Transcript 

Welcome to the Hundredfold Business Podcast where Christian men learn the principles, strategies, and tactics to grow their businesses top line, bottom line, and finish line. I want you to discover the secret to applying biblical truth to business growth for the greatest kingdom impact, so in the end you hear from your Heavenly Father, well done. Welcome to the 100-Fold Business Podcast where Christian men learn how to grow their businesses top line, bottom line, and finish line.

And I'm your host Josh Fonger, founder of 4th Soil Ventures, and today I'm looking forward to bringing you essential 12 of 12 about how you can grow a hundredfold business. During these 12 essentials we'll be going to God's Word first and then having it inform us about what the original design intent for good business is and then applying the teaching for the best result. And if you need help along the way you can always reach out to me directly at 4thSoilVentures.com. Today we'll be talking about the last essential, which is essential number 12, and that essential is measure your numbers.

In Psalm 90 verse 12 the Bible says, so teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. And that's what we'll be focusing in on today, not specifically numbering our days per se, but numbering our business and therefore growing in wisdom and our ability to manage it better. So if you're a little fuzzy in the numbers, you don't have a company dashboard, maybe you're not tracking your KPIs, then this is going to be the essential for you that's going to help you really be successful long-term operating your business.

Now before I get to the verse of the day I'd like to share with you a quick story. So just imagine that you're at a local park, you're sitting there on the bench. Before you, you have two basketball games, one on your left side, one on your right side.

And someone comes and sits next to you and they say, hey one of these games they're keeping track of score, another game they're not keeping track of score. Do you think you can tell me the difference? So what do you think? Do you think you'd be able to tell just by looking at the two games which one's keeping track of score and which one's not? Of course you would, right? In the game where they're keeping track of score, you would notice more intensity, faster movements, more sweat, probably tighter defense. So the gameplay would be different than the other game where you'd notice they'd be walking around, not breaking a sweat.

Probably cracking more jokes, probably some wild skyhook shots from half-court. It'd be a totally different game you'd be watching between the two. Now what kind of players are drawn to the game where the score is being kept? Well it's going to be the players that want the accountability, they want there to be a winner or loser.

They're trying to improve, they're trying to gain skills, they want the competition, they want to work hard. And the other ones, the folks that go to the other game, are the ones that actually they don't want the accountability. They're not seeking improvement, they just want something lazy, something just fun, something casual.

They're not really interested in the intensity, they're not really interested in the focus, they're not interested in having their efforts matter. They don't want a winner or loser. This simple illustration is showing the power of measuring your numbers.

You can see that if you want to have a high performing team, you have to track your numbers so your team knows that they're work is being measured and it counts. And similarly, if you want to be a faithful manager, if you want to lead well, you need to have those numbers at your disposal as well. In today's study we'll be going through the familiar record of Jesus feeding the 5,000.

And this is in all four Gospels, but the one that we're going to be going through today is going to be John chapter 6 verses 5 through 14. Lifting up his eyes then and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, where are we to buy bread so these people may eat? He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.

One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, there is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many? Jesus said, have the people sit down. Now there was much grass in the place, so the men sat down, about 5,000 in number. Jesus then took the loaves and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated.

So also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they'd eaten their fill, he told his disciples, gather up the leftover fragments that nothing may be lost. So he gathered them up and filled 12 baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.

When people saw the sign that he had done, they said, this is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world. There is a lot that could be said about this particular passage, about the miracle that Jesus is doing, and really just proving the point that he is the Messiah, he's God with us, and really it strengthens our faith reading through this. But what we're going to actually do is spend our time looking at how numbers are woven throughout this passage today.

This passage actually highlights four different ways that you can use numbers to manage your business. And those four different ways are, one, the numbers are going to help you assess the situation. Number two, the numbers are going to help you manage the work.

Number three, numbers help you record the results. And lastly, number four, numbers help you make decisions. And before we go on, I think it's important to mention why John actually wrote his gospel the way he did.

Let's go to John chapter 20, verse 30. Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. So John wrote his account specifically on purpose with all of these numbers.

I mean, he could have just said Jesus saw a lot of hungry people, so he took the resources he had, a little bit of food, and he multiplied it, and then everyone was filled up, and he had some leftovers. He could have said just like that. But that's not the historical account given.

That's because God cares about the numbers. He cares about precision. He cares about accuracy.

