Christian Business Concepts
Christian Business Concepts
11 Principles to Win in Business: Strategies That Deliver Results
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What if your work could be both fruitful and faithful, measured not just by metrics but by meaning? We dive into a practical framework for “godly success” that trades vague motivation for clear, repeatable habits. Drawing from Psalm 1 and John 10:10, we make the case that God cares about your outcomes—and then show how to align vision, values, and execution so your leadership actually changes results.
We map out eleven field-tested principles that operate like the physics of achievement. It starts with visionary planning that serves as your GPS, recalculating without losing the destination. Then we get specific about disciplined execution, breaking big goals into daily tasks you can track. Resilience follows as the capacity to learn from setbacks and stand back up stronger. Empathetic leadership anchors team trust and psychological safety, unlocking honest conversations and faster fixes. We explore innovative thinking through a biblical lens, sharpening the ax so effort multiplies.
Integrity becomes the unseen foundation of everything—your structure in the storm. Adaptive flexibility keeps you responsive to market shifts without bending your core. Collaborative partnerships and smart delegation expand your capacity. Continuous learning turns curiosity into a competitive edge. Purposeful persistence compounds small daily deposits into long-term wins. And gratitude with reflection sustains joy, clarity, and morale when the pace intensifies. Along the way we connect ancient wisdom to modern examples, from Nehemiah’s planning to leaders who guard privacy, write thank-you notes, and drive responsible innovation.
If you’re a founder, manager, or team lead who wants results without losing your soul, this conversation gives you the playbook—and the push—to start today. Subscribe for more practical, Bible-rooted leadership tools, share this with a friend who leads, and leave a review to tell us which principle you’ll apply first.
Thanks, Kelly, and welcome everyone to this week's Christian Business Concepts Podcast. I'm your host, Harold Milby, and I want to welcome you to this week's podcast and to the CBC community, actually. Uh, CBC is here to help your business grow, to help you as business owners and business and organizational leaders find true godly success by applying business principles that we find in the Word of God in the Bible. And uh there's some great leadership principles, great business principles that you'll find in the Word of God. And I pray today that you'll be encouraged, enlightened, and empowered by what is discussed here today. Now, each week I ask you to help us grow the CBC community by sharing this podcast with four or five others, or by posting the address to this podcast on your LinkedIn and Facebook pages, and you're making just a great difference. I really appreciate it. Your efforts are helping us to grow the number of people who listen each and every week. Thank you so much. Now, as you know, each week I always give a big shout out to a city or a country for having so many downloads. And this week, I want to recognize uh Hamilton in the Wikato region of New Zealand. I want to thank you all that are there in New Zealand. I appreciate your listening and I appreciate you being committed to this podcast. Thank you so much. And it is my prayer, my belief, my hope that this podcast helps you in a meaningful way. Now, today, you know, success in business, let's talk about that. You know, success in business, in our careers, even in our personal life, I don't believe is a stroke of luck or a secret formula, let's say it that way. I believe it's the consistent application of proven principles that guide decision making, your team dynamics, and strategic growth. You know, many people will say in their minds that they hope they'll be successful. But let me tell you this hope is not a strategy. That's just not a strategy. Let me also say that God wants you to be successful. Now, many people will say, Well, how can you say that? How can you say that God wants you to be successful? Why do you say that God cares about my success? Well, let me say this. Let me I'll just read one verse to you. Psalms one, verses one through three says, Blessed is the one who does not walk in the step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers. But their delight is in the law of the Lord, who meditate on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by the rivers of living water, which yields forth its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither, and whatever they do prospers. Now that sounds like to me that God is concerned about your success. I could I could give you another 50 scriptures to just let you know that God wants you to be successful. God doesn't make junk, He doesn't make people for no reason. You have a purpose in life. You have a purpose. You need to find it. It's important. You know, the Bible says in John 10 and 10, it says, the thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come that you may have life and that you may have it more abundantly. Sounds like success to me. You know, so I believe that God wants you to be successful. So I want to start right there. I think that's really my most important thing that I could tell you is that God wants you to be successful. And today I want to share several essential principles for success. Now, these are principles that are drawn from decades of observing high performers in all kinds