Dennis G. McCarthy

Dennis G. McCarthy is the author of The Four Forces: What Every Young Person Should Know About Investing and The Loyalty Link: How Loyal Employees Create Loyal Customers.

Over a career spanning more than three decades, he has worked with executives and leadership teams across industries, helping organizations build stronger cultures, deeper employee engagement, and more durable customer relationships. That work led to The Loyalty Link, which makes the case that loyal employees and loyal customers are not separate outcomes. They are the same outcome, viewed from different sides of the same relationship.

The question that led to The Four Forces came from closer to home. His granddaughter asked him how money actually grows. It was the kind of question that sounds simple until you try to answer it honestly. He realized that most people, regardless of education or income, are never taught the answer. They learn how to earn money. They learn how to save it. But the principles that determine whether money grows over a lifetime are almost never passed on.

He wrote The Four Forces to change that. The book tells the story of Ella, a thirteen-year-old who starts asking the same question and discovers four principles through conversations with the people around her: time, ownership, discipline, and diversification. These are not market predictions or investing strategies. They are enduring forces that, understood early and applied consistently, quietly determine how financial lives unfold.

The book is written for young readers, but the parents, grandparents, teachers, and financial advisors who give it to them often find themselves rereading it. The ideas are that fundamental.

Dennis is the founder of Paradigm Group and Lumen Capital. He teaches, speaks, and writes on financial literacy, investing, leadership, customer loyalty, and long-term thinking. He splits his time between Florida and Connecticut. He has five grandchildren (and counting).