Welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast with host Darren Shear, an initiative of the RGW Dunham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. This is the show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. You can get more information about the HBU Center for Christianity and Business and sign up to receive free access to all issues of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at Christianityandbusiness.com.
SPEAKER_00On this episode, we're joined by Sarah Jane Ethan. She is the creator of the nine value triggers, the advanced 12-step sales process, and the customer-focused sales formula. And she is a multiple business-owning entrepreneur, international business coach, and author of the new book, The Business of Blessing, the Biblical Blueprint for a God-abundant business. And she's been a committed Christian for over 30 years and is a passionate believer in the power of entrepreneurial business to finance the local church. And she's an active member of her home church, Hillsong Newcastle in the UK, where she lives with her husband Matt and their half dog cat Jeremy, which I guess is uh kind of a special species they have there in uh the Newcastle area. Is that right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think to be honest, I think we've created a special species.
SPEAKER_00Oh no, oh no.
SPEAKER_02This cat is something else. He does tricks. We've got five tricks and counting. I can't explain it other than he must be half dog.
SPEAKER_00That's that's hilarious. Well, she is a delightful, delightful woman of God, and it's a blessing to have you on. In fact, her the name of her website, you can get more information and get her content, get her book at businessofblessing.com. SJ, welcome to the Christianity and business podcast.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Darren. I really appreciate you having me here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I always feel, I don't know, maybe maybe it's just the way that uh the British have branded themselves, but I always feel more intelligent or or even or less intelligent when I'm talking to somebody from I'll take that. I'll take that. It's uh I feel like uh this is a good personal growth experience for me. I feel like I need to be on my have my best manners about me, you know, try to use the the Queen's English as much as possible.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna say it's probably the accent, and I'm from the south of the UK, so I've got a very posh accent, and I currently now live in the north of the UK. So to them, I found it I sound extremely posh. So I'm quite used to people commenting on my accent.
SPEAKER_00Hey, what work with what you got, you know. So so this book that you have just recently released as at the time of this uh interview, The Business of Blessing, the biblical blueprint for a God abundant business. And you told me that the bedrock of this book is First Thessalonians 1:3. And I love this. Says, your work produced by faith, your labor motivated by love, and your endurance inspired by hope. Um, what do you what do you mean that this is the bedrock of the book? And how do you apply this to Christians working in business?
SPEAKER_02I I just when I read this verse, it just smacked me in the face. I just thought this to me sums up what Christian business is all about. And in my particular sphere of business, I mean entrepreneurial business, I mean going self-employed and running your own business. Um, and this idea that your work produced by faith, and that immediately stood out to me because I was thinking of verses like, um, it without faith it's impossible to please God. That's Hebrews, Hebrews 11. Um, and thinking, so God, we please God by the level of faith that we display. And this verse is saying, your work produced by faith. And so it occurred to me that our work or our job can actually please God or displease God by with according to the level of faith that it takes to do it. And it suddenly occurred to me am I doing my work or my job? Is it a product of faith or a product of fear? And the people in my sphere of influence, are they in their job because it's a product of faith or a product of fear? Are they scared to leave their day-to-day employed job, even though they hate it, even though they feel like it's not using their skills and abilities because they're scared to step out into the realm of entrepreneurial business, to start their own business, to actually turn their skills into value for people around them, turn a hobby into a way of life. Um, and so actually, they're they're actually their work is produced by fear rather than faith. Um, so that I feel like is the challenge for Christian entrepreneurs is actually living a life of faith. Um, and your work can be a part of that. What you choose to do with your time can be a reflection of of your faith in God and his sustaining and his provision.
SPEAKER_00What is so more of that fear? Unpack that a little bit more to because I know that this is this is where we all live, right? The fears that we that we battle with on an individual basis, as you're working with, let's say, um seasoned entrepreneurs or those who maybe they're they're working in a job that they know is not the best fulfillment of their gifts and their calling. Uh, but there is that fear. What are some of those fears that are keeping them from really stepping into the work that God has for them?
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, I can say this from personal experience, this isn't theory, because like you said, we all battle with fears. So I battle with my own fears. I've been an entrepreneur for 10 years. I've got multiple businesses, a couple of them are international as well. So you'd think that I have no fears.
SPEAKER_00What type of business, by the way? I know we talked about this before, but tell our listeners the type of business that you're engaged in.
