All businesses start with a dream. Sometimes it’s a dream to be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams or a dream of one day seeing your name on the door.  It could even be the dream to be able to take your family on the vacation of a lifetime or to start your own business so that you can call all the shots.  Regardless of the business, it all starts with a dream of the kind of life you want to have and how you see yourself living it.  In order to achieve, you must have a big picture vision for your life.  You need a life plan first, then build your business around that.  Begin with the end in mind, as Steve Covey says.  You need to know how big you want your business to get.  Do you just want one great bakery or a chain of bakeries with wholesale and retail operations? Regardless of your choice, you need to understand how much money you need to start a business that can exist like that.  You also need to be careful that your dreams do not convince you that you will be an overnight success.  There are few very of those. The formula for success in a small business is dream + plan + pray + hard work = success

The best thing you can do for your business is pray every day. One of other key ingredients in a successful business is patience, which can only come about through prayer.  In business, things rarely happen as you’ve planned them. The big contracts never seem to come in as you’ve projected and the checks are not always as big as you need them to be and sometimes that’s a hard pill to swallow.  Keep in mind that when a contract that you just knew you had falls through your fingers, it’s really a gift.  That client might have been a nightmare to deal with or did not pay timely.  After all my years in business, I’ve learned a critical lesson about business:  God and I do not wear the same watch, and his timing is perfect.  You must wait on the Lord.

My favorite bible verse is Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; Lean not on thy own understanding, in all thy ways honor him and he will direct thy path.  When you pray there’s no need to worry about anything.  Things always work out, even if you have to change course.

The bible also says in James 2:20 Faith without works is dead.  You should not pray for a big check, and then make no sales calls. You must have a business plan with a marketing plan that spells out your sales process.   Do you have a system for cultivating sales? How many sales calls must be made in for you to close the book of business you need to pay all your bills in a month? Do you use a CRM or Customer Relationship Management tool to track your contacts?  You need a sales plan and you need to make sure that you working your sales plan so that you put yourself in a position for a blessing.  A good friend of mine likes to say God already did the hard work for us, all we must do our small part here on Earth.