of markets, um, you know, where there's all kinds of issues, all kinds of problems, all kinds of things that happen. You know, let's understand that everybody has issues. Everybody has issues, and every industry has issues. There's not one industry that doesn't. And so there's no, like I said, there's no magic formula. There's no magic industry that you get involved in to be more successful because it's easier, they don't have any problems. That's just not true. Uh, you know, as we look at these principles that I'm going to be talking about, as we look at these principles through the eyes of God's word, I want you to remember that principles are not suggestions. They're, they're, let's say this, they're the physics of achievement. If you ignore them, then gravity just pulls you down, right? If you ignore the principle uh and the law of gravity, these principles work, but you have to utilize these principles. So I want to talk about 11 principles today for your success in your business, in your department, even in your personal life, you need to follow these principles. They are key. I'm going to give you some analogies. I'm going to give you some modern examples. I'm going to give you biblical examples to some of these. And then I'm going to give you some action steps for each one. This is so important. I wanted to make sure I had something very complete that would work for you. All right, let's jump in because I want to have time to get to all 11 of these for you. So, number one, visionary planning. Okay, so success requires a clear, compelling picture of the future that guides all of your actions. You know, one of the things that I do is I'm a purpose coach, a purpose and a vision coach. And I coach people on developing their vision, developing their purpose. I do that because it is so key to everything else that you would consider to be successful in your life. So you have to know it, you have to understand it. It's so critical, it's so crucial. So success requires a very clear, compelling picture of the future that guides all of your actions. See, when you have a true vision, it will guide your actions of the things that you do. One that that that starts with truly knowing your purpose, you have to start with your purpose first, and you have to develop what that person is. Excuse me. And so I just want you to understand that. You know, visionary planning, it's like a smartphone's navigation app, right? It recalculates you in real time. It ensures you uh that you reach your destination despite uh any kind of unexpected detours that may arise. Uh, but you've got to have this vision planning. You've got to have it. And again, I coach people on this. We take weeks and we we go through these things. It's a very specific program to help people do that. You know, a modern example would be like Elon Musk's his SpaceX vision of of uh colonizing Mark. You know, that drove the company to develop these reusable rockets, and they've been able to achieve 200 plus successful launches and contracts worth billions of dollars, but it started with this vision that Elon Musk had, and that vision caused him to make the decisions that he had. You know, Nehemiah, in the word of God, if you want to look and talk about vision, if you really want to understand vision, you need to read the book of Nehemiah. But his vision to rebuild Jerusalem's walls, it mobilized people, it mobilized resources. And he completed that project in 52 days despite a lot of opposition. He did that because of the vision. So I'm going to encourage you in your action steps here to write a three-year vision statement and share it with your team. If it's for you individually, share it with your family. And you need to make sure then align one goal that lines up, align it with one goal a week for that vision. Make sure it lines up with it, whatever that goal is. All right, so that's an action step. All right, number two, disciplined execution. You know, I just did a podcast a few weeks ago on the importance and the power of execution. You know, that's what turns plans into reality. It's through this consistent, very focused effort that's execution. I love what James said in James 2 and 17 and in verse 26. It says, in the same way, faith by itself, it if it is not accompanied by action, it is dead. As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. And then in Ephesians 5, 15, 16, it says, Be careful then how you live, not as unwise, but as wise, making the most of every opportunity. So James is talking about faith without deeds is dead. So in other words, we can have a great vision. You can have a great vision, but if you don't have execution, if you don't execute specific things that are that are a part of that vision, and those things should be created by that vision, then you just got a dream. You don't have a vision, you just got a dream. You have to have execution. You know, I think about trains. I love to listen to trains. I have one not too far from my house. I love hearing it blow their whistle as they come through. I love listening to them come down the tracks, you know, and you think about it. And execution is a lot like a high-speed train on the tracks, right? The engine we'll say is the strategy. You know, it's the strategy or the vision. But without the rails, without the systems, without the execution to guide it to the station, where does it go? It doesn't go anywhere. So you have to make sure that you have disciplined execution. You know, if you look in the book of Acts and you read chapters 13 all the way through 28, you you read about Paul's missionary journeys. So Paul, he