By: Scott Prewitt

-Consultants get to hear their value affirmed by the clients.

-You are accountable before God how you treat your employees

You need to have good work ethics. There are 3 understandings.

1. Business is not for everybody,
2. In consulting your commodity is your brain, but in
3. Corporate world, you have to deliver a product, transfer what is in your brain to a product

Following Jesus is not an insurance?

Bad reasons to get into business

• Wanting to make quick money
• If other people want you to, but you don’t want, do not do it
• If you want to make more money than your friends
• Good reasons for you in setting up a business (some of the reasons)
• Helps you build a financial future

Consultancy:

1. Gives you a chance to work hard and be proud – Feeling good about something you have created
2. It allows you be your own boss
3. Gives you a chance to do what you are good at
4. Allows you to be charitable – Money allows you to be more of the kind you really are
5. It is an adventure, you are seldom bored
6. You learn a lot about the world

How to grow into a Corporate Leader

• Change your commodity from what is in your head to something outside yourself
• You have to do analysis – Make a business plan
• Do you have enough working capital?
• Do the business plan on paper. It has to be written and thorough.
• Have a business mentor. Someone who has done it. Have people shoot holes in it.
• Learn how to keep books and manage cash flows. Be willing to learn how to manage cash flows if it is not your thing. If you don’t know or don’t understand basic business, take classes.
• Learn to work with employees.
• Learn how to hire for talent, for technical people, how to fire.
• Learn how to manage properly.
• Learn how to correct failure.
• Learn how to take off hats. At the start of business, you will wear several hats, training hat, bookkeeping hat, marketing hat etc. As the business grows, you give some of your hats away. Be willing to let go as business grows.

-You should not be threatened by someone else’s gifts. Learn to appreciate and embrace other’s gifts.

-You need to manage your time. If you have 2 or 3 people you can have an open-door policy in discussing issues. But if your company grows and you have many people, you have to manage your time well.

-Start scheduling meetings and how to hold them properly (Need to have the objectives of meeting, keep time, know when the meetings are done, plan for meetings in advance, have regularity)

-Need to learn or you have to understand between sales and marketing

-Sales – how the business increases the push out of products to clients – to make profits

-Marketing – understanding the how to sale, the target clients, your products, your market

-You need to live a balanced life. Do not let the business be the ‘thing’ that defines you. Knowing what God wants you to be and doing exactly what God what you to do. That should be your drive.

Q & A

1. After a round or cycle of success, how do you split among partners of if one partner wants out?
2. Have a written exit agreement upfront

e.g. If each partner put in some x capital, if one wants out,

-They cannot ask for their share before y number of years,

-The rate of pulling out can be gradual e.g. in 3 phases – 75% -50% – 25% involvement

-Have a written agreement in case of death etc.