Christian entrepreneurs must know the foundations to business success.  These three key points will help you start, grown and sustain your business.

I have literally studied hundreds of successful people.  I have studied business owners, millionaires, billionaires, etc.  One thing I realize is that everyone has their own personality and their own way of doing things.

There is no magic bullet or special prayer you can say to get to success.  Success takes a lot of work.  It is about being prepared when opportunity shows up and taking action.  With that in mind, I have boiled down the top three things that successful people have in common.  In the following articles we will talk about business growth habits and spiritual habits for the Christian entrepreneur.  Today, we start with the foundation: success habits.

Know your purpose

The first thing that all successful people have in common is they know their purpose.  God created you for a specific purpose while you are here on this earth.  If you can nail down that purpose, then you are well on your way to success.

You have been given an opportunity for being in business. It is possible that your purpose lies in your business.  God gave you opportunities to help others and share His message.  Your business is the vehicle that brings you money so that you can do both of those things.

Don’t get me wrong, business is meant to provide a valuable service to the world.  If you are not solving a problem that people will pay for, you don’t have a business.  Yet, somewhere in the midst of your personality, business skills and dreams lies your purpose.

If you can’t put your purpose down in a sentence or two, take some time to pray.  Center your mind on God’s direction for your life and open yourself up to God’s purpose for you.  When you find your purpose, write it on a card, make it your desktop image, print a poster of it or whatever works for you.  Just keep your purpose in front of your eyes each week.

Know your focus

Once you have your focus, you must put all of your efforts into that one focus.  Focus becomes your strategy for purpose.  You must know where you need to spend your time to get the best results.  When you are at work, you should have a single focused strategy.  When you are at home, your focus is your family, but at work your focus should be on making the best product for the best price to help the most people.

Focus is not about setting priorities. It is about having a single priority.  If you can identify your one focus and put all your efforts into that focus, you will see success.  Another word for focus is perseverance.  You persistently pursue your one strategy that will bring you the most success.

Focus will change as you complete your projects.  Along the way, you may have an issue that you need to tend to, but get right back to your focus.  Block out a few hours of undisturbed time to focus on your one thing.  It will take some time to get into this habit and your focus will shift as you complete it, but stick to it.

As your business grows, your focus time will become invaluable.  It is what it will take to keep your business in front of your competitors so you can help the most people.  Identify your one focus this week, block out time on your calendar and make it a non-negotiable habit.

Know your team

You may be a solo-entrepreneur, but you still have a team.  You have a bank, right?  Selecting the right team is important.  They bring strengths that you may not have or they at least take things off your desk so you can focus on your main focus.

I want you to think about how valuable your time is worth.  For starters, let’s say your time is worth $50 an hour.  As an entrepreneur, you need to know how valuable your time is.  If you are spending time on items that you could pay someone $10 an hour to complete, you are wasting $40 an hour!

It is weird to think about as you get started in business, but once you have your purpose and focus in place you will see how valuable your time really is.  Your goal is to focus on doing the work that is $50, $100 or more.  You do the things that only you can do and delegate as much as possible.

Let’s give a simple example.  Let’s say you spend an hour going through emails each day.  A majority of those are deleted or do not need your response.  You could hire someone on a weekly basis to work through your emails and only alert you about the important one.  Just doing that would save you a lot more than an hour a day when you consider all the distractions in those emails.

Make a list of little things that you do that someone else could be doing.  Even if you work from home and are a solopreneur, you could hire someone to come in once a week to clean your house or get a virtual worker to handle your email.  It takes time to set these things up, but in the long run you are building a successful business and want to lay down strong foundations.

Success is simply knowing your purpose and making it happen. –Rev. Lyle. #ChristianBusiness #ChristianEntrepreneur Click To Tweet

Conclusion

The key to success is to know your why and make it happen.  When you pinpoint your purpose, you know where to spend your time.  You have a focus to make thing happen in your business.  Therefore, you delegate non-essential duties in your business, so you will have more time to spend on your focus, which strengthens your purpose.  The cycle continues in a wheel we’ll call the success cycle.