had to plan routes, he preached, he planted churches, he wrote letters. Uh, he was executing all of this despite shipwrecks, despite imprisonment. So he had execution down. It was very disciplined execution. So you've got to have that. You know, I love what Melinda Gates said. She said, execution matters more than ideas. Great ideas without follow through change nothing. So I thought that was awesome. So what do you need to do? Well, number one, why don't you break your top goal into some daily task? Break them down into some daily task, and then use some kind of a tracker app. There's a bunch of them out there to log your progress every week so you can see it in real time. All right, let's look at number three, resilient mindset. Resilient mindset. You know, that's bouncing back from setbacks. And not just bouncing back, but you bounce back with really the strong sense of renewed strength and learning that you you you learn through this. It's kind of like a weed, you know. Uh, you know, we all fight weeds. If you own a home, you you all fight weeds. They they grow up in the cracks of the of the sidewalk and on your pavement. And, you know, you would think that faced with these impossible barriers like concrete, the weeds would not grow. They just would not be able to do it. But it finds every crack and it pushes up until it gets through to the light. And and that's a kind of a uh what a resilient mindset looks like. You just keep pushing up, you keep pushing up, you find the cracks and you keep pushing through. You know, um Sarah Blakely, you know, she failed at law school, she failed at a lot of sales jobs before she invented Spanx, S-P-A-N-X, great company, and she turned all that rejection into a$1 billion empire. You know, she didn't allow the failures to define her, and that is what resilience is. You don't allow failures to define you. You just have this mindset that you're gonna get through and move forward. You know, Proverbs 24, 16 says, For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes. So you got to keep getting up, keep getting up, just like that boxer. You keep getting up, you keep getting up. All right. So, what you want to do after a failure, if you've had a failure, why don't you journal three lessons that you've learned from it? Journal three lessons that you've learned from it. It'll be a tremendous help, and you'll be able to look back at those notes from time to time that'll really help you. You know, Satya Nadella, she is a CEO of Microsoft. She said, be the thermostat, not the thermometer. Don't just measure the temperature, set it. Resilience is really about controlling your response to adversity. Well, what a great quote. I I love that. She's a CEO, of course, of Microsoft or has been. So, you know, I think that's important. All right, let's move on to number four. Empathetic leadership, understanding and responding responding to the needs and emotions of others, that's how you build trust. You know, we're talking about true servant leadership where you truly want to add values to other people. You know, my core, one of the core things in my life that makes my purpose and creates my vision is the fact that I have such a desire to add value to other people. I really want to add value to them. You know, uh Indra uh Nuyi, she's the former CEO of PepsiCo uh through 2018. She wrote personal letters to parents of executives thanking them for lending their children to the company. And folk and she focused on work-life balance. Uh, I think, you know, she she had this philosophy called performance with purpose, and it really emphasized employee well-being and sustainability because she knew if she lost the employees to that, you know, she was losing a lot of great people. That's not what she wanted to do. So she focused on adding value to them. You know, Amy Edmondson, she's a Harvard professor, uh, psychological safety is some of the stuff that she's done. She she said this. She said, leaders who demonstrate empathy create psychological safety, the number one predictor of high-performing teams. Well, let me tell you something. That says it in a nutshell, how important it is to be an empathetic leader. You know, Jesus was a great example. You know, his empathy and washing the disciples' feet in John chapter 13, he was modeling that servant leadership that inspired all that loyalty. So when you're in some meetings, try this. When you're in some meetings, ask, well, how does this decision affect you personally? Ask that question. There's nothing wrong with that. Well, you know, they they they work for me. I don't care about their personal life. Well, if you're going to build a great team, you better care about their personal life. You need to be that empathetic leader. So try that. Maybe, maybe try this too. Send at least one encouragement note every week. Send it to one of your employees. All right, let's move on to number five: innovative thinking. You know, generating creative solutions to problems and seizing new opportunities. That's really what leadership is about. Um, you know, innovation. Uh innovation is like a streaming service, you know. Um it just helps you to uh it turns your passive viewers into really loyal subscribers. You you you you want to have innovative thinking. Uh you know, like Reed Hastings, you know, of Netflix, you know, he pivoted uh at a at the perfect timing from DVD mailers to streaming service. And he created this$250 billion market uh because he was an innovative thinker. You know, Ecclesiastes 10 and 10, it says if the iron is blunt and the one and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength. But