The Work to Which We Are Called

Called by God

Who are we?

We are the founders – often the struggling leaders and sometimes the leading strugglers, the victors and sometimes the victims – of small businesses. We are also the substance that keeps most of the socio-economic fabric of our societies together. We are the ideal clients for many large businesses, and we often struggle hard to win a few of those large businesses over to be our clients. We are in many countries the providers of a large percentage of jobs, and in most countries the providers of most good jobs.

Unbeknownst to many of us, yet all of us are: Called by God.

Fathers and Mothers

Many of us are also mothers and fathers, working hard to put food on the table, pay school fees and insurance premiums and maintain a lifestyle to which our families have become accustomed. Not always realising it, we are also possibly the most important spiritual influence in the lives of our families, and employees – with our businesses often feeling like a kind of extended family.

Funders of governments and non-profits

We are one of the main sources of revenue for governments as we are compelled to hand over significant portions of our hard earned money in the form of tax to these governments who often give us very little in return.

We are also the primary source of income for many nonprofits to whom we voluntarily hand over some of our hard earned cash, to enable them to do their great work that makes the world a better place.

The ones for whom not much gets done

We are the people for whom, and by whom, not many books and articles have been written. Most business books tend to focus on leaders of large corporations, or managers who are somewhere in those multi-layered hierarchies that fill tall buildings and business class flights around the world. The business people who have been successful at publishing business books are often high-profile CEOs who were famous enough before writing their book to become a bit more famous from the book; or they are professional consultants or researchers for whom advising, writing, and publishing are part of their careers. Those careers are often built on the ability of those multi-layered corporations to pay hefty fees that enable these consultants to do the research needed to write the books and articles that we then all read.

I am not dismissing the value of this work.

But those are not us.

Who are we?

Small business founders and leaders

We are small-business leaders and owners and founders. We are the victors and victims of the world of sometimes succeeding, and sometimes failing at, running small businesses.

There are not many small business founders and leaders who have the time, the talent, or the resources to write books on what they do, to figure out what is worth writing, and then to somehow get this published.

Furthermore, if you love God, and seek to live out of a place of seeking first God's Kingdom and His righteousness; living out the values of loving the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength, and loving your neighbour as yourself; if you are trying to do all of this whilst being an entrepreneur, there is often even less material and support to help you through the journey of aligning your aspirations of faith and your sense of calling, to the challenges of trying to succeed at business in a world that does not share these deepest core values of the Christian faith.

I love small business. I am passionate about seeing entrepreneurs become all that they can be, and seeing small businesses develop and grow to their full potential.

I have the scars of being one of the statistics of failed startups, and I have experienced the satisfaction of success. I have facilitated hundreds of small business strategy sessions. I have helped founders get funding, and I have helped founders realise that they did not need funding. I have had long and hard conversations with many founders, struggling with faith through the dark nights of the soul, struggling to keep businesses alive, often taking hefty cuts to their own income in the process. Someone once said that you are not a true entrepreneur until you've had to mortgage your house to pay salaries, at least once. Been there. Done that. Got the bank notices. Couldn't afford the T-shirt.

So if you are a small business entrepreneur, I know how painful, and how euphoric that journey you are on, can be.

Here's to each of you heroes out there who gets up every morning, to make the world a better place by running your business as well as you can.

Blessings to you

Ashton

Grow Your Business

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