Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the R.G. W. Dunham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. I'm your host, Darren Shear, and this is the show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. On this episode, we're joined by Eric Donovan. Eric is the founder and CEO of Paradiem. He's the author of the book What If We've Been Doing It All Wrong, which focuses on how our worldview often interrupts all of our financial thinking and behavior. And this is this is some of the stuff that he's working with businesses and families on through his organization, uh Paradiem. In addition to his writing accolades, Eric has been featured in several national publications and media outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Daily Finance, and the Street and Family Wealth Report. Eric is a proud graduate of Texas AM University, as he should be, where he graduated with a degree in business. And you can learn more at paradiem.org. I'll mention this in the show notes as well, where you can get access to more of what uh Eric has has been teaching and what he's doing for his clients, P-A-R-A-D-I-E-M.org. Eric, welcome to the show. Aaron, it's so good to be with you.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02Eric, what was the life experience you went through that helps to inspire the work you do in wealth management?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I was raised in a small town in West Texas, just outside of Lubbock. And my dad was a veterinarian. I had an idyllic life kind of growing up. I walked to elementary school. I graduated from the same high school that I started in. I mean, it was this small town kind of dream. And about my seventh grade year, my dad, as a business owner and a veterinarian, had this just vision that he was going to expand his visit veterinary practice. Things were going to go, you know, like all business owners and a lot of visionaries, he had all these grand ideas on things that were going to happen. And so he went and bought out another veterinary practice and started expanding so he could do more large animal and small animal. And in the middle of my eighth grade year, my mom falls and breaks her arm. And you're like, okay, so no big deal. But my mom couldn't heal from that. She had several surgeries and ends up passing away in the summer after my eighth grade year. So I buried my mom the day before I started my freshman year of high school. That's the memory that sticks with me. Um and that starts a cycle of events where my dad did little, just like most business owners, I mean, 75% of business owners don't have any kind of exit plan at all. My dad didn't have any plan at all. So he wakes up every morning deciding, am I going to be Mary Poppins and take care of my kids, or am I going to go to the office and take care of my business? I mean, he's a sole practitioner veterinarian, and my mom's medical bills start piling up, life starts happening, everything's going on. My dad's working lots of hours. My dad filed bankruptcy my senior year of high school. Two months before I graduated high school, we lost everything. We lost the house we were living in and everything. And so it started this lifelong pursuit, you know, to kind of where God has brought me to today, to just kind of go, okay, so what happened? What where did things get off? What could have been done differently? You know, one of the things I like to talk about with business owners is, you know, every single business owner will have an exit at some point. So if you think of business kind of like this roller coaster, because it is, you know, if you own a business, there are highs and you're up, and they're, you know, sometimes you got deep drops. And what you want to do is how do you get off that ride safely? And what I like to say is my dad got thrown off the roller coaster. And so many business owners, unfortunately, I think the other statistics I've seen is 50% of business own business exits are not voluntary. It was my dad, you know, and so it was this lifelong pursuit of what could we, you know, what have we done? What are we doing wrong? Kind of this question to come back to the title of the book is how did we get here? And what different questions could he have asked that would have protected our family, that would have protected the outcome and would have protected him inside of that? And what could we have done differently to have a different outcome than we did? And so that's kind of the that's the start of the story, I guess.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, so I'm I know everybody's uh wanting to know what what were some of those discoveries and as you reflected on the these tragedy tragedies all throughout your uh childhood, young adulthood.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, it's I think the first thing really this idea is just how important family is. I mean, so many times, and even as a business owner myself, I get up and I go to the office every day, and we think that the grind of the business, sometimes I think we lose and get this distraction that business is for the sake of the business. Well, business is for the sake of the family. I I found I I even had this own thing happen in my own life, and so I kind of had to turn it around. But where, you know, pursuing business so much, thinking I'm helping my family, but at the same time I'm hurting my family because I think that I need to be at the office more, they need me to make more money, or I need to do something differently, when actually what they need is they need more of me, they need more time from me, and my focus is in the wrong place. And that was kind of my same similar thing with my dad. He fell in love with the vision so much. The vision got ahead of what was best for the family. And it's not that the vision was wrong, because it's really about how can so if the vision is right, then how do you get the vision aligned