Transcript: How Flourishing Culture Powers Biblically Responsible Investing // Cassie Laymon, Beacon Wealth Consultants

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“How Flourishing Culture Powers Biblically Responsible Investing“

January 27, 2025

Cassie Laymon

Intro: What if every dollar you invested was a prayer aligned with God's work in the world? Well, in this episode Cassie Laymon, the president of a Christian-led investment-advisory company, shares how to cultivate a flourishing workplace culture and inspire your team to find purpose in their work, with practical insights that can reshape your leadership and impact.

Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Hi, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and the author Road to Flourishing. And my passion is to equip Christian leaders like you to create engaged, flourishing workplaces, where people thrive and organizations have a significant Kingdom impact.

If you'd like to learn more about me, my book, opportunities to have me speak at an event, this podcast, or recent articles I've written, I invite you to visit allopus.org. That's A-L-L-O-P-U-S dot org. Let's journey together towards building workplaces where your faith, leadership, and organization flourish.

I’m delighted to welcome Cassie Laymon to the podcast today. Cassie’s the president of Beacon Wealth Consultants. Throughout our conversation, you'll hear Cassie talk about tips to build a flourishing workplace culture, including practical strategies for aligning values and actions; creating a culture of stewardship; encouraging open communication and trust, building meaningful relationships with employees and cultivating a sense of unity; promoting personal and professional growth by investing in employee development and well-being. These practical takeaways will help you create workplaces where employees thrive, purpose flourishes, and organization culture aligns with your faith-driven mission.

And I think you're going to love this interview with Cassie Laymon. But before we dive in, this podcast is proudly sponsored by the Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey. Don't wait. This month is a perfect time to gather vital insights from your employees to assess the health of your workplace culture. Cassie Laymon, today's guest, reminds us, “If you want your workplace to truly reflect the values you hold as a Christian leader, you need honest feedback to understand where trust, engagement, and alignment stand. The BCW Survey is an invaluable tool to help you take action and create a culture where your team can thrive,” she says. So, are you ready to transform your culture? Visit workplaces.org—that's workplaces.org—to learn more and start your journey to becoming a flourishing workplace today.

Well, hello to our new listeners. Thanks for joining us as we honor your investment of time by creating valuable episodes like this.

And let me tell you a little bit more about Cassie Laymon. Cassie's the president of Beacon Wealth Consultants and director of institutional sales for LightPoint Portfolios. Cassie holds a master's degree in adult education and an MBA, both from Rutgers University. She's a Certified Financial Planner and a Certified Kingdom Advisor. She's a dynamic public speaker and has presented at national conferences for C12 and Kingdom Advisors. And for five years she's led a Biblically Responsible Investing special-interest group for financial professionals who are members of Kingdom Advisors. She partners with business owners and churches as a Certified Plan Fiduciary Advisor to better understand their company retirement plans and how to make them as cost efficient and cost effective as possible. She previously served as a health-care executive, overseeing people development, for a large health-care system. Cassie and her husband, Rick, the CEO of Beacon Wealth, married and merged their financial advisory businesses together in 2012. They enjoy collaborating on their business, traveling, theater, sharing books, and spending time with their children.

So, here’s my conversation with Cassie Laymon.

Cassie, it's great to have you on the podcast. And I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

Cassie Laymon: Thanks so much, Al. It's really good to be with you.

Al: Well, let's start with learning about Beacon Wealth and the unique values of your company. Can you share a story of someone who you've worked with or who has reoriented their financial decisions based on biblically based values that you share as you work with them with their financial plans?

Cassie: Well, actually, this happens on a pretty regular basis. So, often clients find us. You know, they're looking for a Christian financial advisor. And so they know that we're going to be giving biblically wise financial advice, but they don't really think about the investing side so much of what kind of business practices and companies that they're investing in. So there's a part of our interview process where we say, “Are there any companies or business practices that you would prefer not to invest in because of your faith or other values?” And sometimes people say, yes—they have a really good idea about that, and they share it. But often they'll say, “What are you talking about? I don't know what you mean by that.” And so I get a chance to share with them the impact of our investment dollars. And when you are investing in something—I call it praying with our dollars—you're saying, “God, I'm going to invest in this company. I'm going to put my money here, and I want You to help it to grow and flourish and do more of what they're already doing, and we'll share in the profits together.” And so people don't realize that when they are investing, they are helping those companies to grow and flourish. And if you’re investing in things that are against your values, whether that's abortion or pornography or addictions, you're kind of investing against your own values. So it's a real aha moment for many people to think about that, because we just think about the market as this abstract concept. “I'm putting my money in the market.” But there are real companies that we're investing in. So we get to have that conversation on a regular basis, and it's exciting.

