that they're not two people, they're not a different person on Sunday and a different person on Monday as we want them to be from Monday to Friday. They're in this world where they have to live through and therefore we have to understand, not necessarily be in it, but in order for us to empathize with their world and what they're going through with what we are teaching and how the Bible applies and the Word of God applies to that marketplace for them. So we must bring spiritual and daily relevance to the Word of God in people's daily living and make sure that we are not aloof or completely dismissive of the marketplace challenges. Right? So if there's an inflation problem, it's going to hit the church somehow. If there is a liquidity problem in the market, you know, from what the congregation is going through, if they have job losses, we have to be able to empathize with where people are and bring solutions and prayer and faith to that situation. So I would encourage every pastor to have some way with not you yourself, then maybe your eldership or leaders can be giving you an understanding of how things are out there, but also for you as an entrepreneur to know how you can bring the right thinking or discipleship into the church to help those who you know you don't have to become a pastor, but you could definitely minister somehow to people that are in the marketplace as an entrepreneur, as a person that's gone through these experiences because it's what our members are going through, it's what the church is going through and it's, you know, you can't ignore it. It's what my experience has been.
Ndidi Nwuneli: I love that. Julian, you know, listening to you, my first book is called Working for God in the Marketplace, really exemplifying so much of what you've said and that need for Christians to come prepared, right, to deliver what God has called them to do to reflect Christ in the marketplace. So well done for all you do and all you're doing. I'm just amazed that you straddle these hats as a successful entrepreneur in a difficult sector. Housing. ICT. Can you just walk us through a bit more about your business and how you straddle your faith in some very complex sectors that have to do with government contracts and government engagements, etc.?
Julian Kyula: That's a really good question Ndidi. So the business side, if I could talk about the fintech fintech is my passion, I told you data, that's just been a big, big passion for me. And so, you know, I did build out Mode. As Henry mentioned, Mode stood for mobile decisioning. So I started with the banks and then I was able to sell that company. And then we moved on to Mobile because I found more data within the African context on combining the mobile phone together with the bank because data is really about volume and making that data make sense. So from the entire data science to the algorithms we have to build, I was able to really build out Mode again. Mode was acquired in 2017 and I then decided to build my final fintech, which is what I'm at now called EDOMx. And through all these has been an amazing process, you know, watching how acquisitions have been, watching how to raise capital, watching how capital in Africa works, capital in the Western world, and differentiating that capital from European capital and American capital, very different habits towards the African market. So that's been an interesting trajectory. However, one of the biggest disparities I find in the church is that we have a generation that's just never going to have housing. We have people that live, you know, 60 miles away from the city, but they bring their children to the city. So they wake up at 3 a.m., drive their kids to the good schools in the city. And these kids are tired. And I knew we had to find a solution. So we started looking at figuring out how to bring affordable housing into the urban centers, allowing the next generation to own houses. I don't know if Ndidi may know this. I don't know if Henry knows this. I think he may. But, you know, we have mortgages here going up to 16, 17%. If you calculate mortgages over a 25 year period of time at 16%, you've literally bought four houses. Right. So that's an injustice because it's just not right. Number two, there is a very high developer margin for the people involved in construction are making 3-4x the amount of the house. So if the house costs $30,000. They're making $120,000 or $150,000 on these houses. So we decided to get, Ndidi, two things, and that is, can we manage our greed around the margin that we're going to make on our housing? Yes, we can. Are we going to make money? Yes, we will. Can we find fair payment terms for people that are out of 10%, even in a country or in a market that people say it's impossible? Yes, we can. And we did. And it's been an amazing relationship with governments and It's been an uphill task. I won't lie to you. It wasn't my forte. That was more of this is an injustice. Something has to be done. So we're in the middle of building a couple of thousand homes, apartments, because for us to make it affordable in the city, we have to go up. And so we're building those. But, you know, our houses are within a 20, 40, $50,000 range and people have 20 years to 25 years to pay. So they pay what they pay for rent outside the city, but now they're in the city. So these things and to answer you, I discovered a secret from the Bible. It was how Jesus raised these 12 people. Jesus invested heavily in people. So I'd like to take the glory Ndidi, and tell you that, you know, the idea that worked perfectly because of Julian, what I figured out is I invest a lot in people and these people just from amazing businesses and they do an amazing job. I just come out shining, but they've done an amazing job, so I give all the credit to the people I work with because they do the time, they do the the scaling of the businesses, they do the Excel sheets and the financial models. They do the convincingly to the great presentations. I simply hold their hands, help open doors to gather and they get the job done. So that's what the secret has been. And how I've been able to maneuver across all these industries is I just keep investing in the right people and they get the job done.