with what the family needs? And so, but if you let this vision, even the right vision, get ahead of what's gonna protect the family, then what you end up with is a potential disaster, right? So if the first thought is the number one thing we need to protect is the family. And we need to think about this family unit and just the what-ifs. I mean, nobody likes to pretend, nobody likes to talk about you know what's gonna happen. I think COVID has been an interesting experience for all of us because in one sense, I don't know about you, but we've all in one sense had to ask a mortality question. You know, it's a question we don't like to talk about, is our own mortality. But as we look around this virus as it's going around the country, now it's like, okay, now I need to ask a mortality question. Well, that's exactly what we all need to do when running a business is ask the mortality question. Maybe it happens, but more than likely it doesn't. But how do we protect the family unit? And what would happen if that mortality issue happened? Is everything okay? And that was probably the number one issue for me and for our family, the number one discovery was family comes first and business comes second. And so many times we just have that turned around and reversed.
SPEAKER_02And how do you, as you look to the Bible for your your plan and your your overall approach to wealth management, which I know is not a term that you like us to label you you and your organization with, which I want to ask you about that as well. But what do you what does the scripture teach you? How does the scripture uh inform that conviction?
SPEAKER_03Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna go off of two of them and kind of bring them together in maybe an interesting way. But the most powerful scripture to me in all of scripture um that really just resonates and really is kind of the mission statement of Peradiem comes down to Matthew 6:33, which is seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Because at the end of the day, if you really break all this down and really understand that scripture is God is saying, chase after me, chase after what I'm about, chase after the things that matter to me. And then all these things, and if you look earlier in Matthew 6, you know, look all through Matthew 6, he's talking about don't worry and don't, you know, don't concern yourself and look at the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. And that's our tendency as business owners is to worry how are we going to make payroll and how are we gonna make sales and how are we gonna do this? And it's God's comment to us to say, hey, don't worry about all that. Get in touch with me. Let's have a very strong relationship together, let's have good communication together. And inside of that communication, I will help you understand the path that you're on. And if you will do that, then all these other things I will take care of. And the short version someone said to me one time that I just love is it's kind of like God saying, You take care of my kingdom, I'll take care of yours. You know, and I love that. And then the second piece that really kind of jumped out to me, especially as you look at this family component, is it's from Proverbs 13. And this is gonna sound kind of a funny place to end up with this, but as I was praying and look over this, Proverbs 13, 22 says, a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. And so as we are good men and women who are loving on our families, started looking a lot closer at that. And I've seen a lot of people think that that's a financial scripture. And as I've dove thrown, as I've dive deeper into that scripture, I think it's a relational scripture. So let me tell you a little bit more what I mean. So if you look at the statistics as they exist, 75% of family wealth doesn't make it past one generation. So you start with nothing and you build a huge amount of family wealth, it's all gone within one, 75% of it's gone within one generation, 90%, significant portion of it is gone within three generations. Well, this is not new. The statistics are there, but the statistics have gone forever. I mean, if you look at King Solomon, King Solomon's wealth didn't last. King Solomon's kind of second generation wealth. And if you look by the time you get to the third generation, the kingdom is already falling apart. So this is not something that's new, but a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. So it's three generations. And as I really dug, as I dug into that and prayed about that and thought about that, what I started to realize is in our lives, more than likely, who will we have a relationship with in a way that we will be able to pour deeply into and provide wisdom? Probably our children, I mean our children, certainly. But then also our children's children, so our grandchildren, are more than likely where we'll have an opportunity to pour deeply into them over our lifetime. The likelihood is you won't have a chance to pour deeply into your great-grandchildren. So if a good man leaves an inheritance, maybe that inheritance is financial, but maybe more important, it's relational. You know, so if we seek God's kingdom first and we know what he's about, and then the next piece just becomes how important those relationships are, because no matter what, we leave wealth or we don't leave wealth, what we are gonna leave behind are memories, we're gonna leave behind stories, and we're gonna leave behind our values and what we stood for, and the way that that's gonna echo through those that come after us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. I'm and so your your firm, and when I said referred to you as a wealth management company, you know, you you kind of bristle a little bit at just a little bit at that because there's so much more that you're that you're offering. I'm I'm guessing you are you a RIA uh registered investment advisor.
