Stop Feeling Overwhelmed and Grow Your Christian Business (Here's How)

Okay, I want to ask you something, and I want you to really think about it. How many tabs do you have open right now? And I don't mean in your computer, I mean in your business. How many things are you trying to build, trying to launch, manage and maintain all at the same time? Because I think for a lot of us business owners, the answer is way too many. And today we're going to talk about why this isn't just a productivity problem, but it's actually a faith problem. Welcome to the Faith Led Founders Podcast, the show for Christian entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to grow a successful business without the overwhelm. I'm Lauren, a marketing strategist and business coach with over a decade of experience helping businesses simplify their marketing and build systems that create real growth. So if you're ready, grab your coffee and let's dive in. So I say this all the time, but so many of us have been wired by our modern culture. And in such a toxic way, our culture really does glorify this idea of doing it all. Hence hustle culture, which we talked about a few episodes ago. And all this means is we have been trained to think about more offers, more platforms, more streams of income, more visibility. But really, as a faith led founder, what does scripture actually illustrate for us? Well, Proverbs 4, verse 25, 27 tells us, Let your eyes look straight ahead. Fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all of your ways. Do not turn to the right or to the left, and keep your feet from evil. And so when I read this passage and, and when I look at examples all throughout the Bible, it's actually illustrating to us and telling us to keep a singular focus. And this is really a lost concept in today. But for us faith led founders, this is really crucial for us to pay attention to. Now. It's important for us to pay attention to not just for our walk with Christ, but, but for every area of our lives. And yes, even in our businesses. You know, God doesn't call us to do everything, but he does call us to the assignments that have been set before us. He's given us a task and he wants us to do that task or that assignment with excellence. And so, like I said, we see many examples all throughout scripture where individuals had a seat, singular focus. Jesus himself came fully human, fully God, with a singular focus and a singular assignment set before him. And I, I was doing my devotional a couple of weeks ago and reading in the old Testament. And I was just amazed. And this was something that was actually really highlighted to me because as I'm reading through, you know, the, the tabernacle was built with very specific specifications and there were many of the Israelites and different tribes had these different roles. And a lot of these roles were singularly focused there. What there were the individuals who were the priests and they were the ones who could enter the tabernacle. There was the individual who was in charge of producing the wheat for the bread, but then some other family was the one responsible for the singular task of baking the bread for the sacrifices. And so we see this picture of a singular focus all throughout the gospel. And I think that this is something for us to take note of as business owners. And that's the whole purpose of today's episode. I really want to dive into this and challenge this need to do everything in our business. And I want to help you shift to a singular focus because I think that's when we can actually start to see breakthrough in our business and, and see the needle move forward in the areas that we're hoping for. So I bring all this up because of that. And the reason why this is really important as faith led founders is our faith and our business strategy intersects at this point. So this is, this is where the intersection of business strategy and faith actually begins to come alive. And so how many of you guys, when. When your attention is divided, you notice that your results get diluted? You. You know, there is this saying and a colleague of mine brought this up in a leadership meeting a couple of years ago and it stuck with me and I've just come on to it and the quote is this. If everything is important, then nothing is important. And it's so true. When everything seems important, our attention is just divided amongst all these different things that we've said. It's important and it actually just, it dilutes our focus in every one of these areas. And in business, this can look like offering too many services before actually mastering one and having great sales for one. It could look like trying to be on every social media platform instead of just dominating one and really building, you know, high quality content on one social media platform. It could look like chasing new shiny objects or opportunities. And so if this sounds like you today, I want you to know that you're not alone. But this is a really big opportunity for you to recenter to the things that matter in your business. Because every time you add a new focus area in your business, you're dividing your energy, your time, your Resources and even worse. And what I've seen from, you know, my time span and working in businesses and working alongside business owners is you're dividing your team's attention and you could be losing them and losing their success rates because you're just dividing their attention and you're pivoting way too much for them to actually upkeep it. And this all falls on you as the business owner and as the leader of your business. So I've lived this out working alongside a high performing business owner. We were pivoting constantly. There was always a new software and a new number that we needed to track, a new KPI that we were chasing. And over the course of a year, when we looked back at things, our productivity and our opportunities to actually grow were declining. And it, and it goes back to the fact that we're spread too thin. Our focus is on all over the place. And there's, there's actually research that shows when we even look at someone working on a computer in a workplace, the more tabs an individual has open in their physical computer actually diminishes their ability to focus and to be a high performer on a task because they're constantly brain searching. And I don't know all of the research of this, but there is research out there that shows that having scattered focus is actually very harmful for our, our brains. And so it just slows down business growth from, from my experience, it slows down business growth and at some points it actually completely stops a business from growing. And so before I give you your reset assignment, I want you to understand the root of why we may be taking, taking on so much and dividing our focus. This is going to be, you know, always a foundation I come back to is identifying the roots in our faith because our faith pours out into everything. And so if you're hearing this and you've identified this is me, I have 40 tabs open in my business. Well, let's dive into some of the reasons why you might have those 40 tabs open. So I'm going to help you out today. The first reason why you may be scattering your focus and taking on too much and rather than having a singular focus is going to come down to fear. You might actually be trying to do it all in your business because you're afraid that you're going to miss something. You're, you're afraid that you're going to miss out on an opportunity, you're going to leave money on the table, or maybe that you're even going to fall behind in business growth because you're stuck in a comparison loophole to other business owners. And I want you to know that God didn't give us a spirit