Ndidi Nwuneli: I love that. So many questions coming out of what you just said. I'll take one at a time. You are differentiating between European capital, African capital and US capital. Can you just quickly tell us what you mean? What is unique about the capital structure? And as you've gone through these multiple acquisitions and exits, what have been the high points?
Julian Kyula: So I'll give you a case in point. So my previous business was registered in Africa, right? This was the fintech. We had an amazing EBIDTA. EBIDTA is a measure that is used a lot in European markets, London, their earnings before income tax, just earnings before income tax and duty. And that in itself, I mean, this company was rich in EBIDTA, but I still couldn't get the right valuations because I was very Europe focused in my capital search. And America looks at that very differently. America looks at it so first in Africa, right. If you're going to get the right funding for your businesses. You know, you have to give up your grandma and mother's pin numbers and financial statements and people have to know which village you come from again in the West. And when I say the West here I mean in Europe and especially the UK, which a lot of Kenyan companies have gone to, funding for the capital is different because it's quite brick and mortar facilitated. Right. So they don't do very many tech type acquisitions. If they do, then they have to be very brick and mortar driven in that sense around how the bottom line looks very profitable. Are you currently making good money? Are you structured this way? But when I went to the US and again even in the US West Coast versus East Coast, very different in terms of that facilitation of looking at businesses. You could actually grow a business without profit. It doesn't necessarily always work like that. It's not necessarily a good thing, but you have to figure out what you're involved in. So an EDOMx which had just started, it's a Delaware company, the teams built it from here. We have offices in the US, we have offices here structured it differently. We have products working in the US, products working here, demonstrating through a pilot that it can work in a developing world and as much as it's working in a developed market. So growth, the growth story can be sold, the scaling story can be sold, and the American market takes that kind of business very differently. So they take that same business to African investors. They may not fully grasp it. They eventually get in there, and that's great. So when I look at groups like Flutterwave out of Nigeria and a few others Interswitch, I mean, the collaboration between New York or Silicon Valley and Africa is really becoming a sweet spot for exposure. And so unicorns are coming out of Africa from young people, young Christians and, you know, some of them even we mentored. And here they are doing unicorns like, you know, three time unicorns in two years. That difference is they've just cracked a little science around. How do you scale? How do you grow? How do you go to the globe? The world has become a village, so Ndidi I hope I've answered you by saying I found out that African capital can be quite impatient and staggering. They just want you to get the profit as quickly as possible. The UK because they trained a lot of the African accountants and African investment bankers. Same line of thinking. America is a little open to a growth story and you know how you're impacting the world and how you're going to change that so the capital behaves differently. Now, what I've seen we have to do for the next generation is bring some of that thought pattern of, you know, capital to Africa. And so you have very large groups like Leapfrog, KKR are now starting to open their eyes towards Africa and the collaboration is happening. I mean, Goldman Sachs just invested $100 million in a French business. You'd never heard of that five years ago. And that's where it's going. And that's in Kenya and a business that's just running within Kenya alone. So the more you hear of those stories, the more then the narrative to go out and bring impact funding to really do proper impact in Africa is becoming a reality. And so I've become a very good ambassador of that type of funding, finding African hands that are well knowledgeable about how this works to collaborate a growth story across the continents.
Ndidi Nwuneli: I love that. I think our listeners will be taking copious notes because depending on your exit options and who you're targeting as investors, you have to structure your business differently. And hearing a pastor, a reverend, speak this language and drop this knowledge is phenomenal. Well done. Well done. And then just another question before I pass it back to Henry. You know, I love the housing investment. I would say that many of God's children live in mansions and their congregation live in huts, and you're taking that on. But there's a huge burden right now on people of faith in Africa, right, to prove that, you know, God is real, God loves Africa. And this whole straddling the divide between those who have and have not and this faith, the work that you're doing as a reverend and as a businessman, how do you straddle that? How do you minister across these two fronts with not only integrity, but also credibility?