SPEAKER_03So your your revenue is coming from a what a percentage of assets under management or some of that, because we do manage some assets for some investors, but uh uh it's about equal that we make fee-based revenue for just coaching families and businesses. Yeah, helping them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And so your your focus isn't just on let's um, you know, stay in tune with what the markets are doing and and try to, you know, maximize shareholder value and and all of that, but your your focus is on the whole person, right? How does that how does that um like what makes your firm different from I guess kind of the traditional approach to wealth management?
SPEAKER_03Right. So there's a lot of good people in this business out there. So I just we've just kind of carved out what we think is what makes us unique and a little bit different, um is the fact that ultimately what we believe is finance is probably the last thing you need to be talking about. Um the way that we break it out and we talk about it inside of our firm is what's the greatness, the growth, the governance, and the generosity inside of your story? So every single person has a story that they're going to tell through their life. Um, and so what's the greatness? What are the core values inside of your family? What do you want to be known for? What do you stand for? But not only that, how do you get the family together or the business? I mean, this is not just for families, this is for businesses as well. If you have a business that stands for something, how do you now take that business and center everyone around those core values and line them up with that? You know, is it just some stuff you've put on the wall that you wrote five years ago? Or is it something that everybody inside of the business or everybody inside of the family comes together and says, no, this is what we are, this is what paradigm stands for, this is what it means to be a dun of it. I mean, either one of those work perfectly. And then the next step, we look a little bit at the financial side because now that we understand what you stand for, the growth side of it is let's just take a look at where are you? Let's take a snapshot, where are you today? And what's the vision that God has put on your heart to fulfill your story? You know, so inside of your business, what's the calling of what God has created your business to play in the marketplace? And then where is that going and what is that story going to look like? And what I would tell you is about 90% of the time, it's not uncommon that we'll take a look at once people get really, really clear on how God has created their story, it's not uncommon for us to pull back and go, okay, so here's what's happening. That the story doesn't line up with the actual financial outcomes that are happening. So now we're just aware. We're not, there's no financial solutions, there's nothing that's happening there. It's just simply building an awareness around the idea of here's where God is calling us to, but here's where we're heading. And if there's anything immediate that needs to be done, we're certainly going to do that. But what the next phase is what we like to call governance, which is how do we increase communication and bring together the other outside thoughts about where we're going? So again, you think about this from a business standpoint. How do you bring together the important leaders inside of your teams? If now we've got core values or certain and now we know which direction God is guiding us to go, what's also the feedback and the communication styles that are happening inside of the business? And how do we that how does that trickle down through other teams? And is everyone on the same page on what's happening? And one of the terms that I like to use quite a bit is you know, I depending on how you run your business, not everyone necessarily gets a vote, but you certainly want everybody to have a voice. You know, and this happens in family too. I mean, it's mom and dad's stewardship of the wealth that they have, but you want to hear the voice of the kids. I it's a real quick side tangent story of one thing that happened here. We had a family who, as walking through this, one of their thoughts was, Well, we're gonna pass this farm down to our kids. And they went to the kids