Al: Wow. And tell us a little bit about Beacon Wealth and, you know, your size and scope, just to give us an idea. What do you do? and so on.

Cassie: Sure. We are an independent, called RIA—registered investment advisor—which really means that we have no proprietary products, and we do no commissionable business. We are a full-service wealth-management and financial-planning firm that focuses only on faith-based or biblically responsible investing. And we have a team of about 16 people that are located all over the country.

Al: Yeah. Fantastic. Well, so yeah, praying with your dollars. I like that idea.

But let's go on because some years ago you wrote a book titled I Found Jesus in the Stock Market. And a lot of people aren't looking for Him there, but you did. And so with such an intriguing title, I have to ask you about your own journey of understanding how your faith and, then, even financial practices are connected.

Cassie: Yeah. Well, when I met my husband, Rick, who is the CEO of our company, we met at a financial-advisor conference and happened to be sitting next to each other, and he started talking about faith-based investing, biblical investing. And I had grown up in the church, so I'm comfortable in the church. But like many people, when I went to college, I fell away from the church. So I had not been there in about 20 years. So, here is this fellow telling me all about biblical investing. And I was like, “You're a little too churchy for me.” But he was a real encourager. And he's like, “You need to know about this. You should understand this.”

And it was part of that journey, it was both—you know, what I was learning from Rick and a lot of experts in the field, like he was really one of the pioneers, he and a bunch of colleagues. And he would say, “You need to talk to this person, or interview this person, read this book.” And at the same time, I was teaching the stock-market game to my son's middle school. So that starts right in the beginning. What is a company? What is a stock? And as both of those things were happening at the same time, I was like, “I now have a whole other level of appreciation for what we're investing in.”

I have to tell you the truth: I was very skeptical about faith-based investing. But in this process, I started going back to church and reading the Bible and ultimately recommitted my life to Christ because I was like, “This is really important. This is what God is saying about our money and how we're going to use our money.”

And part of that, also, was just being in community with a bunch of Christ followers, who I really loved and admired. And I will still say that about our company today. And I remember looking around the room and saying, you know, “Whatever it is that these people have, I want some of that.”

Al: So, you talk about community and great people. Well, you and your leadership team at Beacon Wealth have assessed the health of your workplace culture with our Employee Engagement Survey, and you've got a flourishing culture there, and your employees are highly engaged. And what we see is, what stands out is life-giving work—it's one of our eight drivers of employee engagement—where people feel like the work they do is making a big difference. And I've heard a lot of financial people say, “I don't really get a lot out of what I'm doing. I'm not satisfied with this. You know, money isn't scratching my itch.” But no, your folks are saying, “Hey, this is really making a difference.” So describe what this looks like in day-to-day operations. Are there some practical ways that you and your leadership team help people connect their work and your values and mission? How do you do that?

Cassie: Yeah. Well, there's a few different things that we do. First, we always talk about our business is God's business. You know, we don't think about it belonging to any one of us. So we're really looking to be stewards of what we've been given. And, you know, we pray together often. And, you know, we talk about our values at our quarterly reviews, for example. At every quarterly review, we go through the list of values; “And here's how you're showing us that you're a good example of this value.” So it's really first and foremost.

A thing that I find different than before I was in the faith-based investing world, you know, you have in financial services always, like, a goal—like, asset goal, a revenue goal—and I agree: I didn't get a whole lot of energy out of that. But one of the things that we look at a little differently is that we still have those goals. But if we say, “Okay. We are going to bring in $50 million this year,” it's not for the sake of $50 million; it's for the sake of taking that money that may be invested in things that are not in alignment with us and redeploying it. My husband uses a great phrase: we're going to cut off the economic oxygen to these companies and redeploy it to these companies who are doing amazing things—curing diseases, bringing clean water to the poorest parts of the world. And so it's not just a number to hit a revenue goal. It's, like, we are doing Kingdom work and feeling really good about the work that we're doing.

So I think each individual person has different things that they're passionate about in the business. So I could give you a lot of examples, but here's a recent one that I thought of. One of our team members on our investment team, Colin—he's been with us for a couple of years—and under the mentorship of our chief investment officer—her name is Hillary Sunderland—he's gotten really interested in the positive impact of our dollars. And so our whole investment team is really working together to say, you know, “How can we have more of a voice on the positive side of this? How can we get companies to change their behaviors so that they are turning into and continuing to be flourishing companies?”

So when someone has a real passion about a part of the business, we try to capitalize on that and say, “How can we help them to be doing work that they love, that’s also in alignment with the goals of the business?”

