Imagine going to your favorite coffee shop by yourself, like the one I'm in right now, The Tahoe House (www.tahoe-house.com) in Tahoe City, CA. ( I highly recommend it for the food and the atmosphere.) You know what it's like when you get there at that perfect time when it's really quiet and you can get your favorite table? You coffee house junkies know what I mean. You sit down with your favorite beverage and pull out your book or computer and settle in for who knows how long.
Recent Posts
What do wine, marketing and social media have in common? The quality and value of the content does not come overnight but improves with time if the original ingredients were quality also.
The Divine Business model is made up of three parts:
- The ultimate goal for all of us is to have work that feeds us physically, mentally and spiritually.
- Our work should let us contribute to our community and meet our needs by either using our gifts, talents and skills or doing things that help us grow in those areas.
- The ultimate Business success is both profitable and fulfilling by employing people that primarily work in the areas of their gifts, talents and skills.
The Bible Believes in Profit and Can Help Your Business
posted in small business, Business Development
Faith is a huge part of many people's lives and it is an integral part of business and I'm not just talking about "Hoping" business goes well. So, here comes my confession, I'm a Christian and I believe that God and the Bible are Pro Business and Pro Us. I also believe the Bible is full of instruction for business and success. So if you want to know the connection between business, profit and God read on. If you don't then ignore this blog entry and just go on to the other entries on business but realize that if you get any benefit from them then you are benefiting from Gods wisdom in scripture and in life.
All my life I have had a natural tendency to dream about the future, about what could be. I also like to strategize about what it would take to get there and most of my life growing up I was told to get my head out of the clouds and get to work. It happened in school, at home and as a teen it even happened at work. Now I know this sounds bad and maybe you can here the, "Poor is me" fiddle playing but it's not. The truth was that I didn't perform well as a kid growing up. I didn't get my homework done, I didn't get my chores done and I didn't always do well at my job early in life, unless it meant talking to people. That was always something I had no trouble in producing.
A Gap is what happens when people forget to bring together and include vital parts of the whole. Companies get gaps when they fail to recognize and integrate key parts of running their organizations. This can happen with Vision, Strategy and Tactics.
How can two things that appear to be opposites or at least apposed both be true? I don't know... but when they are we call it a paradox and if you want to be successful in business and in life you need to be able to live with Paradox's.
We see Paradoxes all around us, here are a few examples:
- Grace and Truth
- Free will and Destiny
- Old ideas and new ideas
A paradox is something that really troubles us. We look at it and say, "They both can't be true", but they are. The most common problem we find ourselves in is we think we have to choose between two concepts and many times we don't. It's not “either” but “both”. The mother is being kind when she disciplines her child for doing something wrong but the child doesn't think so. To an adult discipline and kindness can both be true but the child says it's either one or the other. You’re either being kind or you’re disciplining me.
When I was young I hated rules and in a funny way I loved rules. I hated them because they were limiting and I was creative and "innovative" as a child. Not a characteristic every parent longs for in their offspring. I eventually realized that I loved rules and structure because they allowed me to understand the boundaries of where I could go and be successful. Just like in any game I couldn't win unless I knew the rules. Once I learned the rules I then was free to create my own path.
Business rules are not the rigid things that tie you up and rob life of excitement and fun. May it never be... No, what business rules are or do is define the treacherous path of business so you don't kill yourself and therefore take you completely out of business. You must pay attention to the rules in business or you will die a slow and sometimes agonizing death.
Probably the number one thing most companies do not understand is that marketing is not a department or an activity but is what every part of a business is about. We call it the Marketing Chain and it is what connects every part of the business to a single focus, creating a customer. Isn't that what we are all in business for? Don't we all need customers to stay in business? Peter Drucker, the father of management and most other things to do with business said that a business's main purpose was only two things, innovation and creating customers.