and started having this conversation, and they're like, We don't want the farm. Okay, well, so well, what's that gonna look like? It's like you want them to have the farm, but if they're gonna sell it the minute that they get it, is that really what you want to have happen? And so again, it's not necessarily a vote, but you do want to have their voice, and sometimes a vote does come into that. Well, once you've uncovered all three of those, now we can go into the fourth phase, which is what I call generosity. And this is actually about the financial solutions, but what we find is that most people have more ability to engage generosity than anyone's ever told them that they have. They've got more capability to be more generous than they realize because we live in a world that tells us to build bigger barns, to accumulate more and more and more, because we never know what's going to happen. And the number one thing that we've found is when you can open your hand and be generous, God just pours abundant blessing on you. And so now we can put together a plan that says, okay, what do you need this business to do? What do you need your family to do? And look at this financially, and how does this fit inside of your story? And now we can create a plan, but the other side of that is generosity now becomes a key point of conversation because generosity teaches the next generation of leaders inside of the company. Generosity teaches the next generation of leaders inside of a family. I mean, I give you a great example inside of our own business, inside of Paradise, and we take 10% of our gross profits and put it into an employee giving fund. And inside of that employee giving fund, my wife runs that every month. And we they sit down. I don't even sit on that committee. They sit down and go through where they're going to give and different things that they're going to be engaged in. It has changed my employees' giving attitude. It's also changed the way that they steward the business, it's changed the way that they think about how we together love on our clients and love on the families we have a chance. And that's just one single lesson of generosity. And so when you look at a family, what we found is when you bring in that generosity component, it just allows so many other things to open up. And the common experience for us is most families can do everything that God's put inside of their story, do everything that God's called them to do from an inheritance, passing on the business, doing everything, and still give beyond their capacity without changing their lifestyle or anything that they're doing. And so our overall statement is that we help families be more intentional in how they live and how they give. And yes, finance is a journey, but we spend a whole lot of time on that live portion. And we believe the give portion gives you another avenue. And at the end of the day, we end up with, you know, what other people would call a financial plan. But our journey to get there asks so many different questions and puts people in a different place that I think it gives us a different perspective. It kind of comes back to this idea of the book, right? What if we've been doing it all wrong? What we found is when we asked different questions, we got different answers that not only bless the family, but actually bless blast bless the family, bless the business, and bless the kingdom. And what a win-win-win.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, I love that about the employee giving fund. Uh, what are what's another example of something that you do in your business? Because it's obvious that you're really wanting to kind of uh not just do business as usual in this industry, you know, where the focus is almost entirely on just uh, you know, getting returns for financial returns for your clients, which obviously let's be really careful is important to that's for sure, for sure, for sure. But you know, that you the the inheritance that uh is to be passed on is is not just it is that and you know, and and in in a lot of ways it kind of represents um you know wisdom that's being not always because you know market forces don't always God's, you know, God's hand. Um but what are some of the other things, something else that you do in your company that uh you see is is pretty unique among your peers.