Al: You know, Cassie, you've mentioned so on a quarterly basis, you're actually kind of reviewing employees’ performance, and you're reviewing their behaviors relative to your values. Tell us a little bit more about your values.

Cassie: Sure. So one of our—well, our first and most important value is love. And we think about that in a couple of ways, right? There's love your neighbor. And to go along with that, we think of always people over profits. That's both for our clients and our employees. We will always do the right thing by our clients because we're fiduciaries. If you want to get into—

Al: Yeah, right.

Cassie: —technical language—

Al: Good. Good, good. Yeah.

Cassie: —of the financial-services industry. Yeah, yeah.

But it's also telling the truth in love. So, nobody likes conflict. You know, when people say, “I don't like conflict,” well, nobody likes conflict. But we encourage each other to have really hard conversations, and we always know that the other person is coming from a good place. And I think that creates a healthy culture.

So love. Excellence in execution is one of our values, and so we always try to do the right thing the first time. If we make an error, because people make errors, we make sure that we recover in an extraordinary way and make sure that the clients know that we are always looking out for their best interests.

We also have a value of alignment. So when we interview people, we share with them our goals and our desire to act according to biblical values so that's not a surprise to them coming in. And we share with them, you know, someday down the line, you'll be in charge of devotions and, you know, we rotate that around. So we let people know what we're all about.

And grit is one of our values, so just being tenacious and doing whatever it takes to get an answer. I have found in our culture, like, client service, it's not very good. And so we just strive to not give up, get the answers that we need to take good care of our clients.

And then, also, growth. Having a growth mindset. We really encourage continuing education for everybody. All of our advisors are either Certified Financial Planners or working their way towards being Certified Financial Planners. They're Certified Kingdom Advisors, and just always looking at expanding their skills and improving so that we can be at our very best.

Al: Wow. I love these values. Yeah. And I can see how they have a huge impact on your culture. That's great. Well, you know, so that's the key of life-giving work.

Well, let's move on to a couple of other strengths that you've really developed over time, and that's fantastic teams and healthy communication. And you have office staff and also wealth advisors in a number of different locations. And sometimes people think, “Well, you're distributed. It's hard to have good teamwork. It's hard to have effective communication,” but you're doing it, and your employees are saying, “Hey, we've got fantastic teams. We've got healthy communication.” Tell us a little bit about the secret of keeping everybody connected and working together in your more-distributed situation.

Cassie: Sure. Well, I think, with all things, you have to be really intentional and put systems in place to make sure people are connected. And so we have it set up that all team members have a one on one with their supervisor every week, which I just think is good, just like, “Here's what's going on. Here's a roadblock that I'm having.” So we can help things move in the right direction.

Our teams—you know, our investment team, our financial planning team—they all meet together weekly just to make sure everything is on track. Our leadership team meets every week to go over everything, our goals and how everyone's doing. Are there any problems that we need to solve?

We meet with our advisors, everybody, all together, at least once a month, where we talk about our successes, our goals. We pray for our clients. We have a devotion together, and we rotate that responsibility around, which is great just because you get interesting devotions when you hear from different people.

And then, one of our really fun things that we do is every year we have an in-person retreat, and that is for all of the home-office people, all of the advisors, and all of their spouses. And it's about two and a half days, and we go to lots of different fun locations, and there's a time of learning. So I would say half the time we're doing education and training, and half the time is just pure fun. And we have a lot of fun together. We laugh together. And it's so good to bring in the spouses, too, because, I mean, we're a small group, so that really is, you know, part of our family culture. And we have meals together, and we always end on Sunday morning, somebody does the devotion. We have our own little worship team together. And so we kind of do life together, and it really helps with our communication.

Al: I can see people listening and thinking, “How can I apply to this organization?”

Cassie: I hope so.

Al: Wow. That’s just great.

So, any leader who's in it for the long haul has experienced high points and valleys in their own leadership journey somewhere, planned transitions or unexpected changes. And, you know, we'd like to focus on some high points. But oftentimes, you know, when we learn or when we have turning points, it's often during hard places in our journey, and we're tied up in a cauldron of complexity, and it's not as comfortable in those places. So Cassie, in your leadership journey, share about some of those turning points or hard seasons, and what you've learned from them.

