Is Anything Real?

Here's a myth

Wall Street would love for us to keep swallowing.

Investing is neutral.

Well, that's just plain not true.

Your money is not sitting in some ethical waiting room.

It's actually building something.

It's financing something,

and it's rewarding something.

It's actually voting for yesterday, today, or tomorrow,

whether you intended it or not.

And the spicy part:

a lot of safe investing is not neutral at all.

It's really just beautifully packaged nostalgia

for the economy that got us into this mess.

Welcome back to "Is Anything Real?",

the reality-first leadership show

where we test advice,

publish the receipts,

and ship what actually works under pressure.

I'm Adam W. Barney,

transition leadership coach,

author of Make Your Own Glass Half Full,

and builder of EnergyOS,

where I help leaders rebuild their operating system

when the tools that got them here stop working.

Today's guest is Peter Krull,

longtime sustainable investing advisor

and founder of Earth Equity Advisors.

Peter has spent over 22 years doing what he called,

on our first call,

counterculture Wall Street,

helping people invest not in the economy of yesterday,

but in the cleaner,

more resilient,

more resource-efficient,

and more equitable economy of tomorrow.

And actually, a few years ago,

Earth Equity was acquired

by private Prime Capital Financial,

giving Peter's work a much bigger platform

while also moving him from entrepreneur builder

into specialist inside a larger system,

which I think, as a fellow operator, Peter,

I know it's his own emotional CrossFit there.

Right?

So, Peter, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Adam.

I've been looking forward to this recording.

And, yeah, I think we're both

dealing with a heat wave right now outside.

So it's nice to be in the air conditioning here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is, it is.

But that's something

we should count ourselves lucky for right now, also.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, if you look at places like India

where they don't have the power grid

or they don't have the wealth,

I guess you could say,

to provide the air conditioning,

or Europe as well too, is having problems.

We should, we should really, really feel grateful.

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, I think that gets into the myth that we're going

into a little bit here today that sustainable investing is soft.

Maybe it's niche, maybe it's political or it's just values theater.

But really, every investment strategy has a worldview baked into it.

The question is whether that is honest

about where the economy is actually going.

So what's the myth about sustainable investing

that makes you want to flip a conference room table?

Professionally, of course.

Well, I mean, I could do that literally too.

Either way is fine with me.

There's a lot of myths,

and there's actually a lot of intentional disinformation

that gets put out about our industry.

And, a lot of it comes from the legacy industries,

the industries that haven't evolved and aren't evolving

for what tomorrow's economy is going to look like.

And that's really frustrating because, you know,

if you're one of the oil companies

and you haven't seen the, I mean,

they've all seen the writing on the wall,

they're just continuing to try to do business as usual

for as long as they possibly can

to get every drop of oil and every BTU of gas

out of the ground before suddenly they're like,

okay, well, we can't do this anymore.

I think there's something morally wrong with that,

and that lack of initiative, if you will,

to actually say, you know what,

we are going to make a stand,

and we are going to transition to a cleaner economy.

We are going to transition our business

so that way, 50 years from now,

our particular big fossil fuel company

is not going to be known for being a fossil fuel company.

It is going to be

the clean energy leader of the next generation.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's the part that drives me nuts here, actually.

You know, the traditional finance world

loves to frame sustainable investing, I think,

as the values option,

as if everything else is value-free.

And I think that's nonsense with a nicer tie.

Right.

Every portfolio,

every broad market index expresses a belief.

Right.

The only difference is that traditional finance

often gets to hide the ideology, let's say,

behind the word normal.

Yeah, it does.

And, you know, there's a fear aspect to it.

Right?

Because we don't like change as humans.

We don't like the fact that, oh my gosh,

suddenly I'm not having to go to the gas station anymore.

I have to plug my car into electric.

That's different.

That's something that I haven't,

that my parents didn't teach me.

And that fear of change, I think,

is a little bit about what holds us back.

But change is constant, as we all know.