of fear. You know, you don't need to be afraid of what someone else is doing or afraid of leaving money on the table. Because if you're a faith led founder and you're trying to run your business with God at the center, fear doesn't belong in your business at all. And this leads me to my second reason why we actually might not have a singular focus. And it's. And it comes down to trust issues. You may be struggling to actually trust that God will grow your business or that you won't get to where you want to go because you just don't trust him. You think that you need to be in the steering wheel. And I want to remind you that God's plan is always going to be better. God's plan, God's timing, it's perfect. I mean, he is a divine sovereign God who lives outside of time and space. He works things together for those who are in Christ Jesus. So his timing for your business to grow, his. His timing and the people that he's bringing to work for you in your business to help you take your business to the next level, it's going to be perfect. It's going to be more than you can ask, think or imagine. So I want to challenge that, that if you are struggling to trust God in your business, this is going to lead to you making poor decisions or taking on too much in your business. And the end result of that is stagnation. But the third reason, and I've already kind of tapped into that, the third reason we may not have a singular focus in our business is control. I have been around plenty of business owners and I have struggled with this myself. But we can tend to be controlling. We want to control the outcomes. We want to know exactly how something's going to be done. We like the way we do it. We have control problems and that is going to lead you to burnout. I'm going to say it as someone who has struggled with control myself. We need to let go of control and learn how to delegate. Is one of the first things, is we need to learn how to delegate some of our tasks. But we also need to remember, and this is my friendly reminder to you, that if you're a faith led founder, you're wanting to God at the center of your business. God has to be the CEO of your business. And if he's not, if you've Gotten in that seat where you're leading, you may be taking on too much. You may have way too many tabs, and you may easily get swayed into chasing shiny objects. That starts to dilute your focus and slows down movement and momentum in your business. So again, if you're hearing all this and you're thinking, well, geez, Lauren, I have 40 tabs open in my business, and I'm feeling frustrated, I'm feeling overwhelmed in my business, and I have not been moving the needle forward in the way in my business, in the way that I would like. I want to give you exactly what you need to do in order to fix that, because I'm believing that whoever is on the other side of this listening. You have been frustrated with your business. You have been overwhelmed with your business. But God doesn't want to keep you there. He wants to help and help you and guide you to move the needle forward in your business in a way that you never thought. And he wants to do that with you in a way where you will have peace, you will have momentum, and you will have such clarity. And so here's your little reset assignment. Here's what I want you to grab a pen, I want you to grab paper, and you're going to write down a few things. The first thing I want you to write down is this question. What is the core goal you are trying to hit in your business right now? It's really important that we get clear on what is the one goal that you are chasing in your business? You know, I am building my business proactively in public for everyone to see. And I had scattered focus for about a year, and I had to slow down and God kind of checked me. And so my singular focus over the last two months was to get my website designed, the copy written, and get my website launched. That website is now live because I focused on my one core goal. So I want you to write down and think about this. What is the one goal in your business? Is it launching a website? Is it increasing your leads? Is it improving your conversion rates from. From a lead to an actual buying client? Write down that goal. And then the next thing I want you to do is I want you to draw a line down the paper, and I want you to have a primary goal and a secondary focus. I guess a primary focus and a secondary focus. And I want you to write out what is the biggest problem keeping you from moving toward that goal. So that's going to be your second question. Then we're going to go into the chart what are the biggest thing, what is the biggest things that are keeping you from moving toward that goal? Is it that you, you've taken on way too much? Is it that a shortage of staff, whatever that the that problem might be? I want you to write that down. Now the third thing I want you to do is ask yourself what are the primary tasks or what are the tasks that would be primary drivers to move toward that goal? And I want you to write that down on your primary side of your chart. These are going to be the maybe two to three things that would actually help move the needle toward that goal. Now on the other side, I want you to list out all the other tasks that you have, all the other 37 tabs that you have open in your business. HR, email marketing, social media, content, whatever those things might be be. Now, when you're looking at this diagram, you're going to have primary tasks that actually move you towards your goal on the left side and on the right side you're going to have your secondary tasks. Now those secondary tasks are going to become the things that you need to do one of two things with. You're going to delegate those tasks out. If this means you, you contract out, you, you find some freelancers, you white label, you're going to need delegate those tasks. The other tasks are going to be things that you're going to stop altogether. And I am believing that when you do this, this is really going to help you see the full perspective of just how much you're doing. And it may be daunting and I kind of hope that it is. As you've written out all of your tasks and all of the things that you've been doing, I hope it is daunting and I hope this will give you permission to start doing less. As you shift from doing everything to having a singular focus, I really believe that you will start to see big momentum in your business because you have a clear focus on where you're headed, clarity, and God's going to take care of the rest. You don't need to be overwhelmed and trying to do it all. I've seen it for myself, I've seen it for my, my business mentor working in his business. And when we as a leadership group and as a team have a singular focus, things just fall into place and you gain so much more momentum rather than trying to do 50 things half heartedly. So I think this will really help you also with building more trust with God. As you start to do less in your business, as you start to have a singular focus. You're gonna see God's hand move and direct you in ways that you never could have even imagined. And it's amazing. And it's just Bible math, you know, it's. It's the way the kingdom works. So that is all for today. I hope that this episode blessed you, and I'd love to hear in the comments, what is the one thing in your business right now that, if you focused on it completely, would move the needle more than anything else? I'd love to hear where you're at in your business. What's the one thing that you're going to start focusing on? So be sure to drop that below if you're new to the podcast. Podcast, welcome. I hope that this was fruitful for you and that you would hit the follow button and we'll be back next week.