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 Hundredfold Business Podcast, where Christian men learn how to grow their top line, their bottom line, and their finish line.

And I'm your host Josh Fonger, founder of 4th Soil Ventures, and today we're going to be talking about the second of 12 essentials to growing a hundredfold business, a business that honors God as it grows, daily making an impact for the kingdom. During these 12 essentials, we'll be looking at God's Word first and having it inform us of how to grow and run a business, instead of looking at the latest business book, the one that's popular right now, the latest guru, and having them tell us how to grow a business. And of course, after all these essentials, if you need help with implementation, you can go to 4thsoilventures.com and you can schedule a call with me there and I can help you out.

Now, as most of you already know, I spent the last 15 years as a business coach and a business consultant helping companies grow, and one of the first steps that I always work through with any of my clients in the beginning is to do a comprehensive business assessment, where I can find out more about what's going on in the company, what the products and services are that they sell, their pricing, sales, marketing, financial situation, and also find out some of the problems that are going on, some of the objectives they're trying to get to, and learn more about the owner and their ambitions. And this is still what I do today. And what I can tell early on with doing hundreds of business assessments at this point, is that if the owner has neglected to do this essential, I know that the company is going to plateau.

It's going to stall out. It's not going to grow. And at this point, you probably already know what essential I'm talking about.

And of course, that essential is having a company vision. Or, as I like to say, the leader needs to articulate their vision. And that's why nearly every business book you read is going to stress the importance of having a vision, the importance of your team buying into your vision.

And this goes for solopreneurs, this goes for startup companies, this really goes for any company that it has the ambition to grow. But what I've actually seen in practice is that, yes, of course, everyone knows they need to have a company vision, and that it should be written down, and that everyone should be following it. But again, in practice, most companies don't have it written down.

They don't have it formalized. The owner is not really sure, not really confident. And if they do have it written down, it's usually collecting dust in their Google Drive, not really being leveraged to its full use, not really being an asset they can use to lean on, to lead them forward.

Instead, they write it, and then they hide it away. Today, I plan to share with you not only the importance of articulating your vision from a biblical perspective, but also share with you how God's done it in the Bible. And through that, we're going to be drawing out some principles, some strategies, some tactics that you can use in your own business.

So, if you have never taken the time to write your company vision, or your mission, or some of the other strategic documents to guide your company forward, this is going to be episode for you. In today's episode, we will be reading from a passage in Deuteronomy 5, verse 22, where God is articulating his vision to his people. And for context, this is a message delivered by Moses 40 years after being in the wilderness, and he's restating and telling the law to the people of Israel.

So, here we go. These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice, and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone, and gave them to me.

One of the greatest examples of leadership articulating a vision to the people they're in charge of has to be the giving of the law by God to his people at Mount Sinai. Now, of course, God has been articulating a vision to us ever since creation, right? Through Adam and Eve, through the prophets, priests, kings, ultimately through Jesus, and through the disciples who are empowered by the Holy Spirit. And all of that culminated in what we have right here, the Bible.

This pattern of leadership communicating to those under their authority is the way God has set up the universe. You can see this in the way he's patterned or structured. Fathers leading their families, and governments leading the nations, and elders leading the church, and you, the business owner, leading your employees, your team.

So this pattern is not going away. And we know that when leaders neglect to lead, chaos is the result. As Proverbs 29 verse 18 says, where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.

So going back to the law given at Mount Sinai, what I want to do now is take the principle of articulating your vision, and through this example draw some strategies and some tactics which you can apply to your business. And the three essentials that we're going to use as a framework is that one, you must speak the vision, and two, you must write the vision down, and number three, you must teach the vision. If you miss one of these three elements, ultimately your vision is going to get distorted and likely forgotten.

And you can see an example of this clearly in the golden calf incident, right? So God and Moses, they're on top of the mountain for 40 days, and during that time period people of Israel, they forget about them, and they make their own God to follow. It says they rise up to play, and ultimately they did what was right in their own eyes. And that's what you don't want, right? You don't want your employees, when you're gone, to just come up with their own way to work and take you off the vision.

I now want to extrapolate some points from this passage that I think can be drawn out implicitly. Though it's not explicitly commanded, I do think that what I'm talking about can be put forth into most business contexts successfully for articulating your vision. And the first point or the first strategy is going to be you must speak it.

You must speak the vision. Let's read that passage of Scripture again, starting from Deuteronomy chapter 5, verse 22. These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice, and he added no more.

So we have here is the Lord communicating with his people, primarily through Moses. And there's three points I want to draw from this passage. The first point is who is speaking.

In this case, it's the Lord speaking. It's God speaking. And so what do we know about that is that he has the most authority, right? He is the highest being.

There's no one higher than him. And so you, in your organization, you being the leader, the founder, the owner, you need to be the one to speak. You can't have this be in a memo.

