This article was originally published here on the author’s website.
Check out “Serving Performs” for other quality content!

— by Cheryl Bachelder

Throughout my career, I’ve been involved in lots of discussions about compensation for business leaders. Perhaps the most common thesis for motivating executives is “make them feel like owners.” That typically leads to a discussion of bonuses and stock awards — that are paid when goals are met.

No doubt, owning shares in the company where you work can be motivating. It focuses you on the shareholder — who has provided the capital for your business. When their shares increase in value, you have served them well and you participate in the gain. The ownership approach also might inspire you to treat the money of the firm, as if it were your own. Frugality is a good idea in business. These are benefits of the owner mentality.

But one flaw with the owner mentality — is when it becomes only about you — and the benefits that you accrue from meeting your goals. Ownership can become a perspective that causes you to primarily think about your personal gains — and to think less about all the other people who contribute to the accomplishments of the company.

A better word for Dare to Serve leaders to consider is the word stewardship. Stewardship is defined as: the careful and responsible management of something that has been entrusted to your care. That would include all of the people and resources that you influence in your role.

The benefit of the stewardship mindset — is that it starts by thinking about others, not yourself. Imagine your current leadership role through this lens.

What has been entrusted to your care? Are your actions carefully and responsibly stewarding these resources? How does a stewardship mindset help you envision a different set of outcomes for the enterprise? Is there any conflict between being a good steward and a good owner? How will you settle that tension?

Take these questions to your work team and discuss — it may unlock new potential for results.

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[Special thanks to Andrew Neel on Unsplash for the cover photo]

— by Adam Metcalf

When we started ZeeMee, I would have defined myself as passionate follower of Jesus. We all follow something or someone. I follow the teachings of Jesus.

My good friend was our Founder and CEO. He was a fundraising machine. We raised a $1m in seed round as completely green and naive Founders. We grew fast via splash marketing. We literally dressed up in orange spandex and hosted dance parties at college conferences. We wore jorts to keep it classy. This mascot was known as Ginger Fro. He became a conference legend.  We were hard to miss.

Splash marketing is an art and we were masters of the art. We soon, thereafter, raised an A round from a highly respected VC in Silicon Valley. They were partial to Ginger Fro. When your marketing strategy is orange tights and dance parties, you are undoubtedly going to have elements of a cowboy culture. We were definitely shooting from the hip and our mistakes were plentiful.

Despite missteps in our business model and product, we raised a Series B and we continue to grow as a company.

Very few companies raise an A round, let alone a B round. And even fewer have as much fun as we did. Sometimes you start to measure your success via these metrics and you pray earnestly that the momentum continues.

Throughout this time, I was pursuing Jesus. I was reading the Bible daily, pressing into prayer and serving in my local church and community. And yet, I missed it.

As I reflect back on the early years of ZeeMee, I was consumed with self-centered prayer. I was praying constantly for the success of ZeeMee and for our investors to have a great return. Don’t get me wrong, these aren’t bad things to pray for! They just aren’t the best things.

I spent far less time praying for the team at ZeeMee. Less time pouring into their lives. Less time learning about their passions, interests and beliefs. I often failed to display compassion, empathy and patience. Conveniently putting aside what Jesus taught for quick iterations, increased productivity, and wanting to see more hours in the seat. All the while, the real beauty and meaning of the journey…the lives of this fabulous team was staring me in the face. But I missed it.

As our business model and product changed, some of these amazing people and relationships became casualties of poor decisions and leadership. I was a fool.

I’ve been extremely blessed to have mentors that completely changed my very temporal perspective on being a Founder. These mentors include Dustin Keele, Michael Dittmar, Eric Quan, Henry Kaestner, Rusty Rueff and others that I have been so thankful to learn from. And when I say mentor, I simply mean that I learned from their experience, their mistakes and their humility. I don’t meet with any of them regularly, or even see them often. I attended NCS, Inklings and listen to the FDE podcast. In that way, these type of mentors are available to us all and I highly encourage you to follow in the footsteps of brothers and sisters that have gone before us.

I learned from these brothers that I need to be far less focused on success and far more focused on souls. Focus on the precious souls of the wonderful people that you are blessed to work with. Pray for them. Love on them. Pour into them. It is these relationships that truly make you successful.