He cares about truth and getting an accurate historical record. God is infinite and measureless, yet he has ordained specific numbers in history and in scripture to give us spiritual truths and divine order. When we take on the identity of Christ, we are ambassadors of him and his kingdom, and so the way to bring him glory is to work in the way he works.

I'm gonna read through a few passages now that I think will make my point. Luke 12, verses 6 and 7. Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies, and not one of them is forgotten before God? Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, you are of more value than many sparrows.

And Psalm 147, verse 4. He determines the number of the stars. He gives to all of them their names. Next, Revelation 21, verses 15 through 17.

And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod.

Twelve thousand stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall.

A hundred and forty-four cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel's measurement. And Psalm 56, 8. You've kept count of my tossings. Put my tears in your bottle.

Are they not in your book? And lastly, Isaiah 40, verse 12. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? In summary, God is literally keeping track of everything. The entire cosmos, creation, everything that's happening is measured exactly to perfection.

And as his image bears, that's our call as we are managing our businesses, is to manage by the numbers, to be overseeing the numbers, to track the numbers, and to be careful and wise and diligent as we're doing it. To mismanage what he's given us, our time, talents, and treasure, would be foolish, would be irresponsible, and would definitely be missing the mark. But when we measure our business activities, we're shown to be more careful, more wise, more faithful with what he's given us, and ultimately be a more godly business manager.

As you go through the Bible, you see a very detailed record of days, of names, of battles, of construction projects. You see a lot of details. And that's because that's how you can know God more, that's how you can know history more, and that's how you can know, ultimately, reality.

And you can't understand the reality of your business, you know, how it stands now, how it's currently operating, the results of your work, and the decisions you need to make without the numbers as well. Now, with that introduction out of the way, let's get to the first point all about assessing the situation. Let me read the first passage again.

So, in this first part of the story, we are seeing that Jesus and his disciples are assessing the situation. We read later on that there's five thousand men, And so with women and children, that could be 10 to 20,000 hungry people. We also see that they would need about 200 denary worth of money, which is about six months wages for an average worker in order to feed all these people.

And all they have right now is access to five barlows and two small fish. The numbers are painting a vivid picture of what the situation actually is and what decisions and what strategic decisions that the leader would need to make. And also, it's going to show us the delta, the change later on.

It's gonna have a baseline number, which we can measure based on what the results are after the work is done. When you're running a business and you're implementing a new program that's supposed to yield a better result, maybe a faster turnaround times, higher profit margin, reduced in waste or expenses, what you need to do first, you need to actually understand the initial conditions so that after you implement your program, you can see what were the results. How close did you get? Did you see the results? Or did what you tried to implement not actually work based on the measurements, the delta? Without a base level understanding of your business by the numbers, it's very difficult to tell of what you and your team are doing, whether it's helping the business or it's hurting the business.

And by how much? Top line, bottom line, finish line. If you're not growing all three, we should talk. Too many business owners are struggling alone.

Stuck in the same cycle, going nowhere fast. Scripture says that in an abundance of counselors, there is victory. And I wanna be that resource for you.

For over 15 years, I've helped hundreds of small business owners break through their limits, build a solid plan and multiply their impact. Go to 4thSoilVentures.com, schedule your free discovery call and let's build your business by the book. Life is too short and eternity is way too long to build it any other way.

So why don't business owners gather these numbers? Well, because it's hard work, right? So it's hard work to gather the correct data and you can waste a lot of time gathering the wrong data. And once you determine to gather this data, these numbers, you need to determine who's gonna do it, how they're gonna do it, how often they're gonna do it, how precise they're gonna be about gathering the numbers and it goes on and on and on. So assessing the situation and developing a series of key performance indicators so you can be measuring the various departments and people and activities of your business is a lot of hard work.

And people tend to gravitate towards what's easy or lazy. And so you have to fight against this human natural tendency because without this data, you really can't proceed with the other steps. You really need to know the foundation first, which is assessing the situation.

Now we're on to point number two, which is manage the work. Let me read the next passage. Jesus said, have the people sit down.

Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down about 5,000 in number. Jesus then took the loaves and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated.

So also the fish as much as they wanted. Jesus is now taking action. He's taking the five bar loaves, the two fish.

He is giving thanks to God and then he is distributing them. And in Mark and Luke's gospel, he goes into further detail and says that he has them sit down in groups of 50 and 100. So there is an organized way that he is multiplying and distributing the food to everyone.