You can't have this be done by the HR director, a vice president. It needs to be you. It needs to be the one with the most authority.

And what matters is that the person with the most authority, which is you, also needs to be a credible person, right? People need to have faith in you. They need to believe in you. You need to have integrity so that when you speak, people listen and they say, okay, the owner is speaking.

In this case, the example is God speaking and people listened. The second point is how they speak. In this example, the Lord spoke and he spoke authoritatively.

It was very loud. It was so authoritative that it caused dread. It caused fear.

It caused reverence, respect. People were afraid to hear God because of his power and his might. Now, you don't have to speak necessarily directly like that, but it should be spoken in a way that's persuasive, that's authoritative, that's serious.

What your people and you are spending 40 plus hours a week doing each week matters and you need to convey persuasively that vision, that message, so they know this is important and I should listen and this owner believes in it and I should really consider what they're saying. And the third point is to make it an event. What we can see here is that God made it a big event, right? There was cloud.

There was lightning. There was thunder. There was fire.

There was loud trumpet blasts. There's a lot going on and it was an event. They weren't going to forget about it.

And so the same should be true when you are delivering an important strategic visionary message to your people about where the company is going, how it's going to get there, is you want them to remember it. You want them to know symbolically that this is important and the way you present it matters. Now we're on to the second essential of articulating your vision.

The first one being you must speak it. The second essential is you must write it down. So let's go back to the same passage and we'll read the section that conveys this message in Deuteronomy chapter 5 verse 22.

And you wrote them on two tablets of stone. So we see that God literally wrote down on two tablets of stone with this finger the law for the people of Israel to follow. Now for you what I want to do is draw out some elements in this passage that we can use to improve the way your vision is received.

The first one is very obvious. You need to write down your vision. And other strategic documents.

If they're not written down, it's in your head. If it's not written down, it's not tangible. You can't see it.

You can't go back to it. You can't reference it. You can't really use it if it's just verbal.

And so God took it, it was written down, and it was saved inside the Ark of the Covenant. And people could actually see tangibly, hey this is here and we need to follow this message. The second key you can draw from this passage is that it was written in stone and it didn't change.

It stayed consistent. And so people could trust it. They could follow it because it wasn't changing.

Like a Google Doc that might be modified from week to week and month to month as the business environment shifts, the strategy shifts. And that's what people don't want. They actually want to have a clear vision that's consistent and they want to be on a mission that's consistent and they can jump on board and feel confident.

So you don't want to change it and you don't want to change it. If you do change it, you gag out here. If your direction is set in a poor way, it's better to change it sooner rather than later and then be consistent from then on out, as opposed to sticking with a bad vision or a bad mission.

The third quick point is that this will take you some time. You can't rush it. God of Moses, 40 days to put together the law.

And so for you to put together your company's vision and mission and other strategic documents, it might take a while. That's okay for you to pray and wrestle with God and create a draft and delete it and start over and work it for a while. That's just part of the process.

And ultimately, it's going to produce a better end result that you believe in, you care about, that you can really focus on your team as well. And certainly you can get help producing this document. That's certainly what what I do.

As Proverbs says, without counsel, plans fail. But with many advisors, they succeed. And now we're on to the third and final point about articulating your vision, which is you must teach others.

And I'm going to read the whole passage again so you can catch the last part, which really talks about this transfer of vision from the leader to the people. These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness with a loud voice, and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me.

So really that last part, and gave them to me, is what we'll be focusing on and draw out some conclusions. The first point is that God taught Moses the law. So you as the leader of your business need to be teaching your people, your leaders specifically, about your vision and what it looks like and how to follow it.

The next point we can see is that the transfer went, yes, from God to Moses, but then it went from Moses to the people. And so it's spreading. And so that's the question for you, is that you may have taught a leader or two about the vision for your business, but have you put it into practice so it's spreading to other business? This could be in your processes, in your procedures, in your training, and is it actively a part of your weekly meetings, your monthly meetings, your quarterly meetings, your annual meetings? So are you embedding this into the culture of your company and teaching the next layer down? And then the next point, which is a little redundant, but it's this idea of people who are taught the vision and the mission, then teaching the next in line and carrying that forward.

And so it's continuing to go down layer after layer after layer. So it's duplicating. And the question for you would be, do you even put this new vision and the mission into how you recruit and how you hire? So the newest and the greenest people in your business also are on fire for the vision you've set before them.

Here's a passage just a few verses later in chapter 6 verse 7 that I think will clearly illustrate this point. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and you should talk of them when you sit in your home and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. So let's look at this passage and then draw some conclusions because we can see God wanted this vision to stick and he transferred it to a leader Moses and then from Moses to the people and the people to their kids and their grandkids.

