(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- The Phoenix Suns had a day off in mid-March, and Chris Paul wanted to take advantage of it. Specifically, he wanted to organize his sneaker closet, which he hadn't been able to attend to since moving into a new house. Paul has hundreds of pairs—13 of them Nikes that he co-designed—and he was pumped about spending the day with them. “I went pretty much this whole season with my shoes being in boxes,” he says—and now those boxes were lining his hallway, ready for his next move. “I've actually been so excited taking them out today.”
Paul has been busy with other stuff. Although he missed 15 games with a broken thumb, he's helped the Suns to a 61-14 record and the top seed in the Western Conference playoffs, which start on April 16. The 12-time All-Star, who goes by CP3 (check his jersey), is known on the court for his fierce competitiveness, deadeye midrange jumper, and chesslike approach to running an offense. Combine that with the swashbuckling drives of teammate Devin Booker, the rebounding of Deandre Ayton, and the defense of Mikal Bridges, and Paul has a real shot at winning his first championship.
Regardless of his success in the playoffs, Paul—who's earned more than $300 million playing in the NBA—has already established a business empire. His production company, Ohh Dip!!!, is expanding from sports documentaries into scripted and reality programming. Some nights it's hard to watch live sports without seeing him in ads for State Farm. And on How I Got Here With Chris Paul, he'll interview athletes and business leaders. The show will stream exclusively on Bloomberg Quicktake starting on April 13.
As an investor, he's looked to companies (and social impact initiatives) that mirror his values. Four years ago he became a vegan, which he credits with reinvigorating his career. He holds stakes in businesses such as Beyond Meat, which makes plant-based substitutes, and Bowery Farming, which grows lettuce and other produce indoors. A father of two—he and his wife, Jada, have a son and a daughter—he's also put money behind family-friendly businesses: MaxOne, an online sports coaching platform, and Goalsetter, which specializes in financial literacy technology, to name two. He's made additional investments in trading card companies, sports merchandisers, and amateur athletics. And if you didn't know that Paul is into cricket, well, he is: He has a stake in the Rajasthan Royals of the Indian Premier League.
Before he got rolling on his sneakers, Paul shared his business advice with Bloomberg Businessweek.
1. Shoot your shot: Find a mentor who gets you
In 2011, after being traded to the Los Angeles Clippers, Paul made a discovery: “Everybody is thinking that CEOs are all busy, so nobody texts them!” Paul says. “They want to be checked in on and talked to, too.” (Of course, it helps your chances of getting a reply when you're among the greatest point guards of all time.) In particular, he hit it off with Bob Iger, then chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Co., whom he asked to be his mentor. “He said, ‘I need someone I can talk with about business. I need someone I can learn from,' ” says Iger, who was skeptical. “I've had plenty of people say that, and then they disappear.”
What was Iger reading? Paul wanted to know. Iger sent him articles; Paul read them, asked questions, watched Iger's speeches, and eventually read his 2019 book, The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned From 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company. “I was sort of his off-court coach,” Iger says. They talked about topics including disruptive technologies, startups, investment opportunities, business plans, initial public offerings, managing people, taking risks, and being decisive.
They became close friends. “Most of the mentoring I've done is with people at Disney,” Iger says. “I've enjoyed it immensely, but it was rare that I would call them friends, because I wouldn't really let them become friends. We'd be friendly and casual, but not friends. This is very different.” Now the two talk a couple of times a week.
One of the most important lessons that Iger taught Paul is about work-life balance. It stuck with Paul that Iger once took a day trip to Shanghai to be back home in time for his son's basketball game. “He could be involved in the biggest deal that's going on, but nothin' comes before his kids and his family,” Paul says. Iger says it's a topic they touch on a lot: “We talk about jettisoning anything else discretionary from your life except for work and family, because there just isn't room for anything else when you have a job like his or mine—you just can't go out and be with the guys very often.”
2. Practice the fundamentals: Know why you do what you do
Paul likes to ask “What's your why?” (a phrase popularized by business book author Simon Sinek) of younger players—and himself. “I just try to be a pillar and educate those around me. I realized a long time ago that I didn't get anywhere by myself,” he says. “I think about the rooms that I've been in and conversations that I've had.”