wisdom helps one to succeed. It's important that we understand that. We we want to um be sure that we're innovative. You know, even in Exodus chapter 31, you know, there were there were people when they were crafting the tabernacle in the wilderness, when they were right after they left Egypt, they picked some people that were just, you know, the well the Bible says that God filled them with the spirit of skill, ability, and knowledge and all kinds of crafts to create artistic designs for the tabernacle. Innovative metalwork, weaving, engraving that had never been seen before. It was very innovative. It was kind of like the first divine blueprint for this portable worship structure, you know, and it blended art and engineering all together. I mean, it was really pretty incredible when you read about it and read about what it was. So, you know, that's something that you have to have innovative thinking, innovative thinking. All right, let's go to number six. Uh, ethical integrity, ethical integrity, adhering to moral, uh, moral principles in all of your decisions. Uh you can build unshakable trust when you do that. You know, ethical integrity is like the foundation. It's like the foundation of a skyscraper. You know, it's it you don't really see it from the top floors, but the only reason the building stands tall during earthquakes and storms is because of that foundation that was built. And ethical integrity is what builds that foundation. You know, Tim Cook, who's a CEO of Apple, you know, he he really champions user privacy. And so he refused the FBI when they when they wanted to have some backdoor uh uh demands added to. It or some backdoor ways that they could get into some of these phones to spy on people or what have you or to pull stuff off of it. And he just said, No, I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. He prioritized principles over potential revenue. So that's so important. It kind of reminds me of Daniel. You know, uh the king came to him, offered him food and everything, but Daniel refused the king's food. This is found in Daniel chapter one. He wanted to maintain his integrity. And of course, that led to his promotion. So it's very important that you have ethical integrity. So what can you do about that? Well, you can define three non-negotiable values in your life. Make sure you write them out, make sure you know what they are, make sure you can articulate them. And then audit your decisions every week to make sure those decisions line up with those top three non-negotiable values. You may have more than three, but you need to make sure your decisions are in alignment with those. You know, Proverbs 11 and 3 says the integrity of the upright guides them. And that's important. That's important. All right, number seven, adaptive flexibility. So adjusting your strategies in response to changing circumstances is important sometimes. You need to be able to be good at adaptive flexibility. It's like a self-driving car rerouting around accidents and still arrives on time because it it rerouted. It it changed. You know, so they weren't really cloud-oriented, but then they changed to cloud first. And she grew from$500 billion in evaluation for Microsoft to$3 trillion in evaluation. And uh, you know, she went on to say in a world of constant change, adaptability is the new stability. Leaders must be flexible enough to pivot while staying true to the core values. What a great statement. You know, Paul was that way. You know, he his adaptability in preaching, he he preached to the Gentiles, but then he preached to the Jews. He had to adapt. He had to make some changes because he was only going to preach to the Gentiles. Uh so anyway, so what can you do about that? Well, I I think you just have to market or monitor whatever trends that are out there in your market. You have to look at those. Um, you may have to pivot a process every so often, but you have to be looking for it and you have to be willing to be adaptive in that way. All right, let's go to number eight. Uh, collaborative partnerships, gotta have them. Uh, that's building alliances, leveraging collective strengths. It's so important. It's like an open source software. If you've ever used open source software, it's great. I've used many uh because there's so many thousands of people that are that are contributing code. They're helping to create products that are better than any single company or developer could do. Um I just think that's that's really important. You know, uh the CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, he built this EV partnership with Volkswagen, and they shared some platforms. Uh, you know, Google did the same thing with the Android integration. Um, you know, those are collaborative partnerships, okay? Those are so important. Look for those, look where you can do that. You know, Ecclesiastes 4, 9, and 10 said two are better than one. If either falls, one can help the other up. That's the importance of collaborative partnerships. And uh, you know, we see that Moses uh he delegated a lot of things to the elders uh in Exodus chapter 18, which prevented him from burning out and uh from disabling any kind of growth that they could person uh that they could have uh by delegating that, by splitting this thing up, he developed these collaborative partnerships. So I would form at least one strategic alliance uh in the next three months if you can. Uh and then try to delegate a key task every week. Try to do that every week. Uh so those are a couple of action steps. All right, number nine, continuous learning. This is