Investing in your business is more than just money.  It is time, effort, practice and prayer.

Our biblical principle for investing is from Matthew 25:14-30.  This is called the parable of gold or the parable of talents.  (Talents was a term for money usually gold in ancient times.)  We won’t go through the whole parable, but I want to glean some things from it.

The owner knew how much to leave each person.  The owner expected a return on his money. The owner was harsh with those who did not perform.

Yes, this is a parable.  It talks about the Kingdom of God, yet it has truths in this world or Jesus would not have used it as a teaching story.

When we talk about investing in our business we always think about money.  “You have to spend money to make money.”  That’s basically true, but we have time and talents that can also be invested.  Not to mention using the time and money of other people.

Investing in your business means that you are being wise about how you treat your employees, budget, income and leadership.  We keep track of budgets with income, expenses and all of those fun financial things, but how much do we keep track of how much we invest in our employees?

Again, I am not talking about money. I am talking about training, time and using their talents.

We can see from the parable that the owner knew what each employee was capable of.  He had trained them and spent time with them so he knew what he could entrust with them.  One of them did not perform, but that employee knew what he should have done.  It was not the return that was the problem, the effort and disobedience was the issue.

What to Invest in your business:

• Money: Yes, you can invest money. You may need equipment, supplies, etc.  Just make sure you are accounting for these properly and you have a good strategy for long term growth.
• Time: Investing time in your business is one things.  You want to invest time ON your business. You want to step beyond running your business and invest time in developing your business system as a whole.
• Training: This one has two parts.  You need to keep training yourself so that you are always in the know and you want to train those that work with you.  Buy books, give them days to go to training, buy them affordable online courses.
• Prayer: We should be investing prayer in our business, in our employees, in our families, etc.  I have never seen a business fail for having prayed diligently for God’s guidance.