Marks on the Market: The Work Beneath the Boom

Host Richard Cunningham and Luke Roush of Sovereign’s Capital sit down with Kyle Pieratt, President and CEO of Vermeer Mountain West, for a ground-level look at the infrastructure cycle reshaping American markets.

Before a data center goes up, someone has to bring in the water, the power, and the fiber. Kyle’s team sells the equipment that puts those lines in the ground. Right now, they can’t get enough of it.

Kyle leads Vermeer Mountain West, an independent Vermeer dealer serving infrastructure contractors across a territory that reaches from Salt Lake and Boise to Montana, Wyoming, and Eastern Washington. Vermeer is manufactured in Pella, Iowa, and best known for its farm equipment. Today, more than 65% of its business supports infrastructure. Kyle’s team just closed a record fourth quarter, and he leads a culture built on humility, grace, and compassion for roughly 1,000 team members and their families.

Key Topics:

• Why today’s infrastructure cycle is more diversified than the Level 3 and dot-com fiber bubble
• Following the money: private hyperscale work versus government-funded BEAD broadband projects
• How bureaucracy, inflation, and outdated contract pricing are slowing public projects
• Why data centers depend on water and power, and why power may have the longer runway
• Managing a boom with two- to three-year planning windows and variable costs
• Prayer requests, the family table, and leading 1,000 team members with compassion
• What God is teaching Kyle about being more inquisitive and less judgmental

For faith-driven investors, this episode shows the AI and infrastructure boom from the people laying the lines. Wise capital asks where demand really comes from, plans for the turn, and cares for the families behind the work.

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Host John Coleman sits down with Brent Beshore, founder of Permanent Equity, for a conversation about what changes when an investor stops carrying weight that was never theirs to carry.

Brent Beshore did his first private equity deal before he knew what private equity was. Today he runs a firm that buys companies with no intention of selling, and he is convinced the opposite of faith is self-reliance. Recorded live at the final Main Street Summit in Columbia, Missouri, this conversation moves from the boardroom to Ecclesiastes and back again.

Brent Beshore is the founder of Permanent Equity, a Columbia, Missouri firm that buys private companies to hold for the long term, typically without debt. He is the author of The Messy Marketplace: Selling Your Business in a World of Imperfect Buyers and the founder of Capital Camp and Main Street Summit, gatherings designed to turn investors and operators into friends. An atheist through his twenties, Brent came to faith 12 years ago, and that journey now shapes how he thinks about ownership, stewardship, and hospitality.

Key Topics:

- The difference between networking and friendship, and why transaction-first relationships rarely become anything more

- Why play is an underrated part of the Christian journey, and what Ecclesiastes teaches about feeling indispensable

- Why Brent is bringing Main Street Summit to a close, and the discipline of putting good things to bed

- How Permanent Equity differs from the “buy, leverage, strip and flip” model of traditional private equity

- Good and bad reasons to sell a business, and the humility of recognizing a better owner

- Rereading the parable of the talents, and why money is the representation of self-reliance

- AI, wisdom, and the danger of outsourcing our thinking

For investors entrusted with other people’s capital, this episode offers a rare reframe. Brent makes the case that freedom from the pressure to control outcomes produces better decisions, and that every steward ultimately plays for an audience of one.

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The Crash Everyone Is Waiting For

Host Richard Cunningham and co-host Luke Roush sit down with Hank Bowen, who helps lead investor relations and capital formation at Sovereign's Capital, for a conversation that reads the market from the allocator's chair and grounds it in Scripture.

Investors have been saying "this can't go higher" for years, and markets keep proving them wrong. Hank's explanation is simple: it's hard to get a dramatic repricing when everyone is waiting for one. Meanwhile, private market distributions are flowing again for the first time in years, yields sit at multi-year highs, and AI is reshaping productivity faster than anyone can price it.

Hank spends his days with pensions, foundations, endowments, family offices, and investment consultants, the deep pools of capital making decisions over decades. On this October edition of Marks on the Market, he shares what those allocators are watching. Luke brings a sobering look at the federal deficit and the future of Christian higher education. The episode opens with a tribute to Ryan Asonto, a champion of the faith driven movement in Austin.

