What’s the most important thing in your business?

Cashflow? Assets? Intellectual property? SOP’s? 

What’s the secret sauce that makes your business stand out from the crowd and how do you protect it? 

Let me tell you, it’s a great deal simpler than it may first appear, and calls for some radical shifts in practice if you plan on long-term growth and prosperity.

The number one thing that sets your business apart is…

YOU!

You are, after all, ultimately in the business of being yourself.

How you show up in the world is an overflow. Your business, ministry, or service to others is an expression of yourself, crystallised into products, publications, or some other platform.

You must protect your number one business asset. It is essential that you take care of your own needs and build your business with the lifestyle you want to create in mind.

https://davidleemartin.com/the-most-important-thing-in-your-business/

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Business was never something that was really kind of my my wheelhouse, to be honest, Larna and I passed it and planted churches for quite a number of years and I was really, honestly quite resistant to the idea of actually going into business at all. And just through a number of circumstances, we were kind of moved into a place where it became very, very apparent that I had to kind of discover a way to engage in business and begin to generate wealth.

00:00:52.080]
That was in keeping with who I am as a person and in keeping with my gifting and my anointing. And that, quite honestly, a job in the kind of usual sense of the word was not going to really cut it for me. And so I we we began to explore ways to make money online, and I ended up going into very much into publishing, writing was something that I always did. We’d actually developed an online Bible school and set up a Bible school online.

00:01:28.220]
So I’d learnt a few things in that. And three, that I’d been exploring ways to kind of rank things in Google and sell things online, etc.. But the real passion in my heart was to share kind of words and share worth three words. So we developed a publishing company and so I myself write. And we also have other people write for us. And by God’s grace, we have really been able to take things from kind of a very much a base level right through to a publishing like self publishing.

00:02:07.550]
It’s me and my laptop essentially right through to a six figure business. And we’re now exploring other opportunities. We’ve done other things along the way and kind of learnt as we’ve gone. But we’re now exploring other opportunities and looking to open the doors to help other people come in and be part of what we’re doing in the sense that we we also recognise that there are other people who share our values and share our world view who would love to begin to kind of share their worth online and begin to kind of build potentially build a business online, whether that’s publishing books, whether that’s developing and selling online courses or kind of just other ways in which we can begin to kind of engage with an audience and potentially then make a living from it.

00:03:06.140]
But I was thinking about business today and just thinking about kind of the most important thing in business and like I can only speak from my own experience because, you know, there are far better businessmen than I, far better, more equipped and wiser people than me in the realm of business. I’m just really speaking from my experience. But I can tell you this, that the number one thing in your business that you have to protect and you may think, you know, it might be you could say reputation, it could be the most important thing is cash flow, all of these other things.

00:03:52.790]
But the honest truth is the most important thing that you need to protect in your business is you OK? You at the end of the day, when it when it boils down to it, particularly if you’re in a kind of a brand business like we are ourselves, where we’re actually providing a service to people or whatever, or we’re actually selling services online or publishing or whatever. You know, at the end of the day, the the number one asset in the business is who you are.

00:04:27.170]
That’s what sets your business apart. That’s what makes your business unique. That’s what that’s why someone would choose to work with you and your company rather than work with someone else. You know, there are lots of people generally in any kind of given niche or given given a space online, there are many, many different opportunities and options for people to choose from. So what really sets us apart in some senses is just who we are and what we bring to the table through our kind of particular way of communicating, a particular way of kind of presenting things, a particular way of responding and interacting with the people that come into our world.

00:05:18.820]
And so it doesn’t it just means that it’s extremely important that you take good care of that number one thing. Yeah. Which means you’ve got to take good care of you. It’s very easy. And this is a mistake that even very recently I found myself falling into. Is that in our kind of in our pursuit, in our ambition, in our intention to see, to help people, in our desire to grow, we can kind of lose sight of the most important thing, which, like I say, is actually you your well-being and the well-being of what you how you show up in the world is really determined by how well you take care of yourself, your your growth in business, your growth in impact, your growth in influence and reach is largely determined by your own personal growth.

00:06:27.280]
And sometimes we can be so kind of head down in the trenches doing the work and just kind of pushing things forward that we expend our energy. It’s like we it’s very easy to run out of fuel. There’s such a in both ministry and business, there’s a danger of burnout. And we’ve seen it so many times, haven’t we? You know, as as people as someone’s influence expands, they just work all the harder. But I don’t believe that God’s design or desire for us is to burn out, OK?

00:07:09.430]
I think that he’s got something better for us as Christian businessmen and business women. And there’s this there’s this great scripture in Ecclesiastes I’m reading from the new King James version here, and it says, As for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth and given him power to eat of it, to receive his heritage and rejoice in his labour, this is the gift of God, for he will not dwell unduly on the days of his life because God keeps him busy with the joy of his heart.

00:07:46.730]
And I do believe that the journey to prosperity, I believe that the journey to kind of really making an impact, the journey to building and leaving a legacy, OK, the journey towards helping more people, building more people, developing and building up a business. I believe that, as the scriptures say here, it should be a joyful one. You know, it shouldn’t be something that we really end up so depleted that we’re no longer in a position to help other people.

00:08:30.870]
We’re no longer in a position to kind of extend our influence and say, I just want to encourage you today, Jim. And if you are in business or any any form of ministry, I mean, if you’re out there and you are looking to share your worth with the world and and your crystalising that into some form of service, some form of online outreach, whether it’s publishing or online courses or blogs or platforms or it may even be a physical business, but even physical businesses now rely so much on what we do online.

00:09:12.780]
I just want to encourage you to remember, in the midst of that building and growing process that you come back and remember what the most important element in your business is and that that is you. And by you, I mean those who are close to you as well, your spouse, your children, the people that are close to you, you know, don’t allow your business to rob from them who you are and how you turn up for them as well, because we can very easily and again, I’m speaking from kind of unfortunate experience in this over the years, because I can be quite obsessive is you can fall into the trap of turning up for the whole world and failing to turn up for the most important people in your life.

00:10:10.620]
So, yeah, just remember that you are what makes your business special. You are what makes your business stand out. You are what makes your business tick. And in the midst of all of that building and growing and pushing through and pioneering, remember to give yourself some room, remember to refresh, remember to always be growing yourself, because what we see outwardly is going to be a reflection of what’s happening inwardly. And if you grow, if you become a bigger person, if you allow the Holy Spirit to speak into your heart, if you allow the scriptures to build you up and expand you, if you allow others to minister to you and allow others to coach you and you remain kind of open and pliable and yielded to the work of God as he develops you as a person, naturally, the overflow of that is going to be the development and the growth of your business or your influence or your impact and say, yeah, God bless you today.

00:11:35.930]
And yeah, I look forward to seeing you tomorrow as we just kind of continue to look, look and seek to encourage our Christian brothers and sisters to really step out, make a dent in the world, and at the same time is making a dent, make some dollars. So, hey, God bless and speak soon. Well, thanks for listening, hopefully. It’s been an encouragement to you today, if you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at

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Davidleemartin.com. Have a great day.