Julian Kyula: Oh, I think it's just driving that whole value system. So, you know, when you study the Bible from where I sit, you know, and start to look at things, you know, I mean, Jesus had some really, really tough words for the teachers of his day. And, you know, you can get religious real fast. So, for instance, you had probably 120 laws that God gave the children at 62. I understand. But, you know, we ended up making them 652 as people, you know, so we have this thing with power over men and how we can be, you know, and I teach it, you know, I'm not telling you what I don't speak to my fellow pastors about. So I feel like the narrative in Africa has got to change from the past of being the example of being blessed to everybody, being blessed. And, you know, the first church and the book of Acts, the Bible says they gave until none of them had meat. And so the whole understanding of how we can change a narrative from one superstar model to a very spread sharing and community driven thinking, I believe does bring blessings beyond our wildest imagination. Right. So I have church members. They have no clue where I live. They don't need to know where I live. You know, I'm not trying not to be generous, but, you know, I told my wife, I'll make sure you have your privacy and what you need to have at the end of the day, what I found out. So we have over 250 entrepreneurs at our church. And you know why? Because we've just drawn up a particular type of people of thinkers and it's become a very interesting community. Thousands of people that have just been transformed through kingdom, business and kingdom minded, thinking around how they do business and how we measure greed and our bottom line and be fair to those that work with us. It hasn't come without its share of problems because any time you're changing a narrative, you're not the most popular person. But you have to be driven by something beyond the norm and something beyond what's going on. So I think by getting people into church, into homes, getting people in church, into work, being able to mentor them through kingdom business practices has been so fulfilling. It hasn't been easy, but it's been very fulfilling to see people transform, change and transform lives and to see them start to think about business as a kingdom tool as opposed to a get rich quick scheme. And it's important not to short circuit processes. I've been able to help them understand it can take ten years to 15 years to build something great. There's no shortcut. There's process and we have to follow it and we have to take care of relationships. And I have been able to show them that every place I've raised capital, 70% of it has been relational driven, 30% has been the business. Right. So so once people get to understand you, especially in your Pre-Series series A or even as you come into the housing casing point for the housing, we needed help with balance sheet optimization. We needed a few friends to come and help us a balance sheet. I mean, it's been Indian groups and Indian families in our country that have actually given me the balance sheet for, you know, millions and millions of dollars to be able to do the housing because they're in that industry. But my partner with us, because our cause was good and right and they felt obliged to work with a group like us to make the change we're making. So these are not Christians, but they're willing to put their balance sheet on the line because of relationship, reputation and track record. So with those examples, you can then go to other pastors and say, Come, I want to show you a different way of doing things that's going to transform Africa. And it goes back to, you know, whether we want to accept it or not. The Catholic Church, the Anglican Church did at the very beginning, we will build schools, we will build homes, we will change community. And in Africa, some of the best communities are surrounded by, you know, where these churches originally were. That's where we are going Ndidi. I really feel strongly about it that a time has come. There was a time for for a pastor, I'm not going to put it that way to be a very key and important person. They still are. But now we're seeing actually the communities also very important. And they should receive the right care and the right love and the right direction so that we can eradicate some of the issues. Look, I'll give you a statistic. So how can the most evangelized continent, the continent had the highest number of Christians on a per capita basis across the world. The continent with the most churches, the continent with the most number of preachers have the highest infant mortality rates, the highest education dropout rates, the highest corruption index rates in the world. Something's wrong with that narrative. We're missing something somewhere. And so if it takes kingdom business, kingdom impact kingdom thinking to change the narrative, then we may have to step down from pulpits, which is really a 400 year old invention, and come back to the Church of Acts and start to live among the people and change it from within. That's my thinking.
Henry Kaestner: So some great thinking, having to write out the Bible. You mentioned something about folks of different faiths pledging their balance sheets because their relationship and the opportunity they see. Can you speak a bit to how you see Christ followers that are becoming more and more successful financially in how they are stewarding their capital? Or are they coming in with the same type of conviction of people of other faiths, yes or no? And or what do you see as maybe the barriers to people that you see stewarding capital? One of the narratives that we want to be able to explore is that and this is a little bit of a leading question, but I want you to build this out and provide some substance to it, if you can. One of the things that Ndidi and I are excited about with this podcast is changing the narrative. And one of the things that we've come to learn, of course, is that there is good capital. There's a lot of investment coming from Africa. And it's not just the Western Church or the faith driven investors. They come in and have to start de novo on investing in some of these different structures. Do you see that happening within the church of those people that God has blessed with financial resources so that it's not just folks from other faiths that have to pledge their assets? Just speak to that. The what you see is positive developments, but also maybe even some of the challenges that you need to overcome there.