Key Topics:

- Why institutional allocators are seeing cash-flow positive distributions for the first time in five years

- The "tale of two cities" between institutions finding steady footing and those building cash reserves

- Why private equity hold periods are stretching from four or five years to six or seven

- The AI productivity boom and what it could mean for the S&P 493

- A $2 trillion structural deficit, weaker Treasury auctions, and the case for fiscal discipline

- Why as many as half of small Christian colleges may not survive the next decade

- Psalm 44, Proverbs 7, and where our success actually comes from

For faith driven investors, this conversation offers a clear-eyed read on liquidity, rates, and AI, without losing sight of the One who holds every market. Listeners will walk away with sharper questions about their own allocations and a steadier posture for an uncertain season.

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Discipleship of the Balance Sheet

Host Justin Forman sits down with Aimee Minnich, Co-Founder of Impact Foundation, for a conversation that traces the shift from writing checks to deploying capital as an act of discipleship.

Aimee Minnich says the donor-advised fund era taught a generation of Christians how to give money away. It didn't teach them how to invest it. Nearly two decades into building one of the fastest-growing platforms for faith-driven capital, she's convinced the next chapter of generosity isn't about writing bigger checks — it's about learning a whole new language.

Aimee co-founded Impact Foundation with her husband Jeff, a platform that lets donor-advised fund holders move beyond grants and deploy capital into impact investments — from foster care housing initiatives to entrepreneurs across the developing world. Trained as a lawyer with a philosophy degree, she has spent nearly two decades at the intersection of faith, generosity, and capital markets, helping shape the modern infrastructure of Christian giving.

Key Topics:

• The founding story of Impact Foundation and the "three customers" test that shaped it
  
  
• Why $1.4 trillion sitting in donor-advised funds and private foundations represents an untapped opportunity
  
  
• The "ring around the neck" — why deployed-but-undeployed capital creates spiritual tension
  
  
• Cross-cultural investing and why proximity changes how we steward capital
  
  
• A foster care housing initiative blending public, private, and nonprofit capital
  
  
• Why institutional-scale capital, not just individual deals, is the next frontier
  
  
• The call for a modern "discipleship of the balance sheet"
  
  
  

For investors who've mastered the discipline of giving but feel stuck when it comes to deploying capital with purpose, this conversation offers both a framework and an invitation to think differently about the whole balance sheet, not just the checkbook.

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What Comes After You Win

Scott Highmark has spent two decades watching high achievers reach the very top of their field — competitively great, by any definition — and arrive there lonely. That question sits underneath this month's Marks on the Market, too: what does a market pricing in near-5% rates, a resilient jobs report, and an AI-fueled earnings boom actually ask of the people stewarding capital through it?

Hosts Richard Cunningham and Luke Roush sit down with Scott Highmark, Co-Founder, President & Principal of Mosaic Family Wealth in St. Louis, for a conversation that moves from Fed policy and AI valuations to the framework behind his new book, The Significance Pyramid — out September 16th.

Key Topics:

• Whether "higher for longer" rates are a new normal or just a return to historical normal
• Reading the August jobs report and earnings data for signs of real economic resilience
• The AI investment cycle — "pricing in magic," and whether we're in the third inning or the seventh
• Overlooked risks behind the AI boom: grid capacity, commodity shocks, and geopolitical black swans
• Why the financial advisor's role is shifting from information access to emotional and spiritual guidance
• Scott Highmark's new book, The Significance Pyramid, and the four dimensions of true wealth
• Ephesians 2:10 and what it means to align time, talent, and treasure with a meaningful pursuit

For investors trying to make sense of a market that feels both historically normal and unusually uncertain, this conversation offers something rarer than a hot take — a way to hold market discipline and soul-level purpose in the same hand.

When Dr. Ola Brown's 12-year-old sister needed emergency care in Nigeria, the nearest air ambulance was seven hours away, in South Africa. The family lost her. Dr. Brown made a promise to God that day — and kept it, building an air ambulance service that would go on to serve over 40 African countries and fly more than 5,000 emergency requests a year.

Dr. Ola Brown is a British-Nigerian medical doctor turned investor, and the Founder of HealthCap Africa, a venture capital and infrastructure fund investing in healthtech and fintech across the continent. After founding and scaling Flying Doctors Nigeria, she moved into investing — raising her first fund from 12 Nigerian families before launching HealthCap in 2020, with MasterCard anchoring the fund's first close. She now sits at the intersection of medicine, finance, and faith, building a thesis around two sectors she believes are central to Africa's future: healthcare and financial services.