The key point in the numbers process here is that you want to be keeping track of the work as the work is happening. So then in real time, you can make decisions that will make the work more efficient and more effective. In 1 Corinthians chapter 14 verses 40, the Bible reads, but all things should be done decently and in order.

And we can see that Jesus did not just randomly throw out this bread to a mob, a big horde of people. Instead, he organized the work, he organized the distribution, and we could see that it was done in an orderly way. Again, this seems like a very obvious operational strategy.

But what I've seen in practice is that most people default to being careless, to being vague, to being unclear. And instead of saying, I need X amount of product delivered to Y location and Z timeframe using ABC strategy, a lot of times the managers are instead are giving vague direction to saying, hey, can you make this happen over here? And that's about it. And that's different than God, because we know that God is exact, he is precise, he is sovereign control of all things.

And we know that everything is happening perfectly on his timing. And as his ambassadors, that's how we want to run our operations. We want to be managing them by the numbers as precisely as we can.

Now we're on to point number three, which is record the results. So let me read this next passage. And when they'd eaten their fill, he told his disciples, gather up the leftover fragments that nothing may be lost.

So they gathered them up and filled 12 baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. Now we have the recorded results of the miracle. Everybody had a meal, they're all full, and we have 12 baskets of leftovers.

And here is the miracle math. We have five barley loaves, two fish, feeding the 5,000 men plus women and children. And then in the end, that equals 12 baskets of leftovers.

Such an amazing miracle that all four gospel writers write about this account. And they also, all four of them, record the 12 baskets of leftovers, they record the details. So what does this mean for you and your business? Well, what it means is that as you're running your business, you don't want to tolerate running it just by my feelings and guesses, running things in the dark.

Instead, you want things to be in the light. You want to have accurate data. You want to run things based on true, accurate data, which is going to help hold you and the team accountable to the decisions you're making.

Your team is going to grow in their faith in you and your leadership. If they see that you have this discipline of keeping track of the numbers. And also, they are going to be way more engaged knowing that there is a report card of numbers given maybe every week, every month, every quarter, based on the work that they're doing.

They'll know that their work matters, that it's being recorded, and that they're going to be rewarded for it. In this passage, there was a goal to feed the 5,000. And we can see that Jesus, with the assistance of his disciples, they're able to do that.

And they're able to do that with a surplus of 12 baskets. And this is what you want for your business. You want there to be goals set where you and your team can celebrate when you exceed the goal and you have the surplus.

And if you don't hit the goal, that you can have a working session where you can figure out what went wrong and how to change the future. But either way, the numbers, the records, are going to give you the ability to have those celebrations and to have those work sessions and to get everyone way more engaged. But we know that a lot of people don't like keeping these kinds of records because it means that they're going to be held accountable.

And they prefer to keep things in the dark. They prefer to keep things hidden. They prefer to not have to show their results.

And they prefer to live with excuses instead of living the truth, because sometimes the truth can hurt. But you as a leader can't lead like this. You need to have clear data, which shows when you're going the right direction, and also data that shows you when you're going the wrong direction so that you and your team can make changes.

Which brings us to our last point of the day, point number four, which is making decisions. Let me read this next passage. When people saw the sign that he had done, they said, this is indeed the prophet who has come into the world.

And we can make a similar decision, right? We can get this data, we can get the records, and we can make the same decision that yes, Jesus is the Messiah. Without the numbers in this story, we might have some doubts. It might be unclear, but because of the data, because of the records that were kept, it's very obvious and very clear that Jesus is, again, the Messiah.

With the numbers that you're gathering in your business, you want to use them to make decisions as well. Maybe some numbers will help you prove to stay in the same course. Other numbers will say, hey, you need to change direction.

And other numbers, they might be unclear. And then you would say, we need to gather more data in this area, maybe a deeper focus, maybe more tools. But no matter what you're gathering, it's going to help you make decisions.

But there is a stubborn, sinful, prideful tendency in all of us to just keep doing what we've been doing in the past, to stay the course, to avoid tough decisions, to avoid the pain of change, and to avoid taking a look at reality and making those tough decisions. I once had a client that had three businesses. One of them was quite large, and the other two were smaller and newer companies.