Cassie: Yeah. So, I have been in a leadership position for just about 30 years, and my time with Beacon Wealth, this is my favorite, favorite team I have ever worked with. And so I think it has reduced a lot of the challenges. There's maybe less challenges that I've had in the past. But I always think, for me, the biggest challenge is people, right? So even though you have all the right systems in place, you've communicated expectations, people have agreed, “Yes, this is what I want,” but in the end, when it doesn't work out, and you have to let someone go, that is the very hardest for me. And as I'm learning—I'm still learning, right? even after all this time—one of my challenges is sometimes maybe hiring people too quickly, because if there's an opening, I want to fill it quickly because I know the rest of the team is working so hard to cover for them. And also, I love meeting new people, and I get really excited, and I'll say, “Oh, my gosh. This is going to be amazing. They are going to do so amazing.” And sometimes I am more excited about their journey than they are. So, we do a lot of coaching and things, but in the end, if we have to part ways because either this is not what they thought it was going to be or they're not able to do what we need them to do, letting someone go, I think, is really the hardest.

So my lessons are, you know, trying to take a little more time in hiring and discerning and making sure it's the right person. And then, when you determine, for whatever reason, if it's not the right fit to kindly and with compassion let that person move on so they can find the next thing that's a right fit. Because we have this family culture, I just want to keep everyone, and I feel like, you know, they're part of our family. So that's really something that I have to work on for myself.

Al: Those are challenging times. And you lose sleep, that's for sure.

Well, so, tell me a little bit about one of your secrets here for making sure you're hiring the right person.

Cassie: Yeah. So, we really try to collaborate as a team and include, you know, multiple people have interviews with the leadership team, also with the department they're going to be in. But one of the things Rick and I really like to do is when we're getting ready to hire someone, meet with both the prospective employee and their spouse and take them out to dinner so that we can really get to know them in a social environment. We always have questions for the spouse, like, “This is what this is going to look like. Are you on board with this? Are you excited about this?” You know, whatever the particular role is, we want to know that they are supportive and on board also in agreement with, you know, what our values are going to be. And it’s a really nice way to do that in a social setting and get to know them outside the office.

Al: Yeah. I just encourage our listeners, as you're thinking about key players on your team, maybe even more than just key players, pursuing that. Recently I did a podcast. Rich Stern, the previous president emeritus of World Vision, this was one of his key things. And I can say that over time I've practiced the same process. What a great way to—you learn a lot, don't you, in those kinds of settings that you wouldn't have gotten, wouldn't have received as you were interviewing in your office or on Zoom or any other way? Yeah, super.

Well, so, Cassie, can you talk about how your own relationship with Christ helps you lead with integrity, demonstrate compassion for people at all levels, and communicate openly and honestly so that you can build trust with your team? And this is a question, you know, these are key things that come out in our Survey questionnaire around inspirational leadership, the main driver of employee engagement. So how does your relationship with Christ impact those things: integrity, compassion, transparency, and building trust?

Cassie: Yeah. I think it is the foundation of everything, right? I mean, who is the best leader ever? Jesus. So, you know, if we think about that, and, you know, integrity, just in the financial-services industry, it is of the utmost importance. Of course, I wasn't at Beacon my whole life. I was at other organizations, too, and they didn't necessarily take those things seriously. Or you can read about it in the news every day, right? So we really have a system of checks and balances to help each other make good decisions, but if we always are thinking about Jesus and being honest and really caring for the other person and having compassion for a situation…

So, you know, we have people come to us in very difficult situations. I would say a large part of my book is widows. And I mean, fortunately or unfortunately, I've had the experience. My mom has been widowed twice, so I have walked with her through that experience. And I'm able to sit with others and put yourself in their shoes and maybe just let them cry, you know. It's not always how we're going to fix your financial situation; it's really walking hand in hand and caring for someone in whatever they need at the moment.

And that applies both to clients as well as employees. And you know, when one of us is having a hard time, we need to be open and honest with the rest of the team. And then, we can come around them and help them. And I think that is what has built such a great sense of trust with our team, that we can talk about the hard things and help each other to solve it and just think about taking really great care of people all the time.

Al: Yeah. Compassion builds trust. People see your heart, if you will. People see, you know, your intention and the consistent integrity that you have in following those patterns. That's exactly right. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Well, Beacon Wealth is a flourishing workplace, you've got highly engaged employees, and it's great to celebrate positive results. And it can be tempting to just coast. And, you know, as you look ahead to the future, you know, how do you and your leadership team plan to keep the momentum going for continuous improvement in your highly engaged workplace?

Cassie: Well, first of all, my husband, Rick, is our visionary, and he does not let us rest for a minute. He always has the next idea. “We need to think about this. This is what's coming next.” So that helps keep us on our toes, for sure. But all of our leadership team has a growth mindset. So I would say in their own respective teams, they are always thinking about, “How can we do this better? Or, you know, what do we need to prepare for?”

