Proof is in the Planning
Updated: Jan 20, 2021
I’m a big planner. Heck, I planned my wedding! My wife would disagree, but I pretty much planned the whole thing out 🙂
When it comes to my business, I’m big on planning as well. Because of my education at Cornell University and the skills I learned in creating a business plan, I’ve always been one to write out where I want my businesses to go.
Creating a plan (not the perfect plan) was essential to my business growth. The plan didn’t need to be perfect, and things always changed, but there needed to be a vision of the strategic plan.
But if we’ll admit it, it’s not our natural inclination to plan. No, we want to charge forth right ahead into the battle.
You and I both know it’s not the right thing to do, but we do it anyway.
Some of us have ZERO plans written down for business growth. We either are too lazy to make a plan, we don’t know how to make a plan because we all didn’t go to Cornell (that’s no excuse), or we have “faith” that God will make a way and we just need to follow it.
Some of us have a plan, but we’re the only ones that know it! The plan can’t come fully from you (the leader) and it can’t be only in your head.
Others of us have too many plans! Or the plans aren’t “perfect” so we never go forward.
But God shows us that preparation is key to entering your strategic growth plan that he has for you.
Today I’m going to show you 3 reasons why we should be planning our business’s strategic growth.
At the beginning of Joshua 2, we find Joshua sending out spies into the land.
"Then Joshua the son of Nun sent two men as spies secretly from Shittim, saying, “Go, view the land, especially Jericho.” (Joshua 2:1)
Us entrepreneurs might wonder, why Joshua sent out the spies. If he was really trusting God, was this necessary? Didn’t God promise success? Why didn’t he just go in step-by-step slowly and cautiously following God? After all, God would fight this battle, right?
I think we can learn 3 things for Godpreneurs needing to plan.
Faith Doesn’t Mean Presumption
Faith that God will provide doesn’t mean you don’t plan. We can’t fully trust our intuitive feelings and wants and desires.
Faith in the Lord’s provision should never lead to presuming on God’s decrees or sovereign actions, our intuitive feelings, or on our wants and desires. Faith wants to look for principles and applications and facts to back up that faith so we can make wise decisions as business owners. You don’t just have faith. You get faith, then you seek to back up that faith with fact. If God wants to intervene in the future and help you grow, awesome! But you don’t presume, you plan.
Believing is Seeing (and Hearing)
It’s wise for you to plan because others can read the plans and see things for themselves. Even having your team do a little research on the market will help encourage them.
Evaluate Where You Are Going
Where are we? Where are we going? What are we doing? Planning makes you like inside and out to discover the calling of our lives, our gifts and talents, our weaknesses, hindrances, and the circumstances of the forces that we’re going after when growing our businesses.
Once you and your team have spied out the market you want to conquer, then, based on this information, establish growth plan, goals and objectives along with priorities and attack the market accordingly, all the while resting in God’s intervention and direction. Start with the things that are the most important and work on them one by one.
This just isn’t for business. If we do this for our personal life (spiritual needs, physical needs, educational needs), our family life (relationships, spiritual needs, etc. as a family), our church life and personal calling and so on, we would all receive God’s blessings and favors more because we put in the time to not go in blindly.