Key Topics:

• The origin story behind Flying Doctors Nigeria — and the personal loss that started it
• Why healthcare is one of the most inflation-resistant, counter-cyclical sectors to invest in
• Nigeria's population trajectory and what it means for global investors
• Portfolio spotlights: MDaaS Diagnostics and InstantRad's AI-powered radiology
• Reframing "health and wealth" away from prosperity-gospel connotations
• What Jesus's healing ministry teaches about business as a tool for the gospel
• Why West African entrepreneurial culture may be closer to America's than Europe's

For investors weighing whether God might be calling them into African markets, this conversation offers something rare: a data-backed macro case paired with a deeply personal, faith-rooted why. Dr. Brown makes the case that comparative advantage, population growth, and Kingdom impact aren't competing priorities — they're the same opportunity.

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Host Henry Kaestner sits down with Matthew Rohrs, leader of Synapis, to explore one of the most overlooked opportunities in frontier-market investing: the "missing middle" — businesses too large for microfinance but too small (or too early) to attract private equity and venture capital. Matthew shares how Synapis has spent over a decade training and accelerating entrepreneurs across Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, and why this segment drives up to 70% of job creation in emerging economies.

This episode digs into Synapis's Kingdom Business Framework — a three-part model built around relationship with God, stewardship, and impact — and unpacks why African entrepreneurs are often more naturally integrated in their faith and business than their Western counterparts. Matthew and Henry also discuss the concept of "evangelical Gnosticism," the sacred-secular divide that shapes how Christians in the West think about work versus how it's lived out in markets like Kenya, where 72% of Synapis alumni report at least one employee coming to faith through their company.

Listeners will hear real stories of scale and impact, including Kickwetu Flowers — a 30-acre flower export business near Mount Kenya that has funded clean water boreholes, a soccer program for at-risk youth, and a weekly kitchen feeding 300 people — all funded from business profits, not donations.

Key Topics:

• Defining the "missing middle": the investment gap between microfinance and institutional capital
• Synapis's Kingdom Business Framework: relationship, stewardship, and impact
• Why 72% of Synapis alumni have seen an employee come to faith through their business
• "Evangelical Gnosticism" and the sacred-secular divide in Western business thinking
• Case study: Kickwetu Flowers and community-funded clean water, youth programs, and feeding initiatives
• The Forge Network: a global collaborative of entrepreneurs, accelerators, and investors

Notable Quotes:

"We serve gazelles more commonly than seeking unicorns." - Matthew Rohrs

"72% of our alumni report that at least one person's come to faith in Christ through their company." - Matthew Rohrs

"Business is part of the kingdom of God. It's the most scalable way to solve these problems." - Matthew Rohrs

Record Highs, Negative Gas Prices, and the Discipline Dividend

Host Richard Cunningham sits down with co-host Luke Roush and returning guest Jordan Strebeck of Fortress Energy Partners for a conversation that starts at the S&P 500's all-time high and ends at a Permian Basin wellhead where operators are paying to get rid of their own natural gas.

The numbers alone are worth the listen: four hyperscalers on pace for more than $700 billion in AI infrastructure spending this year, an IPO market that just absorbed the world's largest offering, and a global oil supply chain that's quietly burned through 400 million barrels of inventory since February. Jordan brings the view from the ground in Midland, Texas — where the domestic shale industry is showing more capital discipline than anyone expected, even as Middle East conflict keeps rewriting the energy math in real time.

Key Topics:

• Markets hitting record highs despite tariffs, an unresolved Middle East conflict, and zero rate cuts in 2026
• The AI CapEx arms race: how Wall Street is starting to separate real cash-flow return from spend for spend's sake
• What SpaceX's blockbuster IPO signals for Anthropic and the rest of the 2026 IPO pipeline
• 1,500 unicorns and counting — why so many private companies are stuck waiting to go public
• Inside the Permian Basin: negative natural gas prices, the AI power crunch, and why the U.S. needs more of everything — nuclear, gas, solar, and wind
• What 400 million barrels of drawn-down global oil inventory means for prices over the next five years
• A closing word on presence, parenting, and what it means to steward the time we're given

This episode is a masterclass in reading past the headline number — whether that's an index level, an IPO valuation, or a barrel price — to the stewardship question underneath it. For faith-driven investors trying to separate signal from noise in a genuinely strange market, this is a conversation worth sitting with.

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