More Than Business

By Jeff Williams

I wonder what the term “business leader” conjures up for you. If I had to take a wild stab, I would imagine the first thing that came to mind was a laundry list of duties. The job description. The day-to-day responsibilities that keep your business running and thriving. And you wouldn’t be wrong. Running or managing a business requires action.

But I’d like to expand your mind a bit. Business is similar to a switchboard—but instead of distributing electrical power to other circuits, a business leader imparts power to people. This may sound like an odd analogy. Bear with me. As a leader in business, you are a power center, an apparatus with many functions and responsibilities. Others depend on you for vision, empowerment, support and growth. You are a conduit for feeding life into others.

A people-centered business leader sees the importance of the whole machine—that it cannot run without engaging every gear and every cog—but you are the powerhouse that keeps the wheels turning. Your power has to come from somewhere, however. You can’t give power that you don’t have.

So, this is where you become set apart, you’re not just the manager of a moneymaking machine. Your power doesn’t come from an electric current. Your power comes from a different Source—the power of God working in you and through you. Many of us don’t really think about business leadership as an incubator for producing a life of kingdom purpose, mobilizing people to live and share kingdom values. Many of us don’t really think about business as a ministry. But that’s exactly what it is. If you are a business leader, you have a ministry.

My story is a transition from finding success in business to building my business for the kingdom to building the kingdom through my business. It’s a story from success to significance and from significance to transformation—in other words, bringing the kingdom of heaven into the marketplace.


FINDING SUCCESS

I own a company called Absolute Results, a training, consulting and sales events company that works with about 1,500 car dealers a year in 17 countries in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. We teach a values-based selling system to 10,000 sales professionals a year and help them sell 100,000 cars.

I started the company 27 years ago in my friend’s garage, training the sales team for two days and then running a one-day sales event to put the training into action. The evidence that the training worked was a record-breaking sale. In essence, it was a training in action concept. I combined the “candy” (the sales) with the “vitamin” (the training).

Like most entrepreneurs who come from nothing, originally, I was happy having a successful company, providing for my family and being generous to charities and my local church. But deep down inside, I knew I was made for something more.


FROM SUCCESS TO SIGNIFICANCE

My life changed when I met John Maxwell in 2013 at a time in my life when I was at a crossroads. My business had experienced three years of crazy growth, and I was unsure of what was next. From the time I was a child, I had a love for God and a desire to serve Him. I felt He had something for me to accomplish, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Just building a successful business felt empty. I knew I wasn’t made for a traditional ministry role, and somehow, I intuitively knew I was called into the marketplace—but for what purpose?

John Maxwell challenged me to build a business for the kingdom. He personally mentored me for two years, teaching me how to develop my gifts and grow my business. He also taught me that I had more than just money to give to ministries like his—EQUIP and the John Maxwell Leadership Foundation (JMLF). He invited me to join him in Guatemala and Paraguay as we developed and scaled Roundtables, a movement that transforms communities and countries around the world by training values to hundreds of thousands of people.

He knew I had a gift to grow and scale businesses, and when he asked me to fund the transformation movement in Guatemala and Paraguay, he said, “I don’t just want your money, I want you to come on the journey with me. Come and meet the presidents of these nations with me, and help me grow and scale this movement. You have more to offer my ministry and other ministries than just money.”

Around that time, I also had the privilege of partnering with an amazing nonprofit called Hope of Life in Guatemala, an organization that rescues thousands of babies and children dying of starvation every year in remote mountain villages. They bring these children and their families to the Hope of Life hospital and campus to heal and educate them. They also build homes, schools and churches and initiate clean water projects.

I was able to build a village and send a team of my staff every month for two years to build homes, rescue dying babies and feed the poor. I also brought dozens of successful business people to Guatemala on vision trips to see what transformation looks like—to see the impact of thousands of people in the city learning to live by values through the work of the JMLF, and then to go out into the country and see lives being saved through the work of Hope of Life.

My goal was to use my success in business and my charitable adventures as a platform to share my message with other successful business people. My message was, “Don’t chase success, chase significance.” My message resonated, and I engaged dozens of successful businesspeople from multiple faiths in God’s work.

This was a rewarding chapter of my life. You might even say it was intoxicating and beautiful to live an extravagantly generous life, to give six-figure checks to great ministries like John’s and Hope of Life and to see lives being transformed and literally saved—spiritually and physically.

And then my life changed in 2018. I had the opportunity to get married, and I knew I needed to make space in my life to prioritize my marriage and business. So, I resigned from the JMLF and reduced all other charitable commitments.

Every time I have doubled down on my business, I have learned more about my calling. But I still wasn’t satisfied. Something was still missing. I wasn’t happy with my business being an engine of transformation for other ministries, I wanted my business to be an engine of transformation in society, in the car industry and beyond. I didn’t just want to build a business for the kingdom, I wanted to build the kingdom through my business.

FROM SIGNIFICANCE TO TRANSFORMATION

To simply put generosity as the end goal of the gifts your business provides cheapens the gift. Here’s why: To say, “I’m going to devote my life to giving to you (e.g., the church) because you are doing God’s work” implies that what we do in business isn’t God’s work—or isn’t as valuable.

That’s true if we are solely focused on the financial ROI. But I believe it’s bad theology to think if we have a successful business, our sole goal should be to grow it big, sell it for as much as possible and then get a big check that we can then give away to God’s work or put it in a charitable trust to give away perpetually.

If you feel strongly that God is directing you to do this, that’s different. But it shouldn’t be the goal. Of course, we will be generous, that’s a given. When you realize all you have is truly God’s, you take joy in abundant and extravagant generosity. Your generosity is an outflow of your business and your life.

God didn’t gift you to be an ATM for the church. He gifted you to bring the kingdom of heaven into society through your business, not from your business. When I began to realize this, I felt very convicted. I began to ask, Am I truly bringing the kingdom to my staff, my clients, my industry?

If our life calling is to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth, and to transform society, then our business is the vehicle to do that:

Our products and services, plus the way we interact and partner with our staff, contractors and their families should reflect this spirit and goal in our workplace.

Our products and services should reflect that same spirit and goal in the marketplace, adding value to people’s lives, solving problems, making life better.

Our products and services, plus our marketing and the way we interact and partner with our clients, suppliers and distribution network should reflect this spirit and goal in the industry.

And the way we personally and corporately invest the resources created from our products and services should reflect the kingdom of God in society.

Our businesses should be an influential and thriving ecosystem, our best Spirit-led template of how the kingdom of God should look in the world. They should be “salt and light” in the workplace, marketplace, industry and society at large, positively impacting and transforming the lives of all they touch.

What did Jesus do? He started a different organization, a different sort of ecclesia. Maybe it’s time for that to happen again. For me to fully understand this call, I had to first consider, then accept, and then believe bringing kingdom principles to society is just as noble as saving lives in Guatemala or funding a movement where thousands dedicate their lives to God.

Absent of business as a God-given commission, business is just . . . business. It’s managing employees. It’s making big decisions. It’s setting and accomplishing lofty goals. It’s monitoring team performance. Is that enough for you? I think He wants more for you.

The secret sauce to a rewarding kingdom business is in the people you impact—your clients and your team. As you run your business with kingdom values, your people will become conduits of your kingdom purpose. And there’s a bonus. It’s not just your business that will profit from a heart of service. It will overflow into every area of your life outside of the workplace. It will have an impact on the kingdom.