Clark Varin is the founder of Teach A Man To Fish, a global non-profit microfinance investment fund that is dedicated to helping the world's poorest people escape poverty via microloans. He is also the author of Teach A Man To Fish: Good News For The World's Poorest. Since 2018, Clark and his team have invested millions of dollars in the world's poorest communities to help them start businesses that transform their lives, allowing them to feed their families, put their kids in school, and improve their homes.

His top initiatives with TAM2F include building a microloan endowment, to help ministries turn their capital into a source of passive income that can fulfill their mission without depleting their funds and a blockchain based portfolio management software purposed to make global finance more fair and equitable for the world's poorest communities.

Website: www.TAM2F.org

Book: https://a.co/d/0b8L8hTR

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clarkvarin

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@tam2f

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cvarin3

Clark's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clarkvarin

TAM2F Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tam2f

Welcome to 12 Minute Converse with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, His creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, Clark.

What part of the world are you in today?

I'm in Colorado.

It's a great pleasure to connect with you.

My first question, what were you even doing in Uganda?

I actually was there considering partnering with a guy who I had met in the travel industry.

I started a travel agency when I was in college, and he was a tour operator.

And the very last day of the trip, I asked Moses, the guy who was showing me around, I was like, hey, do you know anything about the microfinance industry?

Because it was something I was really interested in, and Uganda happens to be one of the best microfinance markets in the world.

There's two things that strike me.

You're someone that has tremendous joy, right?

Because you're laughing and smiling and nonstop, there's tremendous joy.

But then it feels as though you fit in very easily.

If that is accurate, where did that come from?

Yeah, I definitely have just the gift of joy over my life.

I mean, I've had a lot of like really intense hardships, some things that have been very difficult even for people to relate to.

But at the end of the day, I can just see how blessed my life has been, how God has pulled me out of some of the toughest situations.

And so why not live in states of joy?

And that's something that has to be intentionally cultivated.

So I've had a lot of great coaches that have helped me intentionally cultivate the joy.

When I go to a developing nation, it's not anything that's like super out of the ordinary for me.

But what has been out of the ordinary is being able to go there and like bless these communities with the microloans that we're giving them.

Like seeing how their lives are transforming with just a very little bit of resources.

That's truly what brings me like the most joy in my life right now.

Tell me more about that.

What does that mean for the person that's listening, giving microloans?

Yeah, so microloans are how you basically teach people in extreme poverty how to fish instead of giving them the fish.

And so I run a microfinance investment fund called Teach a Man to Fish.

And I also wrote a book on microfinance, also called Teach a Man to Fish.

And basically the solution to helping the world's poorest people escape poverty is to give them the opportunity in order to build a business.

We've tried helping people in poverty in the past by giving them free food, free clothes, whatever it is, but throughout history backfired and has oftentimes worsened the economy and worse than people's conditions on the ground.

Because they become dependent and they've stopped working as hard, they become more poor.

What microloans do instead is we go to poor countries and we find people who are entrepreneurial and we ask them, what would you do if you had the resources?

What's your dream?

How do you want to be able to survive and grow and feed your family and all that stuff?

And pretty much everyone has an answer of how they want to be able to take care of their families.

And so we just give them the resources in order to do that thing.

And by doing that, we're able to find people who have hidden skills and talents or hidden resources or connections that allow them to be able to make the most of their situation.

Stuff that we would never be able to figure out.

The first microloan that I ever gave was to a guy named John in Haiti.

And I had spent a week in Haiti trying to find ways to be able to give back or whatever.

And then eventually I asked John, what would you do if I gave you a microloan?

And although I could not find out a good solution to be able to help these people on my own, John immediately knew.

He's like, I would want to buy a fishing net.

And I would do that because my brother owns the boat and my customers like crab and lobster.

And I would catch crab and lobster.

I'd be able to start making $20 a day.

So his income went from $3 a day to $20 a day.

And he knew what he wanted because he knew his brother owned a boat and he knew what his customers wanted.

So he knew the market.

It's little things like that, that as a foreigner, we're not able to see the little opportunities, but the people who live there on the ground, if you ask them and then you support them in their own endeavors, they take ownership over the business that they start.

And through that, in Uganda, we're able to help people 5X their income within 18 months from $3 a day to $15 a day in a year and a half.