Being able to take a step back and see,

okay, most people who invest,

invest in indexes,

because it's easier

than trying to pick company A over company B.

But what an index is,

it's a measurement of yesterday's economy.

It is where the economy was,

a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago.

It doesn't necessarily do a really good job

of predicting where the economy is going to be

5, 10, 20, 50 years down the road.

And that's where I think that, you know,

there is such great opportunity,

because when we think about

what is the definition of growth investing,

it's investing where the economy is going.

Right.

And so the economy is not necessarily

going to be a fossil fuel economy

5, 10, 20, 50 years down the road,

where your kids and grandkids

are really going to be a part of the economy.

Sure.

So what is going to be the economy then?

Well, it's like you said in the intro,

it's going to be a cleaner,

more resource-efficient,

more resilient and more equitable economy.

So what are the companies that are leading us into that,

I don't want to say revolution,

but I'm going to say revolution.

So.

Yeah, and it is, and I love that

because it actually works to reframe sustainable investing

away from personal virtue

and towards future readiness.

Right.

It's not just I want to feel good about my money,

it's what economy do I believe is being built

and do my investments or my portfolio reflect that belief?

Because the economy of tomorrow

is not some lavender-scented dream board.

Right.

No, and it's about economics.

So, when we look at the data that's coming out,

for the past two years.

So in '24 and '25,

we've seen about 95% of all new electric generation

in the United States

has either been solar, wind, or batteries.

It hasn't been fossil fuel.

It hasn't been gas.

I mean, that's still there to a much smaller extent,

but it's part of the reason why last month,

in the US,

solar surpassed coal

for the first time ever

as a generator of our electric.

And why is that?

Because of economics, because of scale.

The greater the scale, the better the economics.

And so we've really hit that crossover point

where clean energy is actually

a preferred way to be generating electric,

as opposed to yesterday's economy.

Right, right.

And then I think traditionally

people invest thinking

that the past is safely repeatable,

but that's actually the riskiest thing in the world.

Right.

Sometimes the riskiest move is, though,

not just changing.

It's pretending the old world

still has a 30, 40, 50-year lease on it.

Right, right, absolutely.

I mean, think about the perfect example,

of course, is buggy whips, right?

The people who were investing in horse and buggy,

suddenly you got the horseless carriage

and now, how many years on we are from that?

But it's interesting.

You know, I've been in this business for,

like you said, 22 years.

I've been in the investment business for 28 years

and, everything is always changing,

everything is always evolving.

When I started,

we didn't have all this fast access to data

like we have right now.

And that's both a good and a bad thing.

It's a good thing in that

I can get on Morningstar Direct,

or I can get with Claude right here

and get as much information

or put reports together,

so much faster than I ever have.

But the negative side of it

is that it made our thinking

so much more short-term.

And so when we're watching CNBC,

when we're checking out

what is our daily value for our investment portfolio?

That's not what investing is.

Investing is buying a company you believe in

and holding it

because you know that over the long term

it is going to be the company

that really changes the paradigm,

that shifts things.

But we've really developed a short-term mindset.

What are quarterly earnings?

I mean, a lot of retailers are providing, like,

weekly sales figures.

In the big scheme of things,

none of that really matters.

What are you developing,

and how are you creating your,

how are yoy making your company

or crafting your company,

that's a better word,

to be a long-term market leader.

Right, right.

Well, and also I want to kind of talk a little bit

about the personal inheritance problem.

Right.

You know, taking this down

from the market level to the personal level,

because I think it's actually where it gets even stickier.

Yeah.

You know, I had mentioned to you

that my father worked in wealth management

for more than 20 years.

And growing up,

one of the gifts he gave my sister and I,

was ExxonMobil stock.

And that brings up a strange kind

of what I would call inherited tension.

Right.

I didn't choose that as a child.

I did not understand the climate implications.

We don't need to talk about the politics side of that.

But I didn't know what it meant

for money to be invested

in one future instead of another.

But later in life, you begin to ask,

what did I inherit financially,

culturally, politically, spiritually, professionally?