SPEAKER_02So, my, I've had businesses in the past that have been very successful. My current business is as an international wedding photographer, that is the main bulk of my income. But I also work with my husband, and the bulk of his income is running an online business program for um photographers. So we teach photographers because a lot of them are creative people. They just want to take a picture and then hope that somebody buys it. And it doesn't really work like that. So we actually run an online business academy for them, just teaching them all the business side of stuff, how you market yourself, how you brand yourself, how you manage client expectations, all of the things that were involved with running a successful business. So that is the bulk of my husband's income, and I help him with that too. And that is also international. Um, and yeah, and in the past I've had other businesses as well. So every we've started quite a few new businesses, and we're and not only starting new businesses, but taking our current businesses to another level, which feels like starting a new business a lot of the time, it with in terms of the level of fear that you feel. And and we've I feel the fear every single time. The fears are the fact that you feel like you're having to look to God for your daily bread, and you have it really challenges you. Do you actually believe that God is your provider and can provide your daily bread for the needs of your family? Fears that maybe God doesn't want you to prosper, or that you will live in poverty, or that you'll live embarrassed, you know, that other people will judge you, um, and that you'll you'll just be a failure. Um, all of these things are fears that creep in and will stop you taking action. Um, but actually, as Christians, we're not called to live a life of fear, we're called to live a life of reckless faith. And that's what pleases God, because when we step out in faith, we're declaring, I believe you're a I believe you're a big God, I believe that you can do this, but I also believe that you're a good God and you will do this for me. And so when we step out in faith, we're declaring who we believe God to be.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And you know, the the writer of this letter to the Thessalonians is is Paul Silas and Timothy. You know, this is Paul Silas and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians, and so this is uh from God's word and coming from these these three men of God that the Lord is imparting this through, your work produced by faith. One of the things that made me think about is uh Colossians 3.23 about doing your work for the Lord, not for men. Uh, because if you are, if if you're afraid of your boss, if you're afraid you're gonna get fired, if you're afraid of, you know, what's that nobody's gonna invest in your product. So until you get an investor, you're just not gonna do anything with it. You know, there's so many different because we're we're trying to, I think there's a lot of asking permission from people instead of going forward, not only with the permission we have from God, but with the mandate and the calling that that we have from God. Isn't that a big part of it? Just this as you were saying, it not just um, I mean, taking our orders from God and the direction and the guidance and the plan from God, not just from man.
SPEAKER_02Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And I think there's a verse I'm I haven't got it with me here, but it says, cursed is the one who relies who relies on man for his strength, but blessed is the one who relies on Lord, on the God, on God. And I think it's that idea that actually if you're looking to man to be your your security, that somebody is confirming to you, yes, this will work, or you've got customers lining up ready to buy from you. That's actually relying on man. But actually, when you're relying on God, you're acknowledging you've put skills and abilities and passions and dreams within me, and I'm gonna follow them. I don't know where they're gonna lead, I don't know what that's gonna look like, but I just know that you're behind me. And actually, what you were saying about just needing permission, because another thing that Christians do is look for, is look for a sign, some deeply supernatural spiritual sign that this is the right way to go. And I love this verse from Hebrews 1, verse 1 to 2, and it says, In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days, he's spoken to us by his son. And it occurred to me that often we don't need all the variety of supernatural ways of the writing in the sky and the that that God's spoken in the past, if Jesus has already given us the command that we need. And in this area, I feel that relates to the parable of the talents, where he invested the talents with the three workers, and the one who risked the most, who could have lost it all, he was the one that actually the landowner commended. And it got me thinking that actually, if that's what the landowner was looking for in his workers, was someone who was going to be strategic and passionate and and to you know take a bit of a risk, you know, could have lost it all, but did it for achieving maximum reward for the landowner, and the landowner represents God. What does God require of us? God requires of us to be the same, strategic and passionate about the bigger picture and passionate about creating maximum reward for what he's placed within us. You don't need anybody else's permission for that. Jesus has already said that's what he's wanting from us because he told that parable. So you can just go and be brave.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, and I mean, and and he makes it the the unrighteous, the unfaithful steward made it so clear as to why he buried it, but he said, because I was afraid.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00And like you're saying that you're either going to do your work in business for the Lord, driven by faith or driven by fear. And and and when it's that fear of man that's the s that's a snare, right? Because it's absolutely it's it it that we gravitate toward that. It's like the Bible is telling us that. Um and you actually use the statement that risk taking is an act of worship. Yeah, unpack that for us.
