Vision + Diligence = Entrepreneurial Success

For 32 years prior to launching CanaGlobal, God was preparing me to mentor Faith-Driven-Entrepreneurs.

• During my first 16 years as an entrepreneur, I learned how to launch and lead four business ventures, landing multiple times on the prestigious INC 500, Deloitte Technology Fast 50, Business Journal's Top 25, Corporate 100, and the 40 Under 40.
• Over the next 16 years, I launched and led a business turnaround and growth agency focused on helping small business CEOs accelerate their businesses. Most earned INC 500 status.
• Then in 2016, I launched CanaGlobal with a mission of helping startup founders and small business CEOs connect the dots between business, purpose, success, and faith.

All together that's 37 plus years as a serial entrepreneur. That's a lot of mountain climbing!

There is a pattern of failure that I see over and over. And as a mentor, my responsibility is to expose, educate and eradicate the root of failure when I see it. 

Two scriptures come to mind.

John 8:32 (NIV) - “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Hosea 4:6 (NIV) - “My people are DESTROYED from lack of knowledge.”

Knowledge of the TRUTH will set you free, as an entrepreneur, you need one thing to control your company’s destiny - TRUTH.

Here it is. Whether you are launching or leading a business, you are certain to fail if you do not learn the diligence required to build a Vision. See, vision is a precise, clearly defined goal with a detailed plan and timetable for achieving that goal.

Diligence is a learnable skill that combines: creative persistence, a smart-working effort rightly planned and rightly performed in a timely, efficient, and effective manner to attain a result that is pure and of the highest quality of excellence.

>> If you are launching a startup and you've been winging it, the market will eat you alive.

>> And If you are leading a business, changing landscape, and the shifts in technology and buyer journey will do the same. In other words, the thing that gets you there never keeps you there. First slowly ... then suddenly.

This week I was studying 2 Timothy, and chapters 3 and 4 connected some dots for me as a mentor to Faith-Driven Entrepreneurs.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NIV) - All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Notice the teaching, rebuking, correcting and training. This is what a good mentor does.

Then in Chapter 4:2-3 Paul continues with correct, rebuke and encourage too!

2 Timothy 4:2-3 (NIV) - Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

There's a lot of noise out there, mentors and coaches that will encourage and motivate you right into complete failure because they're afraid of what you might think of them. What nonsense! Truth matters.

Look, whether you are launching or leading a company, success comes through diligence and vision, ONLY. Let's explore what The Word has to say.

Proverbs 21:5 (AMP) The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance and advantage, But everyone who acts in haste comes surely to poverty.

Habakkuk 2:3 (AMP) “For the vision is yet for the appointed [future] time It hurries toward the goal [of fulfillment]; it will not fail. Even though it delays, wait [patiently] for it, Because it will certainly come; it will not delay.

Proverbs 29:18 (AMP) Where there is no vision [no revelation of God and His word], the people are unrestrained; But happy and blessed is he who keeps the law [of God].

Luke 14:28 (NKJV) For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it—

Folks, as we progress in 2022, learn the diligence required to create a vision for your success. I know how bad you want to succeed in the things that God has called you to do. Where you lack in ability and resources, God will abundantly supply you. Have faith, and follow with works.

-Gerald