And what am I still carrying?

Because it arrived before I had the choice.

And I know you also talked about growing up

in a conservative Lutheran school environment

and swinging far in the other direction over time.

You know,

how did your own background

shape the work you do now?

So, we had a, we call it a cabin,

but basically it was a trailer out in the woods,

south of Buffalo.

I grew up in Buffalo, and, you know,

my brother was a big influence on me.

We were out hiking, we were out,

you know, learning.

You know, back at the time we were hunting

and just doing all the things

that come with being in that setting.

And I really gained an appreciation for the outdoors.

And, from that, I think I had a good

basis of environmentalism,

for lack of a better word,

right from the start.

My wife, who I met, gosh, 23 years ago,

she's a lot smarter than me.

She's a dual PhD microbiologist and molecular geneticist.

Oh, yeah, I married up;

there's no doubt about it.

But she's had a tremendous influence on me.

I was in traditional investing when I met her,

and we were having conversations about climate,

and sustainability,

and all these things.

I had a conversation with a guy named Bill McDonough,

who, at the the time, was considered

one of the preeminent green architects in the world.

He wrote the book "Cradle to Cradle" about circular economies.

And so those are probably the three biggest influences

on why I'm sitting where I'm sitting today.

Because the appreciation for the outdoors,

the appreciation for nature,

the understanding of science,

and appreciation for science,

which we are completely losing right now.

But we won't get into that.

That is a tangent we could probably spend the next hour on.

One of the cool things that I learned from Bill McDonough

is this idea of circular economies,

is that if you are creating a product

that is meant to end up in a landfill,

that's a design problem.

The idea of a circular economy is

you create a product that has both a beginning,

a middle.

Not both.

It has a beginning, a middle, and an end cycle.

And all of those parts of that iPhone, or whatever it is,

don't end up in a landfill.

They get reused,

not necessarily recycled,

but maybe even upcycled.

And so, it's all about design.

How do we design products,

and how do we design a way,

so that way,

instead of being this throwaway culture that we have,

it's more of a, how can we be.

We talked about resource efficiency earlier.

That is pure resource efficiency right there.

Right, right, right.

Well, and I think a lot of people

in the personal journey,

might deal with feelings of guilt,

grief, anger,

or realizing that they actually benefited

from systems they want to change now.

But guilt alone is not the strategy there.

And I can see how you did that.

Right.

The move is:

what can I do now that I can see more clearly?

And I see how that impacted how you inherited,

how you took, rather, an inherited worldview,

to a chosen worldview.

And that's the personal version of sustainable investing.

Right.

Stop letting yesterday

make all of the decisions

just because it got there first.

My wife and I literally were having this discussion yesterday

about not necessarily demonizing the fossil fuels

that got us here.

I mean, at the end of the day,

fossil fuels raise the standard of living

around the world tremendously,

but it doesn't mean that you necessarily

have to continue doing it.

Once you hit that point of realization that,

oh, this thing that got us here

is actually hurting us too.

And, oh, do we actually have

options that aren't less impactful,

negatively impactful?

Yes, we do.

Okay.

But we need to make that transition.

And, it's again, like I said earlier,

it's those legacy industries

that are just holding on as tightly as they can

to their revenue streams

and to those assets that they've got

that are buried under the ground,

that they haven't dug up,

or haven't pumped out yet.

But, no, I think you're 100% right.

It's really important to be able to

just take a step back and say,

you know what,

I'm grateful for what got us here,

but it's not what's going to get us there.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

It also doesn't tie to,

saying that there aren't bad actors out there.

Right.

It just means we need better standards,

sharper questions,

and fewer moral bumper stickers, let's say,

pretending to be due diligence.

Right.

And the answer to greenwashing,

it's not cynicism,

it's actually asking for better receipts.

Absolutely it is.