SPEAKER_02Well, I think it's as I've been exploring this idea that actually, do you know, I think God wants us to take risk. I think he wants us to be brave and courageous and do, and by taking risk, I I actually don't believe there is such a thing as risk because it's win-win with God, because nothing is wasted in God. He can reverse your fortunes, he can replenish your bank balance, he can restore your reputation. Like nothing is actually um lost in him. But by risk, I mean doing something that you don't feel able to do in your own strength that you're not going to be able to achieve unless God really comes through and does something miraculous in and through your life. That's what I mean by risk. And I think when you do that, when if we choose, if we go through life always choosing the easiest option with the least risk of failure, then actually we could be the same as the worker who buries his talents in the ground because he's scared of the consequences if if if he fails in his own strength. Uh whereas actually, if we're the ones that say, Do you know, I I can see two options in front of me. One is an easy one, and by easy I mean I can do this, I know I can achieve this in my own strength. That doesn't take any faith. That's just common sense to choose something that seems easy. But if you look at the second option, which is the scary one, that's the one you think, I can't do that unless God comes through and does something miraculous. If you choose that option, you're actually exercising faith because you're believing that God can do something that you can't do in and of yourself. So you're declaring that he is a big God, that he's a good God, that he wants good things for you, that he wants you to prosper, that he's generous, that he's merciful. And actually that that then becomes your act of worship. That you're it's not just declaring with your mouth that you believe that God is the God of the impossible, but you're actually demonstrating with your feet the life choices that you make, whether you actually believe that that's true. Is he really the God of the God, the God of the impossible? And we'll show whether we believe that with the life choices that we make.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And and it you find that your faith just continues to grow from, you know, like the Bible talks about going from glory to glory. I mean, you don't necessarily start right out with the highest of faith ambitions, right? I mean, the Lord, it's uh the Jesus described as like a mustard seed of faith, you know, something that it's something that grows over time. It's not like, oh, you're just not right with God if you aren't walking in the same level of faith as this person. Some people actually have a gift, a spiritual gift of faith. Like somebody has administration as a gift, somebody else has a gift of faith. And and so there's that that dynamic in play too. I mean, have you found that that's as in your own life, working with other entrepreneurs, this is something that you have to uh just continually grow?
SPEAKER_02Oh, absolutely. And I think it's like you said, God wants us to live a brave life because that shows that we're trusting him, that we're living beyond our own abilities and trusting him for the supernatural. Um, but equally, if it when you're faced with those two options where you think, okay, I've got an easy option and I've got a scary option, whatever that looks like, push yourself to go for the scary option. But if you feel like I just can't do this, like and you end up choosing the safe option, it's also knowing that that God's a good God. Like the the third worker, when he said I was scared, he said, and this is from the message version, he said, he said, I was scared because I know that you're a hard man and you make no allowance for error. And we know that that's not the case with God, that he's a loving father, that he sees us as his children. And if you have a child that you're raising and you're encouraging them to do something scary, maybe go down a big slide, you know, or something, and they just can't do it, they're too scared. You're not cross at them. You're kind of like, you know, you wish that they'd had the guts to try it because it might have turned out to be quite fun. And that doesn't mean that you won't stop, you won't stop pushing them in the future to try and go down that slide because you know that they're gonna enjoy you, but you're not cross at them because they're too scared. That's just you understand that's their human nature. And I think God, the what the Bible says that he sympathizes with our weaknesses, you know, that he's not cross with us, but that doesn't mean he's not gonna stop push trying to push us into scary territory, into the unknown, because that's where we learn that God is bigger than we thought he was and better than we believed he was, and and that he's able to do amazing things in and through our lives if we are that one person who says no to fear and decides to step out in faith.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and there's such a comparison trap with this too. Uh, haven't you found that you know, when I look at read some of the business magazines and learn about people starting companies to take people to Mars and just stuff like that? It's like, how could you and and and in many cases these are not even Christian believers who are stepping out on these, you know, these ambitions. Like, how do you reconcile that with somebody that's really just a Christian that's been serving the Lord, that's trying to muster the faith to step out in just a very simple business that somebody that's like running one of those Fortune 500 companies, starting one of those Fortune 500 companies would look at like that's that's that wouldn't even that's not even we would hire one person for that, maybe fresh out of college, and it's just not a big deal, you know. Like, how do you how would you reconcile that?
