According to a past American Express survey, Americans tell an average of 9 people about good experiences, and tell 16 people about poor experiences. The challenge is that out of those who have poor experiences only 4% tell the actual business. Many businesses don’t even know they have a problem. As leaders trying to please God, we should be loving our neighbor in […]

Tom Thibodeaux, a professor at Viterbo University, discussed servant leadership at a conference I participated in recently. Although he had many profound things to say, the one that stood out to me the most was this quote, “Service is love becoming visible.” In business, we discuss and work on improving our customer service, but few ever equate it to love. […]

An Association for Psychological Science article highlighted some startling revelations. It discovered that ostracizing or ignoring a worker can cause more harm than harassing that worker. A research team from the University of Ottawa conducted a survey of U.S. workers and discovered that more than 70% of respondents had experienced some form of exclusion in their workplace. In addition, those […]

Time is such a precious commodity that gaining even one hour can be refreshing. Over the course of the year, Daylight Savings Time doesn’t really give us an extra hour, but this time of year it feels like it as we get to turn our clocks back. One hour of time you will never get back. How will you choose […]

While meeting Roger for lunch, Roger asked me to tell my wife, Kathy, “not to take offense if she hadn’t heard back from his wife.” Roger explained that his wife had taken over the day-to-day responsibility for their family business and was chairing a ministry board that was building a new facility! In pursuit of excellence, Roger’s wife began saying […]

In my 30’s, my desire was to be the President of my own bank. So, when the bank I worked for was for sale I assumed that God surely wanted that for me as well. Over a period of months, however, God began to reveal His desire, which was me teaching and equipping leaders to do business God’s way. In […]

500 years ago, today, Martin Luther wrote a letter in protest to Johann Tetzel’s business venture. Tetzel had been sent by Pope Leo 10 to raise money for St. Peter’s Basilica. Tetzel creatively began selling what he called “indulgences.” Tetzel assured the poor that if they paid an “indulgence” to the church, their loved one’s souls would immediately be released […]

In our world, a little dishonesty is okay if you can get away with it and it helps you get ahead. Businesses use puffery in advertisements to excite us into buying their products. Businesses lie about their markups and hours so they can squeeze a little more profit from us. We accept this and look the other way. If everyone […]

My son Daniel and I attended a workshop that promised to teach us how to build our own business. When we got there, it was a multi-level marketing program that focused on building up our own image. In Jeremiah 1, God says those who follow him will do some tearing down and some building up. If we’re building our own […]

I remember how scared we were, back in 2013, the first time we created a One Page Plan for our company that included our mission, vision, values, and short-term goals. We devoted so much time to creating impressive PowerPoint presentations. We didn’t know we could have used a napkin or an envelope and it still would have worked. Despite our […]