So we have multiple layers, multiple generations, and we've got it between their eyes, we have it on their gates, we have it on their hand, we have it everywhere. So the idea is we're not going to forget about what God told us. We're not going to forget the vision.

And so for you that's the question. So the vision, if you have produced one in the past, has it been forgotten and why? And if you're going to produce one in the future, which I think you should, what are you going to do and how are you going to invest in such a way that it sticks and it stays the test of time? Now we know that after the presentation of the law, God was then able to hold his people accountable to this because they knew the vision. Through blessings and cursings he's able to then direct them like, hey you're following a good or no you're not following so good.

And similarly with your team, with your employees, you're able to hold them accountable as well. They'll know clearly where we're going, how are we going to get there, and then you can hold them accountable to that vision because they know what it is. And of course if they don't like the vision they can leave the company.

But whatever you do, you don't want to keep staff who have not bought into your vision and your mission. So after it's been released and everyone knows what it is and it's very clear, then if they're not interested they do need to be let go. And you can see a good example of God letting people go in Exodus 32 verse 27.

And you can see in one day God had to fire 3,000 people, but I would fire your staff differently than that. You probably can't do it that way anymore. But let's just say that he was not interested in keeping people there who were not excited about his vision, his mission, and achieving it and going to that promised land.

And similarly for you, if people are not excited about your vision and mission, that's okay. But they shouldn't work there. It's going to be cancerous for the team and it's going tohold you back from getting there.

So ultimately you want a clear vision. People can say yes to or no to, but you don't want people who are against you or who are lukewarm or on the fence. And here's a passage in the Bible that I think is going to explain the reason why.

It's in 1st Corinthians chapter 1 verse 10. Let me find it and read it to you. I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

This is what you ultimately want. You want unity. You want your people to have the same mind, the same judgment.

You want them to be on vision and have the same mission together and be unified so they can work together. They can get a lot more accomplished. And of course this passage is about the church and how it's organized, but the very same things can be said about a business, right? When people come together, you want them to be unified around a common direction and the way to get there.

And so hopefully this passage helps you. So in summation, here are the three essentials to articulating your vision. The first is you must speak it.

The second is you must write it down. And the third is you must teach it. Now I want to leave you with a few action steps after watching or listening to this podcast, and they might take some time to get done.

And of course if you need help, you can always reach out. The first one is you need to come up with your company's vision or where is your company going? What is that guiding North Star? And a good way to think about it is to project 30 years into the future and think about what you've accomplished. Think about where you've been.

And then write from that perspective about where you're going. And so you have to kind of think broad in a big vision. But what do you want to accomplish? What impact do you want to make as a business to your customers, your employees, the industry, the world? What kind of impact are you going to make? What is that vision? And if you have an old vision, of course you should draw that back up, dust it off, and see does it still hold true? And if not, what updates do you need to make to it so that you can re-release it in a way that's confident and solid? And of course for this step and all the other steps, you really need to be praying.

Prayer is going to precede progress in these areas. The next application step is to develop your mission. So if the vision is where you're going, then the mission is going to be how are you going to get there? So who are you going to work with? What are you going to do? How is your company going to produce those products and services? And what's going to be unique about it? And answering those types of questions, you're going to develop this mission.

Like what we do day-to-day is going to get us ultimately to this vision. And there's going to be alignment there. And if you've already created your company's mission, then of course you can dust that off, look at it, see what needs to be updated and changed.

Maybe nothing at all. But if you need help on any of these, of course again you can reach out. And the last application step is that you need to plan and prepare to present your vision and your mission, both speaking it and in writing and teaching your whole company.

So that's the next step is how are you to go about integrating this in a way that sticks, that's impactful, that ultimately leads everyone together in that straight line towards the vision. And so you have to make sure that you actually think this through, plan it out, prepare it, and make it memorable. Before you go ahead and develop your vision and your mission, the one thing I would recommend doing is going back to Essential 1 in this podcast series, which is all about elevating your mind or having the mind of Christ.

I think that as you renew your mind in God's Word, it's going to help you develop these in a way that glorifies God. Because as you're doing your work, you want to make sure that your business and everything you do is done in the glory of God. And thinking that through and praying about it is going to help you produce a vision and a mission that gets you inspired and excited each day, knowing what you're producing is going to have eternal ramifications.

Whatever you do, don't sabotage the growth of your business by skipping this essential step of articulating your vision. And then make sure to tune in for the next episode, which will be Essential 3, and it's going to be all about how to master yourself. It's going to be a hard one, but I think you're going to take a lot from it.

Finally, if you like this episode, make sure to like and subscribe to the channel. And if you think it's important that other business owners learn how to integrate their faith into their business so that they're equipped, they're encouraged, and they're released into the marketplace so they can spread the light in places that are often dark, then make sure to comment and write a review and share this with others in your network. I appreciate you, brothers, and until next time, grace be with you.