Dustin Serviss has learned from experience how a commitment to work alone can lead away from the path to true wealth.
Over the past couple decades the Salmon Arm resident and financial advisor has built a successful career in the Okanagan-Shuswap. In 2005 he founded Serviss Wealth Management, offering wealth and lifestyle management services. He was twice honoured in the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce's 40 Under 40 program, which recognizes young professionals in the community and their accomplishments.
In 2021, after moving from Kelowna, Serviss helped launch a similar program to acknowledge outstanding achievers and change makers across the Shuswap.
About a decade after starting his wealth management business, Serviss had an experience that would reshape his perceptions of success and wealth. He shares this in his book, The "AND" Paradigm: Own Your Edge, Live Intentionally, and Capture the Ultimate Picture of Wealth.
In My Story, the book's opening chapter, Serviss tells of how he'd poured himself into his job, as a way of not having to think about complications with his marriage. He did so with the belief that things would either fix themselves or go away.
"From a very young age, my brain was wired to think a man could be 'either' successful in his business 'or' successful in his personal life, but not both," wrote Serviss. "It made perfect sense. If you focus on your business and earn more, you could provide more for your family and have more time or resources for your hobbies, ensuring a happier life."
The chapter begins on May 15, 2016, after Serviss had arranged for a babysitter for 4:30 p.m. so that he and his wife could enjoy a gym date together.
"She was thrilled, explaining how she appreciated me taking the initiative to be more present," wrote Serviss. Still at work at 4:45 p.m., Serviss received a phone call from his wife asking if he was still going to the gym. He said he'd be right there, to which she replied "Don't bother," and hung up the phone. This prompted some deep introspection, with Serviss asking himself "how I could be both financially successful and available to my family simultaneously?"
"I took a deeper look at why I missed the gym session and noticed that in the past few years, I had not made time for any activities outside of work, whether for my family or myself. Instead, all my focus revolved around my job," wrote Serviss, who proceeded to look at his own finances and, in the process, came to the realization it he could afford to make a little less and have more time with family.
This was a turning point for Serviss, who started replacing his "either/or" with an “and.”
"No more 'either a successful business or a great family life' or 'either a successful business or a life filled with personal hobbies.' But instead, 'Both a successful business AND the personal life I have always imagined.'
This philosophy guides Serviss in his work, through which he said he's repeatedly encountered others who have yet to reach their "and."
"There’s this situation where… these people all built their wealth on 12-hour days for 34 years and then you ask them, hey, if you only had $3 million instead of $6 million, but you could have stopped working 20 years earlier, would that have been appealing – to not work weekends and attend the kids' events?"
For much of his book, Serviss employs fiction to get at the heart of what wealth can look like when pursued in a holistic sense. It revolves around a photographer who is competing in a contest to capture the "ultimate picture of wealth." The contest sends the photographer to meet with wealthy people and take their picture. Through these meetings, the photographer encounters people who are wealthy only on paper, and others whose wealth consists of "what I call a diverse portfolio of memories, and they’re actually quite wealthy in the holistic sense of wealth, as opposed to just money."
Serviss explained the book is particularly tailored to those working people solely focused on saving for the future, and not setting money aside to live in the now.
"We deal with people who save $200 or $300 thousand a year, in their business or their life, and they’re still thinking they’re broke or that isn’t enough because when they were 20 they didn’t have as much and just thought, I’m going to work hard, I don't know for how long, I’m just going to work really hard forever," said Serviss. "When they read the book and come up for air, you give them… paradigm shift where you’re like, instead of making $200 thousand a year working seven days a week, why don’t you make $50,000 less a year, you’re still saving a lot, and hire an assistant and don’t work weekends anymore. Now you’re not making as much but it’s a better life."
While the first edition of The 'AND" Paradigm was circulated largely among family, friends and clients over the past year, Serviss just released a second edition of the book that is now available in hard and soft cover, as an audiobook and for e-readers through large booksellers.
In addition to the book, Serviss also connects with people through his podcast, The Picture of Wealth, available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Born during the COVID pandemic, the podcasts invite a wide range of guest speakers who help address the question, what if wealth wasn't just about what you have, but about how you live?
"I'm kind of like (podcaster) Tim Ferris with kids, experimenting and trying different things and trying different investments and reporting back on them," said Serviss. "The theme though is I’m trying to get out of the person what they’re doing in life that might be a little bit different, so there is an essence of stretching the mind to know what’s possible."
