We continue to count down the Top 100 Books for Faith Driven Entrepreneurs with…

Business with Soul

by Michael Cardone

Faith. Prayer. Generosity. Servant leadership . . . While such words rarely make the cut in today’s business acumen, CARDONE Industries has put them into action for nearly four decades to build one of the nation’s most successful manufacturing firms.

With more than 5,000 employees worldwide, Michael Cardone Jr., president of CARDONE Industries, argues that no matter the economic climate, leaders can establish sound principles that will strengthen any company’s bottom line.

Cardone writes, “Deep within, I know I am a ‘businessman with a soul,’ and as a natural extension of myself, I want to create a ‘business with soul.’” And what he started with his father 40 years ago is more profitable, better focused, and stronger than ever.

Click on the book cover to check out the Reviews and Purchase at Amazon

This article was originally published here by our friends at Workmatters.
They aim to equip people to integrate their faith into their work by providing powerful events; relevant blog, video, and discussion group content; and foundational training. Learn more about them here.

– by Catherine Gates

Have you ever felt like you were under attack at work?

You may never have experienced a physical threat, but the workplace can feel like a minefield of challenges designed to threaten our self-worth, our reputation, our relationships and our livelihood. A disagreement with your boss, tension with a coworker or an unhappy customer can at minimum upset your day,  or even cause you to fear losing your job.

If we rely completely on our own strength and abilities fight every battle that arises, we will eventually become worn out and hopeless. But I have good news for you. No matter what type of  battle you may be going through, it doesn’t have to be that way – ever.

As believers in Jesus Christ, we have:

• An Advocate who can help us overcome every trial and tragedy. (John 16:33)

• A Creator who can deliver strength, insight, wisdom and even supernatural abilities when we seek Him and ask for it. (James 1:5)

• A Provider who knows everything we need, which may be different from what we want. (Matthew 6:8)

• A Father who believes in us and even custom-designed a perfect plan and purpose for each one of us. (Jeremiah 29:11)

These aren’t just encouraging words. This is reality for those of us who invest in our relationship with Jesus Christ and seek Him in our work and every area of our lives.

God didn’t design us to work on our own. He designed us to work in partnership with Him, to rely on Him for strength and to turn to Him for direction. We have to do our part – take a step of faith and do our work with excellence – and let God do His part – work in the hearts of others, make wrong things right, and make miracles happen.

If you feel like you’re under attack at work, or if you just feel overwhelmed by the demands and crazy deadlines coming at you, reflect on these scriptures:

• “… Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” – Joshua 1:9

• “It is God who arms me with strength and keeps my way secure.” – Psalm 18:32

• “But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” – 1 Corinthians 15:57

• “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’” – Matthew 19:26

• “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” – Philippians 4:13

• “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.” – 2 Timothy 1:7

God is the One who gives us the ultimate victory when we’re faced with difficult, even devastating circumstances – our part is to turn to Him and seek His will with faith.

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[Special thanks to Workmatters for the cover photo.]

Rusty Rueff is one of the co-hosts of Faith Driven Entrepreneur’s weekly podcast. This post was originally published on Rusty’s blog, Purposed WorKING.

— by Rusty Rueff

“Hold firmly to the word of life; then, on the day of Christ’s return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless.”

Elon Musk didn’t need to go on Joe Rogan’s video podcast.  He certainly didn’t need to partake of Joe’s offering to establish any street cred. But, he did and now he adds another point of scrutiny to his successes or failures.  I’ve long been the advocate of it not being what we do, but how we go about it doing it is what is the real legacy of our work.  We have been fortunate to live in an age when self-made entrepreneurs have been able to create products and services that will shape our future for ages to come.  The same could be true for those who lived in time of Edison, Graham-Bell and Ford, but what is different today is that we gain access and exposure to them directly through social media and the internet.  We not only experience what, we see how.

God calls us to bigger purpose behind the work we do. Today might not feel like we are running a race, that would be too kind. It might feel like we are stuck on a treadmill that is speeding up on us and with no way off. Today, let me be encouraging that the work we are given to do on this earthly part of our journey matters.  This work is marked by how we go about doing it, which is what sets us apart.  It may feel like one project, a particular job or a relationship with a co-worker or partner, comes and goes, feeling like they are going up in smoke, but the impression and impact of how we go about this work can last and even be indelible.

Reference: Philippians 2:16 (New Living Translation)

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If you liked this piece from Rusty, we encourage you to check out his other FDE blogs like:

• “How a Corporate Roadmap Creates Unity for a Company”

• “Purposed worKING: Short Sellers”

• “Systemic Surprises”

More found on his Bio page!

[Special thanks to Stephen Hocking on Unsplash for the cover image.]

— by Aaron Mason

Over the course of my career and certainly in my current role as Director of Expansion at a fast scaling startup, I have talked with thousands of business owners, founders and entrepreneurs from all over the world. I continually run into the lone wolf entrepreneur, someone with a good idea but going it alone. I always bristle a little when they tell me they are “hustling” or “grinding” to “make it happen”. The reason I bristle is that success in business is VERY rarely a one-person show. The “bootstraps” and “self-made” mindset are now a sexy mirage of the entrepreneurial world and somewhat of a false reality.

