As advisors and business owners, Chris and Tara Seegers have one primary goal: to activate and equip clients to live exceptional, faith-filled lives. Recently, they’re focusing on ways they can reach the next generation of entrepreneurs and business owners and inspire them toward generosity.
The Seegers advise clients across a variety of industries, helping them develop plans for managing their wealth, developing their businesses, and stewarding acquisitions and sales well. And they do it with the hope of helping clients find a way to become more generous along the way.
What is the work you’re doing with the next generation of leaders?
Chris: We love to coach young business owners who are on track to build great enterprises. It’s been so exciting to guide them through integrating their values and principles into their work at the start of their careers. So many leaders wait until they’re further down the road professionally, but these young entrepreneurs and business leaders are building an intentional foundation from the beginning. We’re guiding them as leaders to make a bigger impact for God’s kingdom through the marketplace.
Where did this passion to support Next Gen leaders come from?
Chris: We went to an NCF conference a few years ago where they shared a lot of really impactful research about the next generation. These younger business owners and entrepreneurs were building or inheriting wealth, but the majority reported not knowing how to steward it well or where to look for guidance. We heard that and thought, Let’s figure this out. We got to work building tools, writing resources, and creating curriculum to help meet that specific need.
Tara: Almost every service we incorporate into our businesses comes from a gap in the marketplace. If we can’t find the service provider, we solve for the gap and offer it as a solution for others. We love systems that are repeatable and scalable, and that’s driven so much of what we’ve focused our time and energy on as a company, specifically as it relates to this next generation of leaders.
How did generosity become part of your business?
Chris: When we were younger, it felt like, to work in ministry, you had to be a missionary or a pastor, or in some other specific bucket not related to the business world. We knew our talents were well suited for business, but we didn’t want to have to isolate our faith from our professional lives. That’s why we created Exceptional Companies. It allows us the opportunity to integrate our faith into our work and opens the door for us to activate and equip others to live exceptional lives.
Tara: We’re often in conversations with business owners who want to understand how to align their financial freedom with their generosity goals. We ask clarifying questions to help uncover what generosity means to them and how they wish to see those goals achieved as part of their legacy. Money is just one tool for generosity. And through these conversations, we notice people begin to identify many ways they can live generously. When they follow that leading, it tends to become a new pathway to freedom and joy for them too.
Why did you decide to work with NCF?
Tara: We work with NCF personally, so we understand the experience, the platform, and the deep expertise that exists within the organization, specifically around non-cash and complex giving. We believe that aligning your values with those guiding you is really important, so when a client’s values align with the values of NCF, we make the introduction. NCF provides a lot of education and strategy-rich content to help us as advisors more fully serve our clients and to help the giver discern how to give.
Chris: It’s also the people. They’ve got incredible people who are at the forefront of learning how to structure giving in a way that best serves our clients. The high-level expertise at NCF is a huge value for our clients.
What’s it like to help someone become more generous?
Tara: A few years ago we spent a lot of time working alongside the team at NCF to help a client understand their options as they prepared to exit their business. We wanted to show them mathematically the impact of different choices related to generosity as they transitioned out of the business. Seeing the models of the impact they could make by gifting a portion of their business was a powerful exercise for them. It helped them see a greater capacity for generosity.
What would you say to other advisors as they work to encourage their clients toward greater giving?
Chris: There’s always going to be something people are passionate about. Everyone has something they either love or something that makes them angry when they see it at play in the world. Encourage your clients to find the best organization working in that space and then lend your support. NCF is a great resource for this because of the vetted charities library they already have catalogued. Then, guide them to take just one step to get involved using their time, their talent, or their treasure. Doing that connects the heart to the hand.
What’s been the fruit of incorporating generosity into your work?
Chris: It makes work so much more fun. We’re all just temporary stewards of God’s stuff, and stepping into the freedom of stewarding it well is really exciting. We always say we’re an innovation company, meaning we get to build things in whatever ways we think will best glorify and honor God as well as meet our clients’ needs. Having that perspective brings a lot of joy into the work.
Tara: Anytime we’re thinking beyond ourselves, we see fruit. Once people understand what they’re passionate about or where God has called them to give, we help them understand tangible ways to put their dollars to work. Generosity is a wonderful activator of humans, and we love to see people come alive in new ways when they give.