Anytime he meets corporate leaders, he says he asks about the company's early years: What was it like when it was starting? How did it grow? “I'm constantly asking questions. For me, I'm not going to stop learning,” he says. Iger says Paul's curiosity is “extraordinary” but that his talent as an investor is taking action. “It's not just about being interested in things,” Iger says. “He then pursues them. He does the things he thinks about.”
When Paul considers investing in a company, he thinks about how its mission affects his daily life. Then he considers the leadership. “You want to be involved with good people,” he says. “Not every investment is going to be a home run, but if you're building with someone who you enjoy being around, that's worth something.” This might help explain why his family is integral to his empire. Paul's brother, CJ, handles a number of business activities, and Paul wrote a memoir (with sportswriter Michael Wilbon) called Sixty-One: Life Lessons From Papa, On and Off the Court.
Hiring family members can backfire, of course. “I've seen both sides of this. It can be a disaster. How do you fire a family member?” asks former NFL player Adewale Ogunleye, who advises athletes and entertainers at UBS Global Wealth Management and worked with Paul on a show for Ohh Dip!!! “But every time I've spoken with CJ, he truly has Chris's best interests at heart. That's big. It doesn't happen all the time.”
Paul wants the people who work for him to own their success, and he wants the companies he invests in to invest in their people. “The part for me that I get excited about is building with my team. I want to continue to see my team grow,” he says. He has a stake in PlayersTV, a two-year-old media network with lifestyle and entertainment content featuring athletes. It's available on Samsung TV Plus, the Roku Channel, YouTube TV, and elsewhere. “What excites me about it is ... it basically gives us the opportunity,” Paul says. “No one knows us better than us.”
3. Keep an eye on the clock: Plan for your next move
Paul was president of the players union for eight years. He sat in a room with 30 owners and 450 players “who don't all agree on everything and don't look the same but have to come together for a common goal,” he says. “I had a master class. I've learned so much about the nuance of the league from my relationship with Adam Silver,” the NBA commissioner.
The next logical step, Paul says, is to be an owner. His time with the players union has made handling challenging temperaments easier. “Managing the personalities and everything that goes along with a team, I would love to do that,” he says.
Owning a pro team would scratch Paul's itch for competition. “I've actually tried to learn this lesson myself,” Iger says. “Pro athletes compete almost every second of their waking lives. That's how I felt when I was CEO. Suddenly when you're not doing that, it can be jarring. People who step down from competing all their lives feel a great sense of loss, and he should be prepared to fill that void.”
Paul already is, in some ways, by thinking about the next generation of competitors. He has the Chris Paul Basketball Academy, which is co-ed and starts with elementary schoolers. His family runs Team CP3, a youth and teen basketball program in Winston-Salem, N.C.; it's familiarized him with talent as young as 10. “One of my kids—well, they're adults now—is actually about to come over to the house,” Paul says. “I get most excited when I watch their games or see them out there getting contracts and seeing the smiles on their families' faces and the lives that they've changed.”
He's also is a staunch supporter of historically black colleges and universities. During the pandemic he enrolled in one, Winston-Salem State University, where he's completing the communications degree he began at Wake Forest University before leaving for the NBA in 2005.
“HBCUs are so important to me because I grew up in HBCU country—I went to Winston State every weekend, and all my little cousins went to North Carolina A&T [Agricultural & Technical State University, in Greensboro],” Paul says. “So HBCUs have been with me my entire life. It's just that when I was growing up, that wasn't the path to the NBA.” Now he hosts training camps for HBCU players, and he's working with former first lady Michelle Obama on a get-out-the-vote drive aimed at all HBCU students. Ohh Dip!!! also produced two seasons of Why Not Us, about the challenges of playing for HBCU basketball and football teams. It aired on ESPN+ last year.
Paul doesn't want to talk much about this season. But two things are clear. One, “I hate to lose,” he says. “There hasn't been one flight this entire season that my teammates didn't play Bourré,” the card game. He has 22 dominoes games going with friends around the country on an app. So it's safe to say he won't be fulfilled until he's got a ring. And two, no matter what happens, he's not done playing. “When you start thinking about retirement,” he says, “that means you're almost there. I'm not there.” —With Joel Weber
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