My prayers have changed. I still pray that ZeeMee will succeed financially and our investors get a great return. But it isn’t my central focus. My focus is to show the love, kindness and compassion of Jesus to those around me and deeply love the beautiful people of different faiths, beliefs and backgrounds that make up our company. I most certainly don’t always do this well, but I wholeheartedly believe this is what it should all be about.

Your team is your real success. I am so thankful for our diverse team at ZeeMee. They are from all different walks of life, customs, and faiths, and I consider myself truly blessed to spend a single day in the startup trenches with them.

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[Special thanks to Kai Pilger on Unsplash for the cover photo]

This article was originally published here on the author’s blog.
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— by Mats Tunehag

She was amazed and perplexed at the same time. She was treated with respect and dignity. She was a woman challenged with disabilities. But her life had changed. With no or little prospect of ever getting a job, she was now working in a manufacturing company. She was creative, she had made friends, and she made money.

Women in this country and religious context were treated as second-class citizens. If they had mental or physical handicaps they were often further down.

But the company she worked for employed and offered jobs with dignity to women with disabilities. It was unheard of, and it made a huge difference not only in her life, but also for the other women who worked there. It even had a transformational impact on families and the community.

This woman asked herself: why is this workplace so different? It changes lives on many levels. She knew that the founder and CEO was a follower of Jesus. So she told herself: If that’s what it means to be a follower of Jesus, I will also follow him. It was a huge and risky step for a handicapped woman in a conservative Muslim environment.

What brought her to Christ? A gospel tract? A Jesus film? A Bible study? No, it was human resource management informed by biblical values, underpinned with prayer. Ultimately, it was, of course, God’s doing.

This true story from the Middle East highlights some important issues as we serve God and people in and through business. In BAM as we talk about the quadruple bottom line: financial, social, environmental and spiritual. BAM is not doing business with a touch of ‘churchianity’. BAM is not Christians just doing social enterprise. BAM recognizes God as a stakeholder who has a vested interested in the multiple bottom lines and multiple stakeholders.

We can and should set goals in each of these four areas individually, as we plan, operate and evaluate.  However, we also need to recognize that these areas of impact overlap, interact and connect; the result is greater than the sum of its parts, as we learn from the story from the Middle East.

The CEO of the manufacturing company served faithfully with excellence, professionalism and integrity. God used that to draw a woman to himself. There was a kairos moment.

We cannot convert anyone by pushing through or forcing a spiritual impact. This is essential as we do business as mission. We must serve our customers, staff and suppliers with professionalism, excellence and integrity, and trust God for the kairos moment.

In the words of the apostle Paul: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused it to grow.”

Serve people and trust God for impact.

Serving your employees well can lead to strong teams and low turnover. Learn more in our article, “How to Reduce Turnover as a Faith Driven Entrepreneur.”

As Faith Driven Entrepreneurs we know that you’re looking for resources to encourage and equip you on your journey. We also know that a big part of that is finding a community of like minded leaders both to provide insight and counsel and in some instances to financially invest in the work God is doing. Those are some of the many reasons why a growing number of fund managers, investors have come together to star the Faith Driven Investor. In the coming weeks you’ll see us share more in a 4 Part Podcast Series introducing it.

We also know there is nothing like the power of getting together. There’s something catalytic about spending time praying for what God might do in this space. What started off as a small gathering of 30 friends we had to cap out at 175 leaders of the Faith Driven Investor gathering in Deer Valley, Utah for a day of prayer and shaping the conversation.

So many ideas that came from last week … It was so encouraging to hear ideas about things happening in real estate, private equity, employee resource groups and so much more. In the surveys we’ve already heard a desire for future events, content ideas, and possibly the idea of working groups to evaluate deals together … And thats just a few of them! There’s no way we can summarize them in one email, which is why we wanted to create this website for those conversations to continue.

This is very much in its beta form, but we hope that its something that you’ll be proud of and want to share with friends. In the coming weeks we’ll be adding blog posts with slides and notes from many of the speakers. We’ll also continue to update the Asset Map that captures who is serving in this movement and we’re planning to process the input on the Unifying Principles and have an updated version up by the end of August. We’re grateful for pastoral friends like Chip Ingram, Tom Nelson, Toby Kurth who have offered to provide theological leading to many of the things we discussed as the conversation continues. We also know that many smaller working groups might spring out of this for different spaces or to tackle some of the Areas Where Action is Required.

