I was visiting with a friend recently and asked him how his dad was doing. “Not good! He expected to lose his job last week but it didn’t happen, but he expects to lose it soon.”
Those are scary words for a man of God, who takes God’s charge seriously in providing financially for his family. There are many ways in which fathers and husbands are charged to provide for and protect those under their care. In modern-day America, financial responsibility is a big one.
When I was in undergrad, I didn’t like the cutthroat nature of business, the icky competition. Thus, I changed my major slightly from business admin to business teacher. After 10 years in government work, I was well on my journey out of socialism and back to capitalism. It was partly due to the difficulty of any non-capitalist system to define what winning and losing looks like–how to keep score. With seven bosses called my board of education, I had a very difficult time knowing if I was winning or losing. When entering my 3rd superintendency, my wife and I knew it was my last chance to figure it out. Well, I didn’t, maybe I should say, couldn’t. Thankfully, I had at least five years of notice….and that started me on a journey of entrepreneurship. Initially, my wife said, “borrowing money to buy real estate seems risky.” I said, “well, it seems more risky to not have another income stream than a day job–what happens if/when the boss says, ‘we don’t need you anymore?’”
Fast-forward some years and I now strongly encourage people to have a 3-prong attack to their own financial stability, and a job is only one of those prongs.
Cashflow is the name of the game–every businessman knows this, is often painfully aware of the consequences of not watching cashflow. You can lose money for a long time and not go out of business. You can go bankrupt even though you’ve been making money steadily for a long time. I wish they taught this stuff in school…..but they don’t….not even in business college!!
I also strongly believe in the genius of God setting up economics in such as way where the worst part of us (our selfishness) is leveraged to best serve our fellow mankind. Our desire for profit turns us into the most attentive servants [of our customers or prospects] and we have the beauty of price, value, and cooperation that aids us in this system.
So, I am a thankful business owner / operator today. I actually believe EVERYONE should be. They should be, because business really does make us a better human. Which of us would raise our hands and say, ‘I don’t need to serve others better.’ I’m not saying we shouldn’t be employees, I was one for 20 years and currently am employed by a company, albeit a company that I also am a 100% owner of. However, I separate my ‘owner’ role from my ’employee’ role. If you are interested in how I do that, ask me. Nor do I mean a full-time business or anything like that.
Back to risk management….having one prong, being an employee, is more risky than being an employee and also a business owner. Therefore, do something beside your job. You’ll learn things, you’ll start to see life very differently, and you’ll bless people, even if it is in a small way. Recently, I was encouraging someone in this way. The next day, our tiller stopped working and so I contacted him, saying I really needed someone to solve my problem. He said, “I don’t know anything about small engines.” I said, “I don’t care, I just want someone to solve my problem–that means, someone who relieves me of the next step (me shifting my problem of what to do next to him), and then the next, until the original problem is solved.” He did, and we were both blessed by his action!
Consider a local service business–there will always be demand because they can’t outsource that type of work to China, people are always looking to get their problems solved more effortlessly than yesteryear, you have to look people in the eye, so to speak, which builds relationship and community, and there is a great demand for quality which people will pay a premium for (compared to commodities where there is no wiggle room in what you can charge, and little ability for you to increase quality or value)
What do you want me to talk more about…I can take this topic in a number of directions. Let me know!