Nicholas Leone, founder of Business Bible, and 4word founder, Diane Paddison, begin the New Year by discussing God’s blueprint for business and how the Bible has so much to say to today’s workplace leaders.

You can listen to this conversation with Nicholas and Diane on our podcast, Work, Love, Pray! Listen below or click here to find your preferred listening platform.

Diane, would you share how you and Nicholas know each other?

Diane: It is just amazing how God connects people. Jennifer Jackson, a member of 4word’s Executive Women 4Christ Community Group, reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, I hear you’re in New York. I want you to meet my friend Nicholas. He is thinking about starting a business Bible.’ So Nicholas and I met in 2019, and we’ve been in touch ever since. It’s just so fun to see how God uses relationships to help grow His kingdom when we’re really focused on serving Him. 

Nicholas: I remember when I first learned about Diane and had the opportunity to meet her at the Harvard Club in New York City. I learned about her career and her calling, and it was very powerful. She was a great encouragement to me and was one of the first to encourage me to create the Business Bible. This was born out of our shared love and belief in the power of the word of God and the word for work. Diane had written Work, Love, Pray, which had a centralized goal of reaching women in the workplace to equip them with the Word, so we share that same mission. 

Nicholas, could you share your vision for the Business Bible and talk about how was it placed on your heart? 

Nicholas: I’m a former hedge fund manager on Wall Street, and in January 2007 I started my first hedge fund. Then the global financial crisis ensued, and the stock market declined 50%. People lost their homes and many people lost their jobs. I thought, ‘Isn’t there a better way to do business?’ Unfortunately, Wall Street wasn’t providing any clear guidance, and the church was silent about this crisis during that time. I wanted to find a better way to do business, and that desire led me to read everything I could and search the Bible for principles to help me navigate life and work. And that’s how the idea for the Business Bible was born. 

Diane, what was your first thought when you heard about the business Bible? 

Diane: What a great resource, right? Nicholas and I were recently with a company called Escalante Golf, and the cool thing about this company is they take every day between nine and ten in the morning to have a Bible study. They shared with us how even their clients can’t believe how much they get done in a day. They owe a lot of their success to the foundation built with a focus on serving God through their company. It was fun to watch Nicholas introduce the Business Bible to the Escalante Golf team and show how to use it as a tool. Now their team is so excited to have this tool to help guide them, because it’s so much easier to understand what the Bible actually says about work and business. It was amazing to see the Business Bible project just come alive in a real business setting. 

Nicholas: Part of the discovery and the work that I did in the Business Bible was going through all 31,000 verses one by one and then exuding them in the Hebrew and Greek and discovering what the Bible says about business. There were several key moments in that process for me, like learning that the Bible is about business from beginning to end, that we’re created to work and in the end we’ll be rewarded for our work. That’s very important for business people, and particularly business women, to realize that they’re created to work and God wants to reward them for their work. I think the greatest discovery that I had was that the economy reflects design. If we follow God’s design in our work, in our leading of our business, and investing in generosity, we can expect the results that He and His Word promises. 

Having been to business school and seminary, this was a wonderful discovery process for me. I hadn’t realized those things before, and had never heard anyone else point them out. It was really amazing to see at Escalante Golf how they’re putting the Word to work. Wouldn’t it be great if, when we have a Bible study at work, we actually studied the Business Bible and learned what the Bible says about work? 

Diane: As I prepared for what we’re talking about now, I thought this is exactly why I felt called to start 4word. I didn’t feel like I could bring my whole self to church, and I didn’t feel like when I went to work, I could bring my whole self, either. Starting 4word really gave me the opportunity to create a community where women are encouraged to bring their whole self, which is also the foundation of God’s Word. This is not a new concept! When we read about Lydia in the Bible, she was a professional woman making yarn and clothing, and she was also a strong spiritual leader who supported making disciples from the reward of her business.

Nicholas: The Business Bible is a comprehensive work, but it’s not exhaustive. We learn about Adam and Eve who are created to work together, about the Proverbs 31 woman, and Lydia and Esther and some women business leaders in the Bible. Women are still discovering what it means to be faithful in the workplace, so there’s work for Business Bible and 4word to do to discover greater truth in the Word and how we apply that in the workplace.  

Nicholas started his first hedge fund at the age of 40 expecting to earn success in life and work; then the global financial crisis began. The stock market crashed, the economy entered the great recession, and millions of people lost their jobs, their home and life savings.

Firms like AIG, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch were at the heart of the crisis and Nicholas did business with all of them. With firsthand knowledge of the crisis, he asked an important question, “isn’t there a better way to do business” and began searching for answers.

He read Wall Street research, government economic reports, and history books but they did not provide clear guidance. Then he read the Bible. Everything he was searching for, how to do business, navigate the economy, and invest successfully was right there in plain view. Very few understood what the Bible says about business, and even less follow it.

Nicholas combined a discipline research process he learned investing with the skills he had acquired in seminary and began to read the Bible from a business perspective. He discovered we are created to work, the economy reflects divine design, the power to create wealth and how to multiply investment returns by 2X, 10X even 100X.

According to Nicholas, the Bible is about work from beginning to end. It reveals Principles how to succeed in business, create wealth, and give generously. That’s why Nicholas founded the 1st of its kind Business Bible — with everything you need to know about business and the Principles highlighted in gold.

The Business Bible will help you become a better business person, create wealth, and live generously. If you follow one of the Principles, your work will be changed; if you follow them all, your life and career will be transformed!

Diane Paddison, 4word Founder and President, is a Harvard MBA, former global executive of two Fortune 500 companies, CBRE and ProLogis, and one Fortune 1000 company, Trammell Crow Company, and serves as an independent director for one corporate and four not-for-profit boards. 

Diane is a leading advocate for Christian women in the workplace. Diane published Work, Love, Pray in 2011, and Be Refreshed . . . a year of devotions for women in the workplace in 2017, laying the foundation for 4word.

She authors weekly posts at 4wordwomen.org and is a featured columnist for The Washington Times and the 4word Mentor Program has been highlighted in The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch.

Diane and her husband, Chris, have four children and two grandchildren and live in Dallas, Texas.