Julian Kyula: Yes. So the whole impact financing philanthropy. Give back. Thinking. Henry, it's beginning to happen. I'm not gonna tell you we're there yet. It's beginning to happen. There's a whole bunch of friends beginning to lobby for a different plot pattern. One Africans in the diaspora, Africans within Africa that have actually reached a certain threshold of business success and where they could give back in relationships. Balance sheet, business optimization, business growth. We're seeing a lot of it coming even out of Nigeria again, just by watching what's happening with the collaboration between them and their brothers in the United States and how they're using that to change. What I think we haven't succeeded in and the challenge has been we're lobbying our governments, lobbying our governments to help us look at how we do philanthropy, how we do give back differently. So there is absolutely limited tax benefits for helping. So there's no corporate assistance for looking to actually have impact and that's appreciate that that is actually an incentive in its own way for that to happen. But outside of governments, there is willingness, there is some lethargy around, you know, being alone, surrounded by so much needed to be done. But at the same time, there's a lot of encouragement come within this small community of investors or people that have succeeded and actually have the balance sheet to be very thoughtful around impact and what kind of businesses we're getting into. So I don't know if I've answered you, but that's actually where we are at the moment, is that the community is growing. It's it's global because we belong to a few global bodies that are doing these kind of incentives and thinking. But it's been a challenge because people are just really starting to understand locally the philanthropy and give back an impact language.
Henry Kaestner: I want to come back to that here in a second, but I want to set up I mentioned that you've talked about something in the past that bears repeating. You mentioned before how Africa needs to be bold and confident and understanding that the world has become a village and you talk of entitlement. Can you share more about this idea? What is this call?
Julian Kyula: That call is to move away from our entitlement for aid. It was a talk I was given. I was dealing with the whole pattern around aid and how we face our disposition around being given. We don't need to be entitled about anybody helping us. It's a good thing, but we need to also appreciate if we study history of all these nations across the world that people are working very difficult challenges to get to the place where they can really think. Are there injustices we have to deal with. Yes, there are. There are inflation injustices. There is economic injustices. There's a lot to get over. However, the world has become a village. The fact that I can set up a Delaware company and I'm seated in Kenya should encourage someone to understand that I don't have to do business in my country alone. If I'm in the service industry, I could place myself to be a global provider of those services. And so we must come out of ... also I was building Mode into 28 markets. I mean, that mean I went to about 100 markets to eventually have 28. It was not an easy job, but we figured things out will figure out stuff around partners. Language barriers. Being able to find ourselves in places. We just didn't know what language people are speaking. We went Indonesia and we won a very large deal in Indonesia as a Kenyan company. But the truth is we were up against very big giants, very large American corporates in some of those contracts and deals. And we competed and we won. So we don't have to limit ourselves to think that if it works here, it will work anywhere else. There's billions of people to service if you ask the position, right. So I think a lot more research needs to go into what am I really building and how can I scale it? The world has become a village. I could have my store servicing an American just like I have Amazon servicing us. I know it's a different scale, but you know, we shouldn't be limited in our thinking about only registering within my village here in Kenya, I should be able to build and go out. I can teach Kiswahili to, you know, 50,000 Chinese people. And if I have something that does that, my thinking will change around how I set that up. And so that's really where it is. I have a friend who's doing a catalog and he built closed user group for just people that love tennis. And what he did, he just went into the research and he's sitting out here in Kenya, but he's got over 15,000 subscribers who pay $9.99 every month for him to just put out amazing tennis content. But he's sitting right here. Nobody knows where he is and it's working out very well. So we can specialize and understand the world is bigger than our country and build that way.
