Lessons in Building a Successful Business with a Faith-Filled Approach
I started a new book this week entitled, “Expert Ownership: Launching Faith-Filled Entrepreneurs into Greater Freedom and Success.” The book is written by nationally acclaimed entrepreneurs – and brothers – David and Jason Benham. Based on Scripture as a manual for business development, their 12-step program walks you through the path they took to scale their business from one location in North Carolina to 100 offices in 35 states, achieving financial freedom by the age of 33 (!!!) and gaining their time back to focus on ministry around the world. There were three things in the first several chapters that really stood out to me that I want to share with you today.
Before they even created their business model, they selected the specific type of person they wanted to work with and they called it their “Avatar.” They kept that person front-of-mind when they built their business model and made decisions on how they were going to attract customers and the things that went into their value proposition. Now, that concept is already in almost every business book out there, but very few people actually prioritize this task enough to truly accomplish it. When these business owners did that, they were rewarded for it.
2. When they built their business model, they kept it as simple as possible. They narrowed in on just two things on which they would compete in the marketplace to win business and grow their business overall. And they just kept it that simple. They built up their value proposition around those two things and grew to be the best in the market at those two things.
3. They focused on building the strongest foundation for their business. They often referred to the importance of their foundational work with their saying, “pennies turn into dollars.” They did things they knew would pay off in big ways in the long run, even though they knew they were not high-paying activities in the short-term. They saw this route as just building necessary momentum. They did the little things and they did them well, even though they could have chased bigger dollars in the beginning. And because they did the little things well from the beginning, their foundation was solid enough to scale up appropriately to handle the large amount of business when it came their way.
From a tactical standpoint, these three things worked really well to propel their business growth. But what really speaks to me and differentiates this book from other business books I’ve read (and I’ve read MANY), is their zoomed-out approach to growing a business. At a high level, the Benham brothers believe that everything they do in their business is not theirs, it’s God’s. Their business is God’s business – He owns it, and He is ultimately steering the ship. Their mindset as business owners is always that wherever God guides them, He will provide for them. That brought them comfort and steadfastness when they were enduring uncertain times, and gave them the motivation to continue to build because they knew they were building something special.
Read more Blog posts about having God as your business partner: The Leadership Shepherd