If you can’t convince at least one talented person to join you in the process, it is going to be difficult to believe that you will be able to convince investors and customers. This is one of the main reasons I am wary of the lone wolf mindset. Often times your first sale is building a team of talent around you who can help you drive and scale the idea further than you could by yourself. 

As a Christian, I have been taught to look at Jesus for answers to my life’s observations and test them against how He showed us to live.  When I view the life of Jesus I see a man who certainly could have taken the world by storm, healed the sick, walked on water and radically changed the world by himself.  But He didn’t, He chose to partner with people, to invite people to run with him.  If you step a little deeper, the relational aspect of the Trinity means that Jesus never did ANYTHING alone. 

In fact as an entrepreneur, we can learn so much from Jesus.  After all, He was more radical and innovative than Richard Branson and Elon Musk combined.  Jesus was announcing, founding and then building a new faith movement that would radically transform societies for thousands of years!  If Jesus’s first move when founding this radical new startup was to go and find people to run with, then it seems to be sound advice for us too.  

Here are three observations about the power of bucking the lone wolf attitude in the entrepreneurial journey.  

1.     The power of combined expertise.  Lone wolf entrepreneurs often miss the opportunity to leverage a broad spectrum of expertise in the launch and growth phase of their business and this can hamper their speed to scale by missing out on insights that can help overcome early hurdles. When you surround yourself (and idea) with people that have talents and experience in other areas than yourself you benefit from a talent-rich combined viewpoint that problem solves efficiently and allows your idea to flourish in new ways. 

2.     The power of the combined network.  The old monicker “it’s all who you know, not what you know” is still fairly accurate (although what you know still holds some weight, see example 1). In my work, I spend most of my day connecting with people throughout various networks globally in hopes of making the right connection to bring shared value to our cause. When you go it alone you are essentially putting your idea/business into a narrowly networked alleyway, however, if you are in the context of a team then you are multiplying a shared network of thousands of connections. Just take a look at the platform LinkedIn if you need to see the spiderweb effect of network and relationships.

3.     The power of accountability and support.  You can find countless studies on loneliness and the power of close relationships and those are absolutely true for business as well. One of the saddest things I have seen in lone wolf entrepreneurs is burn-out as they try to grind their way to success. Why? I would pose it has a lot to do with loneliness. When you share a vision with a team and you are running together on a daily basis to achieve a goal, it is invigorating and energizing. On the days you don’t feel up to it, or are discouraged, you have accountability to continue going because your team needs you, and the support of someone gives you a jolt of energy reminding you of the mission.

So there you have three powerful results of choosing to shake off the lone wolf attitude in entrepreneurship and business. Surround yourself with like-minded people that you can build something with together. Keep grinding, and keep building but for goodness sakes grab a friend, preferably a talented one. 

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[Special thanks to Philippe Montes on Unsplash for the cover art]

At the end of every podcast, we like to ask our guests to share what God has been teaching them in this season of life. This week’s guest is Max Anderson , an entrepreneur and author. He is the founder of Stagecoach Ventures and author of the The Weekend Reader, a deep thinker’s guide to modern culture.

Nahum 1:7

The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.

My grandfather taught me the second verse I ever learned. It was his kind of life verse, which is Nahum 1:7. And any time your life verse is in Nahum you know you’re the real deal person, by the way. So it says the Lord is good. A stronghold in the day of trouble.

And when I went through my most recent episode of feeling anxious and depressed. That was the verse that I clung to quite a bit, because it reminded me of my kinship with my grandfather and also just the message of the verse itself, which is that we are known and we are loved.

And I think when I get anxious often it’s because I feel lonely and unknown. And it’s because I feel unlovely or unlovable, because maybe what I set out to do, it’s not going to succeed the way I wanted it to. And I’m afraid of how that’s going to look or what people will think. 

But at the end of the day, the Lord is still there, and he is a stronghold in my day of trouble. He knows me as I trust in him.

On today’s episode, we invited Max Anderson to come in and help us tackle a difficult yet important topic—depression among entrepreneurs. Max is an entrepreneur and a writer. Each week, he writes something called The Weekend Reader, where he explores one big idea from culture with a handful of suggested articles. Recently, he dove into how depression affects entrepreneurs, and what he found was staggering—entrepreneurs are anywhere from 2-10x more likely to suffer from mental challenges. It’s a topic that’s extremely important, yet remarkably under-discussed, so we thought that with Max’s help we’d push the conversation forward today…

Our hope in bringing this topic to light is that if you, or someone you know, is suffering from depression, that you could take the necessary steps to get help. We know this isn’t easy, and we also know that it’s not necessarily a fun topic to talk about. But it matters. And we’re grateful to Max for bringing this topic to our attention and for also helping us talk about it

We follow a God who cares deeply about His Creation, and that includes you! While much of this podcast is dedicated to stories of success, failure, and everything in between, we hope this episode meets you where you’re at and gives you some encouragement along the way.

As always, thanks for listening.

Useful Links:

Entrepreneurship and Depression

WSJ – Beyond the Confetti: The Darkside of Startup Success