Henry Kaestner: So building off of that, this sense of entitlement, he also picked up something there. I pick something from what you said about teaching Swahili to the Chinese, I get animated by a talk that was given at the Faith Driven Investor conference a few years ago and where one of the speakers had talked about the fact that Christopher Columbus had presumably tried to raise money and capital from the Genovese because he's from Genoa and Italians or maybe the Portuguese. And he struck out with all of them. He end up getting capital from the Spanish, which is why they don't speak Genovese in Buenos Aires or Santiago, they speak Spanish. So the question is, if we know that in Africa and we know in Kenya that there's a dynamic marketplace, incredible opportunity, what language are they going to be speaking in Kenya? In the marketplace, are they're going to be speaking Arabic? Are they going to be speaking Chinese? Are they going to be speaking secular or are they going to be speaking Christian? And so the hope with this movement is that the body of Christ may come to understand that there's an opportunity to steward the capital that God has entrusted them with and to participate in what are thought of as emerging markets like Kenya. And yet the groundswell, the real interest is they come alongside our brothers and sisters of Faith where they're investing with their leadership, because otherwise Westerners are just going to mess it up. They don't understand the culture. They don't know Swahili. Do you see that trend? You see local Christian investors motivated by their faith, placing capital in ways that Westerners might come along under their leadership at they're following along with them. Do you see that or is that just not developed enough yet?
Julian Kyula: Henry. I mean, I'm 46, I think, and for where I'm at and the people that are building behind us, you know, people in their thirties, that's actually the model. The model is I'm not going to ask anyone to put in money where I've not been able to demonstrate through to my friends and and then a very small pool of people that that I can, at the very minimum, give you a minimum viable product that you can see where it's gonna go. So what we are seeing more of is people coming to us or to friends and saying, you know, I need to raise a half a million dollars, but I don't want to go out to find a Henry. I'd prefer to to make sure by the time I speak to Henry that I've got a certain model that's already work and that I can demonstrate skill. That language is becoming more and more apparent. There's a lot of, you know, I-hubs and trade centers now that are starting to help people understand what they can get done with 25 or $100,000, build something. And again, coming back to that entitlement, one of the things I teach is I tell people, don't be entitled to an investment. Nobody owes you anything and number two make sure the language you're speaking is understood by the person that's coming to invest. So, yes, we're seeing more of that alongside compensation. Now, whether it's the language is Christian or not is a very good question because we haven't yet got into the scale where there are many kingdom people that have that capability or have the appetite to keep taking risk in these businesses. So we don't have enough angel investors from the kingdom community. So so from the early stage of companies not being fashioned to necessarily speak that kingdom language but are we seeing more of that angel type thinking where people would then scale before they come to speak to people like you or go out the markets to them scale? Yes, we're seeing a lot of that.
Ndidi Nwuneli: Julian, you know, as you were talking, I was looking at all your photos online, saying this is a pastor, I would like to sit under his ministry. He wears Nigerian fashion. He speaks well. He looks good. He has a great family, great businesses. But clearly it's not all razzmatazz. How do you show that vulnerability through some of the heartache and the pain and how have you navigated that to show that, you know, you're not a superman?
Julian Kyula: So I'm very big on giving back. And giving back sometimes requires vulnerability. So I have something I do. It's on my pages called Business Monday. I have a few thousand people there, few thousand business people in that stream. I have a privately owned telegram where we have a couple of thousand people. I'm extremely open. So first we give back a lot. We give back a lot of information about who are the right kind of lawyers to have in your business, who are the right, you know, here are all these Excel sheets free of charge. Here's how you want your cash management. Here's how you watch your cash burn. Here's how I failed. Here's the mistake I made before that I wouldn't want anybody to make again. So, you know, if you get right on this, this will help you. So we have these Business Monday club forums where we speak very openly about and I bring a lot of friends. We talk about our failures. We talk about where we messed up. We talk about where we should have balanced time more with the family so that people can actually appreciate. They're talking to people that have made mistakes. And it's also incorporated in my teachings on Sundays and other Christian forums where I think people associate more with. Where we have failed and what our weaknesses are and necessarily our strengths. And I've actually discovered it's an amazing ministry tool and breaks a lot of ice not to comment to point of heavy strength, but actually to come from a point of I've been here and this is how God helped me navigate this place. So I've got stuff out there about how I lost $1,000,000 and I was completely scared and this was many years ago, and I had to figure out how to pay people back and how I handled that debt and how God just graciously kept giving me wisdom. So that kind of stuff seems to do more for people than when I come to talk about ten ways to make sure your business doesn't fail, nobody wants to hear that. It's what's your true self and what's that true north you've discovered from following Christ and being able to talk about when we've had very, very conflicting parts of your journey where you're a Christian, but what you're being asked to do is completely unorthodox and out of the way, and it could cost you your entire business. How do you make those decisions and what did you do and how tempted were you?