And I'd been contracted to focus on the larger company, helping that grow. But as we were working together, I said, what about these other two companies? Do you have the numbers on those? And he said, well, no, I don't really track the numbers, don't really have the numbers handy. And I said, well, why don't you get those numbers? We can take a look at them.

And eventually, after a few weeks, he was able to gather some numbers on those companies so we could make some decisions. On one of the small businesses, we found that it was actually making a pretty good profit margin. It wasn't very big yet, so we had to change some of the systems, we changed some of the management practices, we changed the way it was organized, to help it scale, to help it grow, and we could be doing just fine.

But the other small company was not doing so well. It truly was the definition of a money pit. A lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of energy.

And the more time it went on, the more money he was gonna be losing. And we did some analysis and realized, even with a lot of effort and more investment, it still wasn't gonna make any money. And if it ever did, it would be barely breaking even.

So now that we have the numbers, we were able to do what he didn't really wanna do, but now that we have the numbers, it was the wisest thing to do, the only smart thing to do, which was to shut down the business, to stop the bleeding. Up until this point, he was kinda just keeping his head in the sand, not really wanting to see numbers, because he had a feeling they probably weren't very good. But again, being confronted with reality, with the truth, you could see very clearly, there's no way out for this company, and so the decision was simple to make, and so he was able to make the decision and then focus on the two companies that really needed his efforts.

Decisions are difficult as business owners, but with clear numbers, with clear data, you can, again, determine where you are, how you're progressing, what your results are, and it's gonna really aid, like it did for him, aid in decision making. So is tracking the numbers of your business biblical? Of course, yes. In order to be careful and vigilant and wise and faithful in your management of your company, you really need to know the numbers.

The Bible says to know well the condition of your flocks and to pay attention to your herds. And having careful records allows you to be sober-minded with the truth so that you can make good decisions, good judgments, based on careful records. In Revelation, we see that Jesus is gonna be opening the books, and every thought, word, deed, everything we've ever done in our entire lives is gonna be weighed, our hearts are gonna be weighed, our works are gonna be weighed, even a glass of cold water is gonna be weighed, every decision is gonna be weighed, and so we know that our work matters and that it's being measured.

That is why it's so important to not play out our life and our business like the basketball game in the beginning of the story where they weren't keeping track of score, as if everything they did didn't matter. You wanna make sure that you have the right team jersey on, and then you wanna get to work and work hard and keep track of score. And of course, you're gonna sweat more and you'll probably take a few more elbows along the way, but in the end, you will be happy and satisfied with the result, and so will the scorekeeper.

So go measure your numbers, because Jesus is. And I think I can speak for all of us that we all wanna hear in the end, well done. So in summary to Essential 12, measure your numbers, the four points are, number one, assess the situation, number two, manage the work, number three, record the results, and number four, make decisions.

And if you need any help setting up KPIs or dashboards, you can always reach out directly to me at fourthsoilventures.com. Now for the application for today's lesson, and as always, prayer is gonna precede progress for anything here. So the first thing you wanna do is assess the way you're currently measuring your numbers and organize it to make sure that you have a clear way of how you're measuring it, who you're measuring it, how often you're measuring it, where you're recording it, and making sure that there's a cadence to it and a cadence of the reporting of those numbers. The second thing you wanna do is probably you're gonna wanna measure some new things.

So some new data, some new ratios, some new aspects of your business you wanna start measuring. So make a list of those, and then again, divide those by person, by department, by focus area, and make sure you have a way to measure those new areas of your business. The third thing you wanna do is tie specific business objectives and focus areas to specific goals.

You don't wanna just say, we wanna grow our sales. You wanna say, we're gonna grow our sales in the third quarter by 7% by using this specific strategy. So you wanna have very specific goals, and a way to do that is to set up SMART goals.

So that familiar acronym is, they're gonna be specific goals, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. And lastly, you wanna start making decisions by the numbers. So either you're gathering those numbers, you're gathering these reports, you and your team can see very clearly and very logically how you are managing by the numbers.

It's gonna give them confidence in the future because they're gonna know that you have a level head and you have the discipline to make decisions based on real data and real results. So now, grow your business's top line, bottom line, and finish line, and do it by measuring your numbers and running your business in the truth. Finally, if you like this episode, make sure to like, subscribe, share it with a friend.

And as always, I appreciate you brothers for tuning in. Until next time, grace be with you.