And you brought up something earlier

about the generation aspect of this,

and Morgan Stanley does great research on this,

and the latest numbers that came out

are showing that both Gen Z and Millennials,

both are somewhere around 97, 98%,

are either somewhat or very interested

in sustainable investing.

That is a massive departure from, say,

boomers and older generations

that don't really care about it.

Us Gen Xers are somewhere in the middle.

We're in the 80s.

But, that says something because

with your story about ExxonMobil,

there are a lot of younger people, again,

starting basically with Gen X and on down,

that are going to be inheriting trillions of dollars

over the next couple decades.

Their life philosophy,

their value sets,

and value systems

are different than those previous generations.

And, I think what we're going to see

is we're going to see sustainable investing

or values-based investing,

or however you want to phrase it,

is going to become a bigger and bigger and bigger

slice of the overall investing pie

because they look at things so differently

than their previous generations.

Right, right.

And, you know,

that actually gets into the equity thread, right?

Investing as an industry,

we talked about this a little bit before,

still has a representation problem.

And I think any field,

when it's dominated by people

who sound like us,

who look like us,

and inherited some level of credibility default,

it shapes who gets trusted,

who gets hired,

who gets capital,

who gets mentored,

and whose definition of risk is treated as rational.

And you said you've been trying to hire

even more diverse advisors

and the candidates that keep surfacing

still tend to look like you.

What does the sustainable investing world, on that end,

need to confront about representation?

I just think we need to be more intentional.

That's the bottom line,

is we need to be more intentional about education.

We need to be more intentional about outreach.

We need to be more intentional about

overcoming the disinformation that's out there.

That's a big part of my role within the overall industry,

not just at Earth Equity,

but within the industry,

from writing my book, "The Sustainable Investor",

which really overcomes

a lot of the disinformation that's out there.

My podcast,

"Dollars and Change",

which tries to do the same thing.

And when it comes to more diversity in our industry,

it's not just sustainable investing.

I mean, it is investing in general.

And again, it has to be intentional.

We cannot just simply assume

that things are going to change,

or hope things are going to change.

Everybody says hope isn't a strategy, right?

Well, it actually really is true.

Yeah.

I mean, wishing does not, let's say,

redistribute opportunity.

Right.

Behavior, hiring, mentorship, sponsorship,

and changing who gets trusted with money does.

I am so aligned here, that a future economy

that is cleaner but not more equitable

is not a future economy.

It's just yesterday with solar panels plastered on top.

Right?

Spot on.

I mean, that's exactly right.

And I mean, we've taken some steps back in this,

but it probably will give us an opportunity

to really take a look and see,

okay, did we do it right,

or what was wrong that actually maybe

led us to this point where we had to pull back

and so how can we move forward

knowing what we know now?

Right, right, right.

Well, I'm going to take this maybe into

one move that our listeners could run this week,

and I'm going to call it, let's say,

The Money is Building Something audit.

Right.

Yeah.

Maybe it's just open one account,

not your entire financial life.

Don't create a spreadsheet so intense it ruins the weekend.

It makes your dogs avoid eye contact.

But just pick one account:

a 401k, an IRA, a brokerage account,

maybe a donor-advised fund,

foundation allocation,

whatever is most relevant to start with.

And then just ask four questions.

What is this money currently building?

Not what it's called,

not what the historical return is,

but what companies, sectors, behaviors, and assumptions

does it actually pay towards?

Ask then,

is the portfolio pointed at yesterday or tomorrow?

Then I would get into

where am I hiding behind default, right?

Did I choose this?

Did I inherit it?

Did I ignore it?

Or let a provider choose it

because asking questions

just felt tough or inconvenient?

And then finally,

what's one question I need to ask

a financial professional

before I pretend I'm done?

And that's not about shame,

that's actually about agency.

But what would you, Peter,

add or change in that audit?

So, 401ks are probably the hardest one to do

because you're limited by what the employer chooses

that you can invest in that 401k.

So one of the things you can do

is make sure you go to your employer and say,

I'd like a sustainable investing option in our 401k.

That's one thing you can do.