Tell me the difference between you being there and thinking entrepreneurially versus the Holy Spirit moving your thoughts.

We're a super Holy Spirit guided community.

At the fund level, at the teacher and official level, Holy Spirit tells us how to reach out to investors and donors and how much to ask them and whatnot.

But when we're on the ground, it's our partners who have to be Holy Spirit led.

And so we have to find partners, CEOs essentially, that are building up this organization guided by the Holy Ghost.

And we have our credit officers, every single week, all of our credit officers get together to pray, to read scripture, to basically set the tone for the week.

And then after setting the tone for the week with them, they get sent out into the communities and they're always praying on who exactly they should be asking.

So I myself am not someone who's on the ground giving out the loans, but I have to find people who work on my team at the fund level and the people who work at the institution level, who are God driven.

I have to make sure that our culture of like being Holy Spirit led is imbued into all the aspects of our organization.

How did you meet Jesus?

So I had a pretty wild story.

When I was actually in Haiti the day after I gave out my cologne to John, the guy who bought the fishing net, I got super sick and it came out of nowhere.

And I found out about five years later that it was witchcraft.

It was Haitian witchcraft.

It was through that illness where doctors could not figure out what was wrong with me that I eventually resorted to God.

Like I had to start seeking out God.

And through that journey of seeking out God, I explored many religions.

And when I finally came across the Bible and started believing in Jesus, I started to be healed and healed and healed and healed until eventually I gave my entire life to the Lord.

I was like, Jesus, you can do whatever you want with my life.

And then that day I received the Holy Ghost.

It was like a rushing wind came inside of me.

And then the curse like broke off of me.

And from that day on, I've been set free.

So yeah, the Lord literally saved me out of a deadly disease.

And the only solution was Jesus.

And you're in Bible school right now at the time of this recording.

So I am actually done with Bible college, but I'm working here for the next couple of weeks.

And then I am thinking about moving in a couple months actually to a new town.

I'll be pursuing a couple of degrees.

One of them is going to be a finance degree at Dartmouth.

And that's obviously for fund management, for teacher management affairs.

I'll be pursuing a politics like legislative process certificate at Georgetown.

And that's going to be like a political degree because I'm really feeling called to the United Nations.

I'll be doing a leadership program at Harvard and then a green chemistry, like a climate technology program at Yale.

All of those are one year certificates.

So I'll be doing all of those at once while running my fund.

And it's going to be a big year of education.

Probably my last year of really intense formal education.

You seem excited about it.

I'm very excited.

I mean, I like everything I'm going to be studying.

I'm really excited to learn more about finance.

Like I wish I had more of a finance background from my undergrad.

And then I'm really excited to go to Washington, DC and start to influence politics.

We need more people who are like following the Lord in Washington, DC.

Then if God brings me up to the United Nations and my climate technology and stuff comes into play as well, I've got some ideas that will dramatically help the environment as well.

And so I'm not just like a one trick pony.

I've got quite a few things that I want to do in this life.

Five years from today, you're listening to this conversation.

As a memory, what's a message you'd leave for future you?

A message I'd leave to future you is remember who got you where you are.

Here you are.

You're walking the straight and narrow.

Do you have any fears?

You know, little fears do pop up every once in a while, but I feel like that's just because I am truly walking by faith.

You know, like my goals are big enough that when I'm hearing from the Lord and he's telling me this is the game plan, I'm like, oh my gosh, that sounds intense, dude.

And so it's like the Lord told me when I was writing my book, Teach a Man to Fish, he's like, I want you to build a $10 billion fund.

I'm like billion with a B billion.

And I'm like, okay, well, I don't know how that's going to happen, but I'm going to trust that you're going to be able to figure this out for us.

So yeah, fears do pop up, but you know, they don't shake me.

And I feel like that's what true faith is.

It's like continuing to walk the path in faith, despite the challenges that come your way.

I'm excited for you.

This has been a great pleasure.

I'm excited to see where this goes in the next five years, Clark.

In closing, is there anything else you'd like to share?

I think that we covered the majority of it.

I mean, at the end of the day, the big thing that ultimately changed my life was choosing to walk by faith, not through the flesh.

Learning how to both hear and then follow God is like the biggest skill that you can develop in your life.

Practice has been a pleasure, a treasure.

Thank you for being what is inspired by 12 and the Converse.