Business, The Lord’s Way

There are few startup owners that I can really speak openly to, about the best way to choose a home business option, because I am not certain of whether they will accept a religious take on it. But this is my first advice, to anyone who is open to receiving it:

Look around you, and find a need for something that you know the Lord will approve of. Ask Him to help you find the need that He wants you to fill. Business is always about meeting needs when it is done right, and when you go about meeting the needs that the Lord desires for you to meet, it takes care of YOU, too. If you ask that, then you don’t need to choose based on feasibility or earnings potential, or skills, or anything else. You choose based on what He inspires you to choose. THEN you go back and ask Him how to make it feasible, how to develop a revenue generation plan that works, how to hone your skills to do it, etc. He can move mountains, He can also help us get the right thing, and then help us work out the necessary practical details to make it work.

I can’t tell you if you should start a business. But I do know that if the Lord desires for you to do something, it is His wisdom that you do it, even if it looks like you don’t need it. I felt inspired to seriously build our business just six months before Kevin (husband) was laid off. Anyone looking at us from the outside would have said that for Kevin to go into this business was absurd, and that it would never work. But I knew it was inspired, so we did it. Only now is the wisdom of that inspiration coming to light – as Kevin is finally able to pull out skills that he did not know he had, and that he has fought for so long.

I chose based on my existing talents, which pointed me in a direction that helps other people. See, it isn’t about marketing a business. I didn’t look around and say, “Oh gee, the world needs another web designer!”.  It is about helping a business owner succeed so they can care for their family. In this day, when it is becoming increasingly difficult to survive, and to afford to care for children, my purpose is to enable families to live. THAT is the purpose of helping businesses. I chose web design because it looked like there was a need for one that specialized in helping people in the low end, by offering more affordable options within a specialization that did not exist until we created it. We help them succeed in their business, but we also help keep them from being cheated, and my business allows me to learn how to teach others to spot scams, and to teach ethics and honesty in my profession. Those are all things the Lord approves of. It isn’t about web design. Web design is a skill, which allows me to help others.

Where is the hole in the lives of people around you, that is not being met by existing businesses?

You may not be able to answer that for some time, you may need some additional business exposure first. But if you are inspired to follow this kind of course, a thought will begin growing, and you’ll put the pieces of reason together into something that fills a great need, and that reaches beyond just a goal of learning and earning.

I know that when you seek not just a business, but a means of serving the Lord IN the business, a miracle happens, and a niche forms, and a wondrous thing comes of it.