While things are fresh we wanted to highlight a few tangible ways we’d invite you continue to shape the conversation and lead out as a voice in the movement.

Encourage Others to Join the Conversation – If you know friends who want to join the conversation but couldn’t attend the event we encourage them to sign up for a monthly newsletter where we’re going to bring the best podcasts, articles, videos into one place.

Listen to the First Episodes of the Podcast – We’ve got four beta episodes we’ll be releasing over the next two months. You can start by listening to Henry Kaestner and Aimee Minnich on the introductory episode. And please be sure to send us your thoughts on format, topics and guests we should be consider. Then, stay tuned for these upcoming shows…

• Pete Kelly unpacks how Apartment Life is making both a Spiritual Impact and delivering a greater Financial Return.

• Trae Stephens talks about this idea of Abundance vs. Scarcity and Competition vs. Creation through the lens of Scripture.

• Christeen Rico talks about how Faith Communities are Strengthening Culture and Companies at Apple, Dropbox, Google.

• Frank Chen talks about being a Servant Leader to the Entrepreneurs they work with at Andreesen Horowitz.

Share Your Thoughts and Thoughts Shaping You – Yesterday on the blog we shared the prayer that Mats Tunehag shared with us last week at the event. We’d encourage you to check that out and let it recalibrate your heart as you start your week. Please send us posts, articles, videos, and/or sermons that you’ve written, or share what is shaping you so we can share with others.

We’ll continue to keep you updated about future gatherings as one way to spotlight work God is already doing to bring this community together. Many friends in this space are planning to be at the Christian Investment Forum that John Siverling hosts August 14-16 in Asheville, North Carolina and we’d encourage you to check that out!

We’re grateful to be on this journey with you and excited for what’s to come!

The Faith Driven Investor and Faith Driven Entrepreneur Team

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 Mark McClain. As CEO of SailPoint, Mark brings to bear over 20 years of experience developing and leading innovative technology companies.

Psalm 119:105

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.

I’ve sort of been camped out for I don’t know, three years now, I guess to the old King James version of Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and light into my path. And the reason I think that’s such a critical concept, particularly here in the West. I don’t think that was true around the world. We are big on long-range planning and vision at where we’re heading over a long period.

And I always like to say, you know, we don’t articulate it, but we really want God to say in that passages, you know, your word is a searchlight that shines far down the path and shows me where I’m going years and years.

And it says, no, your word is the light to my feet. Right. It says, I’m going to get to see the next step or maybe to write that God’s unfolding before me. And sure, I am forced to make plans and think ahead as part of stewardship. Right. I have to think that way about my personal life, about our company, about the people that God entrusted to me, my children, my wife. 

But more and more, again, as I have gotten older and hopefully a little wiser, I really have learned that that’s what it means to walk by faith. Right. You are walking a step or two at a time. And when we try to get out ahead of God and look too far around the corner, I think we end up being regretful about that. We’re not designed to be looking too far ahead, we’re designed to be kind of holding God’s hand, walking a day or a step or two at a time. And that’s what trust and faith are really all about. 

You know, people say, what’s your long play? I don’t really know. But I’m enjoying this journey. And I do see a few steps ahead of what probably are likely steps, but I don’t really know what five or 10 or 20 years of life looks like. I don’t know if I’m going to be here in five or 10 or 20 minutes. So why would I spend a lot of time thinking about So that’s a powerful concept for me. That simple little passage about, you know, the word and therefore God’s presence in this moment.

Mark McClain’s entrepreneurial journey is a unique one. But if you find yourself in a startup or new venture that you didn’t anticipate starting a few years ago, Mark’s story will be both helpful and encouraging. He will be the first to tell you that he didn’t envision himself as a creative entrepreneur. Yet, when he found himself frustrated by the difficulty of creating change in mid-size and large organizations, his desire to create sparked a shift in his career and his life.

Mark has some great lessons for entrepreneurs. On this episode, he shared about struggling with the idea of control, and he also talked about what happened when he realized he couldn’t be the expert at everything. His humility and vulnerability set the stage for a great interview, and we really hope the story of his journey encourages you along your own.

Useful Links:

SailPoint

It’s Not All Fun and Perks: What Company Culture Really Means

Why SailPoint? With Mark McClain, CEO and Co-Founder

Books Mentioned:

StrengthsFinder

The Ideal Team Player

Top 50 Books for Faith Driven Entrepreneurs