Hey! It's been a long time since I've written. It was due to all the unnecessary work stress. But then, I realized we have to continually seek God and He has the solution for all our work worries.
We should not limit God's Word as only a guide for our spiritual life but for our whole life. As such, entrepreneurs can also gain business wisdom. As a business development officer myself, I have been guided (sometimes, rebuked) by the Bible.
1) Hard work is essential.
We need to put in our best efforts, pour out time and detailed attention to our businesses. We need to prepare back up plans and to continue experimenting for growth and development.
2) Trust God's providence.
It is scary to venture to business. There are so many "what ifs". There will be shaky times. Doubt and anxiety may fill our hearts, especially when the stakes are high.
But no matter what happens, we must remember and claim God's promises. We trust in His faithfulness when He said that He has good plans for us, plans to prosper us, to give us hope and a good future.
3) Honor God.
This is the most important of them all. We need to recognize God's supreme authority in our lives. He can see everything. He can search deep within our hearts.
Because we fear the Lord, we run our businesses with integrity. We only conduct fair trade. We treat our employees with respect and dignity, balancing it together with the company's authority to implement rules and policies.
We practice humility. We accept our mistakes and correct them. We also exercise prudence, especially in our words.
I praise God that He has guided us in our business decisions. We had a serious problem before about stagnant store traffic (Btw, we have a small barbershop in the heart of Davao City). It seems an impossible task due to our inconvenient location, our slightly higher price and the saturated market of barbershops.
I asked for guidance and God revealed to me to honor our clients. And so, in all our marketing efforts, we encourage them. We also share their inspiring stories (with their permission, of course).
We also strive to promote our own company values (respect, hard work, humility, trustworthiness, etc) and avoid adding to the toxic messages that popular media infuses to our youth. It can be difficult to promote Christian values in the market because it does not sell as fast as the "me, me, me", instant gratification and consumerism culture.
We also have slipped sometimes but thankfully, we are getting better in filtering thoroughly each word and detail in our messages and in resisting the temptation to go with the flow of the mainstream culture. Sticking to our Christian principles cost us with slower response to our ads but we believe it will be worth it in the end.
God is faithful and He has always been faithful.
New clients started coming in. We were able to survive lots of problems, especially in finances and operations. Praise God for his faithfulness and providence! He has shown His mighty hand and I claim that we will see His goodness in our shop as we strive to put Him first.