Henry Kaestner: So that's interesting. Tell us about what one of those felt like. What was a time where you're like, Oh, my goodness, this is a dilemma?
Julian Kyula: Yeah, yeah. I mean, especially when I was dealing with the housing stuff, it was very painful because, you know, you're here trying to really bring out this help, but the industry is trying to get you to bribe your way into certain things. If you sought out these people, they can get you approved for very tall buildings. And, you know, the money makes sense that 25 stories doesn't make sense with ten floors or, you know, if you part with half a million dollars, you're going to get this this group to give you one, two, three. And if you don't, nobody there is ever gonna speak to you again. I'll tell you Henry and Ndidi, it's been very, very rough on those streats. But what I've seen consistently is God just break through for us by saying no to those deals and thinking it's all going to be over to eventually seeing what happened to the group that did that deal. And somehow you find yourself saved from a very big scandal and keeping your true north about why God didn't allow that to happen. I teach a lot about what happened to Joseph between Potiphar's house and the palace, and I say for us entrepreneurs the most painful years of this, two years between Potiphar's House and the palace. Because everything I knew from that Potiphar's house was actually it. You know, you look around and say, this could have been the dream. I think this is what God was showing me. I'm here. I'm in a foreign land. I'm supervising staff. You know, everybody's looking to me for direction. This guy has put me in charge of this house and then I go to jail. And I don't understand that period between, you know, that silence for those two years is very difficult, not knowing what God is up to. So I think teaching perseverance and patience through those experiences has been an amazing journey.
Ndidi Nwuneli: I love that perseverance and patience, Potiphar's house is not the destination. I love it, I love it. So we always like to close out each episode by hearing what God is teaching you right now. What have you found in God's Word that has stuck out to you recently that you can share with us?
Julian Kyula: I've been studying a lot about the words of Jesus and also just looking at Paul Paul's teaching and Peter's teaching. So I've been doing a study on I've spent a lot of time with the kingdom in the marketplace, but I also wanted to spend a lot of time understanding the whole journey of salvation and the whole journey of really what happened in the cross and where are we going in terms of our generation and the next generation's impact in trying to remove that veil from the continent of Africa and even different parts of the world where there's been a lot of. I want to say this carefully, but a lot of glorification of the past to where God wants to do something new. It's been a study of what really was the cross about, what was salvation about. What's this justification walk and how do we how do we walk towards restoration? So first, Peter, chapter two says, moving aside, every deceit, every malice, every hypocrisy, envy, defining these things in my own life and becoming very self-aware about my blindspots and my own misgivings about things to do with my tongue, language, understanding so saying all that to say yes, business success can be a great thing, but it means nothing. If along the way we've lost our clear understanding of that foundation and everything that falls and it's still coming into the words of Jesus, telling us to be wise as serpents and humble as doves, figuring out what is the wisdom of a serpent. Those are things I'm learning right now. I'm reading a few books around that and coming down to Paul to learn about laying things aside, you know, just not traveling too heavy. And I'm also learning about what is God's call to us as kingdom champions at this time? What is Africa's give back to the world and what are we supposed to be doing now? So I'm studying a lot of that, just develop me and to ask myself what I'd like to do in my fifties. If God gives me the time to be there, I'd like to be very, very clear in my time because we have two assets, time and energy. I don't want to waste them on the wrong things in my fifties. I'd really like to make sure I can live but taking time to live today with my kids, my wife, a day at a time. So I'm dealing with 5 to 6 different facets of things, but dealing with Julian as a person and looking through my history and maybe hoping that I have what I call the next half, the next quarter, to just be able to have impact for those in my immediate circle and those on that outer circle.
Ndidi Nwuneli: Awesome. Such an inspiration. Julian, thank you for the great work you do in the marketplace, in the ministry. Thank you for your faith and your work, and thank you for inspiring us today. Keep on going. And God has great things in store for you and we'll be rooting for you 110%.
Henry Kaestner: Indeed. Indeed. Julian, thank you for your time.
Julian Kyula: Thank you, Henry. Thank Ndidi you all. So lovely.