SPEAKER_02I am so glad that you've asked this because I look, you know, to to the people that know me, I look like I'm achieving on a very high level. I'm traveling all over the world, charging a lot of money to photograph very expensive weddings. We've got coaching clients in seven different countries and counting. I've just written a book. Do you know? So I look on an entrepreneurial level like I'm achieving on a very high level, but I didn't start like this. So let me tell you about my first business. Because my first business was singing lessons. Because I had trained on a singing program, I knew that it worked, and nobody in my area was teaching this singing program. And my mum suggested, why don't you become the one, the person who teaches this? I had no idea how to do it, and so I started learning how to play the scales on the keyboard that I needed to teach these lessons, and I uh and I learned the scales and I learned how to teach it, but I the thing that I bought to start my business was a five-pound keyboard that I got second hand, and it had a broken sound card, and the only thing it would play was the trumpets, and so I was playing these scales, and it didn't even sound like a piano, it's just going it was awful. And I balanced that five-pound keyboard on my ironing board, and I engaged my first singing client who was a member of my family, my mum, and she and from the money that I earned from that first singing lesson, I bought myself a keyboard stand and then I started and I built from there, and so it wasn't this glamorous. I launched in and I've got this successful business. And I think a lot of Christians make unwise decisions when they're starting businesses because they want to try and avoid the hard work stage or the embarrassment stage where you haven't got a successful business, it all looks very homegrown. But actually, that's just that's the process of growing things, you know. The Bible uses a not a lot of analogies of farming. Um, and I feel that that reflects on Christian business and it's talking about if you if you're building little by little, that's when things grow. If you try and bypass that that process, you're just chasing a fantasy. Um, that actually you just have to be prepared to work from the bottom up, and that may look like a five-pound broken keyboard on a key on a lining board, and that's what your new your first business looks like. But actually, you know, I'm living proof that that can grow if you just keep faithfully doing the small things that you can see in front of you to do within your financial capabilities, within your skills in in that particular time. Actually, God can use that and grow that into something that looks far more significant than you ever dreamt it would be.
SPEAKER_00Yes, so good, so good. And so, I mean, we we really ought not to compare ourselves to other people and despise the faith that God has given to us to do what we're called to do. Because, you know, again, somebody can look at somebody out in um, you know, Fortune magazine or whatever, and like, why if I really had faith, I'd be on the cover of that magazine, or they would be looking at me like some technological genius or something. But it it's it's not even because the thing is, those people could it really comes down to what's motivating us, right? Is it the fruit of the spirit or is it the the deeds of the flesh, you know, the selfish ambition? Because you can you can reach those sort of worldly pinnacles of success by being driven by selfish ambition. You can do that. But what you're encouraging people to do, and what the Bible is encouraging us to do, is to be motivate motivated by faithfulness, which is uh a spiritual fruit, right? And and that's what that's what pleases God. It's it's the things that so it's not even about looking measuring up to some worldly standard, but what does risk taking look like for you in the eyes of God, right?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, and that actually brings us to the next bit of that one Thessalonians, where your labor motivated by love. And it's actually having a purpose behind your business is your purpose that people know your name, in which case, you know, that's not necessarily a godly ambition. Um, but actually, whether you're motivated by the love of your clients, whether you're actually genuinely wanting to add value to the people around you. And if you improve the lives of your customers, that's it, you can die a happy person, you know. Um, but also for us, the love of the local church, that we know that we can do good to the local church through the finance that we generate in our business, and that makes us labor. And I love the fact that it says you're labor motivated by love because it's not easy. You have to work at it, it's it never just falls in your lap. You step out in faith and oh, it's all you know, singing and flowers and like you know, and it's all wonderful. It's really hard. You have to labor for it. You go through the seasons just like a farmer would do where you go through the winter and you think, is anything ever gonna happen? And I can't feel like I can do anything right now. And then you go through the spring, you're thinking, is something growing? It looks like it is, Jen. Like, you know, there's all this emotions, and and it's it's a difficult process, but you'll keep going because you're motivated by love. You're motivated by the love of what you do, the love for your customers, and the love for the purpose of your business, which for us is a lot about supporting the local church.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, beautiful. Well, SJ, as we wrap it up here, uh tell our listeners where they can get in contact with you. Business of blessing.com is the website, uh, and and also tell them about the book and how maybe they could engage you in some of your services.
SPEAKER_02Oh, absolutely. Yes. So I've actually just poured some of my story and some of my what I've learned about how to build a successful business into this book, The Business of Blessing, the Biblical Blueprint for a God Abundant Business. So that's now available on Amazon. So you can actually buy that on any of the Amazon um stores. So just go to your national Amazon store and search. It's probably best to search Sarah Jane Ethan rather than Business of Blessing, because I've noticed that doesn't come up sometimes. So search for Sarah Jane Ethan in the Amazon store. You can also go to my website, thebusiness of blessing.com. And I've also got a free study guide and a 12-page business plan. So we can really get your strategy sorted for how you're going to start this business, you know, once you're all excited and motivated about starting a business out or the strategy behind that. So that's free. The free business business of blessing study guide and the 12-page business plan template, that's available on the website too.
SPEAKER_00All right. Well, we'll have the link in the show notes, and obviously, SJ is a delightful person to work with. So encourage people to reach out to you. SJ, thank you for sharing your time. Uh it's morning here, no, it's late afternoon. Uh, you go enjoy your evening and may God continue to bless the work you're doing.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much, Darren. Thank you. It's been great to be here.
SPEAKER_01We hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and Business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HBU Center for Christianity and Business at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.