One of the things that we do as—I mean, besides meeting weekly—as a leadership team, every quarter we go offsite for a day, and we talk about our goals that we had for that quarter. Did we meet them? And then, we do goal setting for the next quarter. And then, at the end of the year, we do a multi-day offsite, two or three days, where we do a lot of brainstorming. We talk about our opportunities for the next year. We set a target for three years from now. “This is where we would like to be,” and just the process that we use almost forces us to be thinking about the future, and if we're growing at a certain pace, who do we need to hire? What does it look like? And I think that that process of planning really helps us to stay future focused.

Al: Hm. Now, Cassie, you're using terminology that I've heard before, and it sounds like you've implemented EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system. Okay. So that's the process that includes weekly leadership-team meetings and quarterly offsites, and then an annual review and annual offsite and goal setting for the next year, and a three-year picture of where you're going so that you and your leadership team can all be on the same page. Yeah. So I appreciate that. Great. So that's just fantastic.

Well, Cassie, we've learned so much. Now, the next question that our listeners are interested in, do you have any good recommendations for investments for us?

Cassie: Not without disclosures from my compliance department.

Al: There you go. All right. Yeah, of course.

So, yeah, Cassie, this has just been a great conversation. I love, you know, even going back to our early conversation, you know, praying with our dollars. Let's make sure that, yes, we're praying with our dollars. And I love the title of your book, I Found Jesus in the Stock Market. And you know, we can find Him a lot of places, and that's one place. And then, the way you kind of lead your organization through the process of creating life-giving work. And I love the discussion of your values, where, again, on a quarterly basis as you review employee performance, but you're also reviewing, well, how are people actually living our values of love and excellence in execution and alignment and grit and growth? So I, just, yeah, that's just great. And then, fantastic teams and healthy communication, how that works together. And again, that's that process, that consistent process that you have of connecting with people with one on ones and weekly team meetings and leadership meetings and monthly all-staff meetings, where people come together, you're sharing devotions, and you pray together. And then, annual in-person retreats with spouses. That's really something. Yeah. Good for you. And the things that you're doing to create inspirational leadership, leading with integrity, and compassion, and how it is that you're, yes, we don't oftentimes think at financial-service firms compassion is a big thing. We think that it just requires sharp pencils and a lot of intelligence. But no, there is an important side of compassion and building that into the process.

So, yeah, Cassie, this has just been a great conversation. Is there something or anything that you'd like to add that we've talked about?

Cassie: Well, I just think when we talked about, you know, how we're always thinking about growing and expanding, one of the things that might be interesting to your listeners is that we also do 401(k) plans that are faith based for companies. So if that is of interest, we could, you know, give you some thoughts about that.

But the other thing that I just really want to say is if you have listeners who have not used your process of doing the Best Christian Workplace, I really encourage it because it's a goal of ours to be a best Christian workplace every year. We feel like that's a great way to attract talent. But it also, you know, it's part of our planning that we do. We say, “Look at these scores. Where are the opportunities for improvement? What can we do?” And that's part of our mindset of improvement is looking at our results from the Best Christian Workplace Survey, to say, “What can we do to be even better?” So we're always thinking about that, and so that has really helped us so much.

Al: One last question, then, Cassie. Okay. So I love the value of love. I guess that's saying the value twice in one sentence. But you've got people over profits. But I'm curious: do you see having a flourishing workplace culture actually has an impact on your own firm's success and profitability?

Cassie: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. When you have the right people in the right seats, you're taking good care of them, they're excited about their work, ultimately, the financials all work out.

Al: Okay. Thanks, Cassie.

Well, thanks so much for your contribution today. And most of all, I appreciate your commitment to serving God's Kingdom by sharing biblical values in the financial realm. So, thanks for taking your time out today and speaking into the lives of so many listeners.

Cassie: Thanks for having me, Al.

Al: Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Cassie Laymon. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

You can find ways to connect with her and links to everything we discussed in the show notes and transcript at workplaces.org/podcast.

And if you have any suggestions for me about our podcast or have any questions on flourishing workplace cultures, please email me at al@workplaces.org.

And as Cassie reminded us, flourishing cultures just don't reflect our faith; they also lead to financial success. When you prioritize your people and align your values with your practices, your organization thrives in ways to honor God and benefit your bottom line as well. So, if you're ready to take the next steps to assess and strengthen your culture, visit workplaces.org and discover how the Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey can help build a flourishing, financially healthy workplace today.

And let me encourage you to keep listening to our weekly podcast as we continue to learn from leaders who are proven inspirational leaders exhibiting Christian character and excellence in their leadership every day.

Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more information.

We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.