I am so excited to get to write this post today! I am Laurie Parrent, founder of Set Apart Services, where we offer bookkeeping and financial clarity for small business owners. We focus on relationships with our clients so that we can help them navigate their business growth with confidence. In my personal life, I am a single mother of two amazing children and a licensed foster parent. Likely just like you, I started my business as a way to have freedom and finances to live a life for my calling and my family.
However, when I started my business, things didn’t start as I had dreamed. I had so much fear. Fear of embarrassing myself, fear of letting others down, fear of failure, as well as major impostor syndrome. Maybe you can relate. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I started to have some breakthroughs, and I want to share some of what I have learned with you.
LESSON 1:
I think the first lesson I learned, which took years for me to heal enough to finally grasp, was that I needed to have a big vision. Life is hard and we all get beat up and have scars. In my life, those scars kept me from being able to have a vision at all, because I was afraid to be hurt again. However, the Bible says where there is no vision, the people perish, Proverbs 29:18. I knew that is what the Bible said, I was just so scared to have to let go of yet one more dream, that I wasn’t even willing to dream anymore. When I finally was able to gain a vision that was bigger than my fears, I started to see change. Suddenly I could no longer hide or play it “safe”, because my vision involved others, and I was not willing to allow my fear to rob others of what I saw God wanting to do for them. Listen, my friends, if you find yourself playing small or dreaming small for fear of failure, let me encourage you to seek God. He brought you here to be a blessing to others. Ask Him what HIS vision is for your business, and how it will be able to impact the lives of others. Ask Him to help you grab onto that vision and let go of the fears that are holding you back. As it stands today, I know my vision is entirely too big for me to achieve alone, but that vision keeps me moving forward. Knowing that God is going to bring things into place in His timing.
LESSON 2:
Even with this first battle won. I realized I still had a lot of impostor syndrome. I was now doing the work to make myself more visible, but I was still so scared people would eventually see me as a fraud. Oh, the lies Satan feeds us that we willingly believe. God started to work on my heart. First He provided me with an opportunity that helped me to see how much I did know as well as the truth that even when I did not know the answers, I was always able to find the answers. While Satan wanted me to believe I needed to know it all, God helped me to see that He was equipping me as we walked together. He also started to show me how He had created me, and all my quirks, just for this work. Psalm 139:14 says I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Satan, through the world, tells me I have flaws, and I need to be more like this expert or that influencer. The more I tried to be like everyone else, God showed me it was like taking the masterpiece He created and hiding it under a sheet. Sure, I would let the world see pieces of that masterpiece, and a few close friends a couple of corners, but mostly I was hiding it behind a sheet so that it didn’t stand out. We were made to stand out! As we go through life, the world gives us feedback telling us that we need to conform, we need to fit in, and we need to hide our quirks. The more I did that, the more impostor syndrome reigned. When I finally realized what I was doing, I uncovered that masterpiece! I started realizing that God loved those quirks. He created them! He even created them with a plan and a purpose, Jeremiah 29:11. I started to stop trying to be like everyone else, and just started to love my quirks and goofy sense of humor. I stopped trying to be more “professional” and started to just let the goofy girl God created who genuinely loves people, show. And you know what? I started to attract more people who loved that side of me as well. My impostor syndrome disappeared, and I started to LOVE sales/discovery calls. I no longer felt like I had to sell myself or convince a person I could do the job and was the right fit. I just knew I COULD help and that I WANTED to help, and if I wasn’t the right fit for that potential client, GREAT! God always had more leads to come, and I knew those clients would be more aligned with how I wanted to work.
LESSON 3:
Probably the most important lesson I have finally grabbed a hold of is that as a Christian entrepreneur, I do not own my business, God does. I am simply the manager or steward of that business. As Christians, we know that all things belong to God, but so many times we forget that also means our family, our business, our paycheck, etc. While this, at first, may seem like an uncomfortable idea, this realization (and following surrender) helped release so many of those fears I was hanging on to. Suddenly, I was not solely responsible for the success (or failure) of my business. It was not my responsibility to find more clients. It was my responsibility to be a good manager, or steward and listen to what God was calling me to do. It was not my responsibility to “sell myself” or make the sale on every discovery call; it was my responsibility to seek God, dive deep into who He created me to be and trust Him with the rest. Most reassuringly, it was not my responsibility to know all the answers to solve all the issues that arose; I just needed to seek Him and follow where He led.
So let’s talk a little bit more about what it means to be a good steward of God’s business. Just what exactly does that look like realistically? Well first, it means starting your business days with a meeting of the owner of the business, God. If we neglect our quiet time with Him because we feel we have too much work to do, we are going to miss out on the different areas He is asking us to work. Being a good steward of our business also means handling the business money properly. To do that you FIRST need to know where the money is coming from and where it is going. While you may think you know the answer here unless you are up-to-date on your financials and reviewing those reports regularly, you are just guessing. This is a real struggle for a lot of people. We may be willing to surrender our “lives”, but we have a hard time surrendering our finances. Let me encourage you to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Stop guessing and start being a real CEO/Manager of your company. Make sure you are watching your financials, understanding them, and asking God where things need to change. Lastly, we need to make sure that we are treating the people we encounter in our business, whether clients, employees, or vendors, as Christ would. I have certainly had encounters with clients where pride rears its ugly head, and I want to treat them how I have been treated. However, God calls us to love others as ourselves. There has been more than one occasion when I have followed God’s lead instead of my own desires and watched God take a tense situation and work it out for good. Trust Him.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I am Laurie Parrent, founder of Set Apart Services, where we offer bookkeeping and financial clarity for small business owners. We focus on relationships with our clients so that we can help them navigate their business growth with confidence. In my personal life, I am a single mother of two amazing children and a licensed foster parent. Likely just like you, I started my business as a way to have freedom and finances to live a life for my calling and my family.