SPEAKER_03We have a program within the company we call To All With Love, which is this idea of not only how can we give financially, but how can we give in in the actual time that we have? So we've got people who are located all over the country. There's a story behind how that happened, but not everyone is here in Covington, Louisiana, where I live, and we serve families all over the country. So that works out really well, but looking for ways to get engaged around um just in things that are going on. But the real unique way that that plays out, that unfortunately is going to be hard to transpire this year, is a program we call the Do Unto Others Adventure. So every single summer for the last eight summers, we've gone on a family mission trip, taking our family and our employees who can go. So we'll pay for them to go on that trip to go on a to to go down to Tijuana, Mexico with a group called Amore Ministries and build a house for three days. And you sleep on the ground and you use a pit toilet. And that overall experience, it's you're just in Tijuana, so it's you're I'd like to tell people it's kind of a good starter mission trip because if something goes wrong, you're close to home, but it gets you exposed to poverty and exposed to a different way of life than what we have here and really disrupts your life, disrupts your thinking. I mean, one of the things that's important to us is how do we intentionally transform our lives? How do we be intention about intentional about the way that our lives change? And that type of experience uh is so transformational. I'll give you one more just real quick. But about three years ago, I had an experience with a group out of um Dallas, Texas called Fellowship of the Sword. And they have an event called Quest, which is five days of chasing after the heart of God. And so I went on this retreat and it changed me dramatically. And there are jokes around the office about pre Quest Eric and post Quest Eric. You talk about, you know, this idea of understanding that we get business backwards on our family, you know, and we're chasing after the wrong thing. It was really kind of this place that God revealed that to me. I came home from that experience. And inside of our company, if you want to go on Quest, we'll pay you to go or we'll pay for you to go. And it's as if you're at work. It's not vacation time. It's not a, we want you to go experience this. So everyone who works for us at this point has been on a Quest. But one of the other things that's been neat about it is inside of that employee giving fund, the employees have been so impacted by Quest that they set aside money from that for scholarships for people to go to Quest. And so, like one of our internal goals is to send 10 people who've never been on Quest to Quest this year. So being able to create spiritual transformation outside of the company and our friends and in our family and make a difference for the kingdom is another way that I think that we look at this generosity component of doing business and doing life, changing other lives.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Beautiful. I love that example. Well, as we wrap it up, Eric, uh, what would be a parting piece of advice you'd like to leave with our listeners today who are primarily Christian business professionals?
SPEAKER_03The number one thing I think that we all need to realize is a is this idea that our time inside of our business is limited. You know, we we'd like to come in and we think about all these dreams and these visions of things that we're gonna do and we're gonna create. But no matter what, we are finite beings with an eternal mandate. God has called us to do something today that makes an impact on eternity. So I don't know if you're familiar with Simon Sinek, but he just finished an incredible book called The Infinite Game. And I've been encouraging everyone I know, and so I would encourage any business owner who's listening to get a copy of the infinite game, but I want you to read it with a different perspective because I don't know Simon's faith. But if you take that book and read it as the eternal game, read that book as the eternal game, and think about how you run your business and how you do your life. And one of the things he talks about is there's two ways you can play life. You can play it as it's finite and it has an end, and I win or I lose, or you can play it as an infinite game that even after you're gone, you want them to win. And you want that, you know, what you've started to continue. So when you look at this, if God has truly given you a kingdom vision, that it is a kingdom vision that more than likely has the ability to go beyond you. So what can you do within the way that you run your business and the way that you serve your leadership teams and the way that you serve your families that thinks of this from an eternal perspective and recognizes, you know, I'm not going to be here forever. So I need to plan for my family and what happens if I make an unexpected exit. I need to plan for if I have a planned exit. But no matter what, how do I look at this knowing at some point I'm leaving? But what I've been called the steward needs to be stewarded well, and the next steward needs to be prepared.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Excellent. And you have a lot of great resources at uh paradium.org. You you teach about the kingdom business cycle, you teach about the owner's dilemma. We don't have time to talk about that all of the great the teachings there. We'll point people there to paradem.org. Uh, anything else you want to say about where people can connect with you?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so paradium.org, uh, we're on we've got a Facebook site, we've got we're on we're on LinkedIn as well. Um, we've got a YouTube channel where we're updating um, you know, different teachings and videos. And then I also personally have my own YouTube channel, Eric Donovan, D-U-N-A-V-A-N-T. Um, and I'll do some separate teachings on there. Um, just God is always speaking about the kingdom, and there's things that go on in business, but there's also things that happen personally that I found don't quite fit inside of what Paradidum is doing. That, you know, as I get the opportunities to teach on those, I'm doing that personally.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Excellent. And the book, again, is what if we've been doing it all wrong? I know people can get a hold of that at Amazon. Uh, just you can Google the book, you'll be able to find it as well. Eric, thank you so much for your time and for the wisdom you shared with us today.
SPEAKER_03Darren, thank you. It's been a great time. Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00We hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HBU Center for Christianity and Business at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.