When it comes to your other accounts,

don't judge a book by its cover.

So in other words,

if you've got the XYZ ESG fund

or the ABC Sustainable Fund.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the underlying holdings

are going to be sustainable.

And so there's a little bit of work and due diligence

that goes into that,

but it's actually relatively easy to get online

and find out what the actual underlying holdings are.

That's one of the fun things about my job, is

I get to know all of these different

mutual funds, ETFs.

I also run an individual stock portfolio for our clients.

So I get to really, sort of, dig into

who's actually providing solutions to our greatest challenges

and how do we create portfolios that actually,

can manifest that for clients.

That's actually really, as you can tell, I got excited here.

That really excites me.

And when you talk to a financial advisor,

ask a financial advisor,

you know, don't just ask them the surface questions.

Ask them the harder questions.

Ask them, is there fossil fuels in my portfolio?

And if there is, why?

Because the way we look at it is

if you're owning fossil fuels and sustainable investments,

you're owning both the problem and the solution.

Let's try to get rid of the problem.

And so, you know, ask good questions.

If you do want to do sustainable investing,

there are a lot of people who will say,

yeah, I do that.

But they may not be a specialist

or they may not know the background on it.

So make sure that you find somebody

who actually has spent some time doing it

and who understands the ins and outs,

and maybe somebody who's read my book,

because then they'll really know everything.

Well, it really gets down to

your money that you've invested

is already making a statement.

It's not just the statement

that you get at the end of the quarter,

or the end of every month.

The only question is really knowing about,

is whether you know about what it's saying.

So.

Yeah.

What does it say about you?

At the end of the day.

One of the cool things is

one of my clients came up to me one time and said,

that owned our individual stock portfolio.

And is like,

it is so cool getting my statement

because I can look through all these

individual companies that I own,

and then when I'm at a dinner party,

or I'm at a party,

I can actually brag on what I own in my portfolio

that's actually doing good in the world.

That felt great.

That's fantastic.

All right, Peter,

you know how we end here after all of this,

whether it's sustainable investing,

counterculture, Wall Street,

inherited defaults, equity, scale,

and the question of what our money is actually building.

Is anything real?

Is anything real?

Yeah, absolutely, it's real.

There are companies that actually are founded

on the basis of making the world a better place.

And it takes time to find them.

It takes time to determine

that they're the real deal,

but they're out there.

And, you know, that's pretty much

what I've dedicated the last 22 years of my life to

is helping people who truly want to make a difference

and using a part of their of their assets

that they don't normally think about

as a way that they can make a difference.

Right, right, right.

And I think that's really,

what's real is that money moves.

It moves toward something.

It moves away from something.

And pretending not to choose is often really

just choosing the old world by default.

That's exactly right.

That is exactly right.

Peter, where can folks find you

and learn more about Earth Equity Advisors?

Sure.

Really simple.

Earthequity.com

will take you to our main website.

The book is at

sustainableInvestorbook.com.

Sorry.

And please feel free to reach out.

We love working with folks.

We are continuing to, I think,

improve how we do things here, like,

which is what we always want to be doing.

Right.

And I'm grateful for the few minutes

that we've got to spend here today, Adam.

Yeah, yeah, likewise.

And I would challenge the leader,

founder, or investor who's listening today,

don't let default make your value-based decisions for you.

You know, look at what your money is building,

look at what your leadership is rewarding,

and look at what future your systems

are quietly financing.

And if the conversation hit,

I would also challenge you to send it to someone

who still thinks sustainable investing

is just a side salad for people

who own too much linen.

Right.

And if you're navigating a leadership transition,

whether it's promotion, burnout, reinvention, scale,

or the moment where those old tools stop working,

there's also a 20-minute foundational call

linked in the show notes below

along with everything that Peter mentioned here today.

But Peter, thank you for being here.

This was an absolute power one.

And until next time, for our listeners,

stay grounded,

stay human,

and keep questioning the noise.

But thank you, Peter.

Thank you Adam.