a big one for me. I talk about it a lot. You need to commit to ongoing education and improvement. Doesn't have to be college. There's all kinds of ways uh that you can gobble up education and learn. But you want to have this continuous learning attitude. You know, it's like software updates for an app. You know, if you skip them, you become obsolete. If you embrace them, you stay on a cutting edge. So you've got to make sure that you have this continuing learning uh desire to learn. You know, uh Mark Benoff of uh he was a CEO of Salesforce. Um he is known to be an extremely big, big reader. He reads over 50 books a year, big learner. He studies, he he meditates, he he really gets into learning. That's a big thing for him. And he adapted Salesforce to the cloud really early on, really early on. And now he's got uh what he's called Einstein, which is AI for them. And uh Salesforce is a$34 billion uh company, number one CRM company in the world. So uh very powerful, but he is a big, ferocious, ferocious reader, and so uh we we want to have that continuing learning attitude. All right, so what can you do? Well, why don't you read 20 pages every day and then take what you learn out of those 20 pages and teach one learned concept every week, just teach one to somebody else because that's the best way for you to learn it is to teach it to somebody else. But you need to have this continual learning attitude. It will take you far, I promise. It is a huge, huge law when we're talking about uh success in any part of your life. All right, number 10, purposeful persistence. Purposeful persistence. You've got to maintain steady effort toward any kind of meaningful goals. You know, persistence, it's like compound interest when you're investing. You know, uh small daily deposits. It creates this exponential wealth over time. Well, persistence is like that. You know, I I look at J.K. Rowling's, you know, she had 12 rejections before Harry Potter was ever accepted. And now she's got a 7.7 billion dollar empire uh empire. She was about to lose it all, but she kept going and she kept going, she kept going. She was so persistent. She got up every day, wrote 500 words every single day, seven days a week. Um, you know, when I think about persistence, I always think about Joseph uh in the Old Testament. You know, Joseph went from the prison to the palace. You know, if you want to read about Joseph, read Genesis 37 through chapter 41. He was sold into slavery, he was falsely imprisoned. Joseph just continued to persist with his integrity and skill for 13 years before interpreting Pharaoh's dream and becoming Egypt's number two ruler of the whole nation. So you have to have persistence. And then lastly, number 11, gratitude and reflection. Gratitude and reflection. So you need to regularly acknowledge progress and blessings to sustain your motivation. Gratitude is like regular software updates as well, because it keeps the system running smooth and it prevents crashes. You need to have this attitude of gratitude. Um, you know, Doug Conant, he was the former CEO of Campbell Soup. Uh Connant used to write over 30,000 handwritten thank you notes to employees uh during his time there. 30,000 handwritten thank you notes. Uh, you know, and he credits daily gratitude practices for turning around the company culture and boosting morale. And it's a habit he continues to do, even though he's retired, through his speaking and writing. Uh he just has such a great attitude uh of gratitude. Uh he has a lot about reflection in his life. You know, 1 Thessalonians 5.18 says, give thanks in all circumstances. You know, biblical gratitude turns scarcity into abundance. You know, thanking God in the wilderness, like they did uh in the Old Testament, it opens doors to the promised land. It's so important that you have this biblical reflection as well. It it's a it's like uh, you know, when you have biblical spiritual reflection, it's like a spiritual archaeology. It's like digging up past victories to build faith for future battles. It's just very, very powerful. And maybe you want to start and end some meetings with, you know, maybe some people uh sharing with gratitude about some things that have happened. Keep keep maybe a weekly success journal. You know, you you want to do that. Now, now, these principles, I believe, are the bedrock of success in these modern times that we're living in, these challenging business landscapes that we're all a part of. And I believe if we apply them consistently, you'll not only achieve results, I believe that you'll inspire other people to do the same. Godly success is a choice. So I hope that you'll choose these principles today. Lord, thank you for those who have listened to today's podcast. Lord, I thank you that they've listened. Lord, I pray that that they see that you not only want them to be successful, but you have also provided a guide to their success in your word with these principles. And Lord, I pray, Lord, that you will help them to apply them in their daily lives so that they can find true godly success. And Lord, I ask it in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen and amen. Well, listen, I'm so glad again that you have tuned in to this week's CBC podcast. And I look forward to seeing you again uh next week or hearing or having you listen next week. And uh so we're just so glad that you're a part of our Christian business concepts family. I just can't thank you enough for being a part. But until next time, I want you to remember this Jesus is Lord, and he wants you blessed.
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