Below Momma’s Money Tree has shared an excerpt from our upcoming book, Home Business Basics: Lessons From The Proverbs 31 Woman. For more information or to purchase the book, please visit our Products & Services page.
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Nitro for Your Business
If you enjoy automotive racing shows of any form, you will inevitably come across the concept of increasing a vehicle’s engine performance through the addition of nitrous oxide. The stuff is almost portrayed as being the substance of mythical legends.
In actual life, it turns out that a nitrous oxide injection system really can provide more oxygen to a racing engine, thus increasing the vehicle’s speed. However, if a person were to believe the racing movies, the addition of nitrous oxide to an engine spontaneously transforms a driver into a racing Super Sayin – or seizes the engine thus destroying the vehicle. Despite having such a significant drawback, the portrayed racers appear to deem possible vehicular disaster a small price to pay for the chance to become a speedster legend.
Compared to businesses of ancient past, ventures today have access to a similarly awe-inspiring kind of performance-boosting additive in the form of modern technology. Using the internets of people and things, computer chips, and automation, a relatively simple business of the present becomes potentially capable of outperforming what would have been a sophisticated enterprise from the past.
True, we are yet to unlocking some of the greatest ancient mysteries, but the computer chip has done much to shape the businesses of today. With digital enhancement, modern businesses can increase their hours of productivity while reducing the time spent on human collection and analysis of data. Using computerized systems, it is possible to have a specific task performed online with an almost endless (24/7/365) schedule, no need for rest breaks, and a minimal decline in work quality over time. Without modern computing and automation, this kind of feat would be impossible.
Of course, the presence of current-day technology begs a significant question for the line of study pursued in this book. If the Proverbs 31 businesswoman were alive today, how might her daily and entrepreneurial life be different?
Obviously, the original description doesn’t provide any kind of direct answer to this question, but perhaps there are clues indicating what the differences might have been.
If you’d like to find out, keep reading.
Modern Homemaking
If she were fortunate enough to travel time and view the technological abilities of our day, the Proverbs 31 woman would probably be awestruck by the amount of work that can be accomplished by a single person and a computer connected to the internet. However, once recovered from the shock, she would probably begin evaluating how she might use some of the new digital options to augment her own personal support.
As a first step, the Proverbs 31 wife might arrange for technological assistance to organize her schedule, maintain an inventory of office supplies, and track household needs (verses 15 and 21). This would probably be her first step toward allowing automation to help increase her time for family and self-care time.
If she found herself needing to supervise the remote classwork of her children during the global pandemic, the Proverbs 31 woman might consider arranging for a virtual personal assistant to lighten her load. Thanks to global interconnectedness, she could hire a virtual assistant to schedule personal appointments, respond to emails, schedule food delivery, and order refills for regularly used supplies at home and work. The reclaiming time could be used to support the distance learning of her children and maintain her exercise schedule during periods of sheltering at home.
Having taken these steps, there might be a temptation to spend some of her newfound free time on social media. However, the Proverbs 31 wife would probably resist the urge to lose herself in social media gossip, rumors, and small talk (verse 26). While she might use social media platforms to communicate with friends and market her business, it’s not as likely that this entrepreneur would allow herself to neglect family time or work responsibilities (verse 27) to hang out on social media. Instead, the Proverbs 31 businesswoman would probably invest part of her additional free time to further cultivate important personal and business relationships.
In a similar manner, the Proverbs 31 woman would probably resist social media-inspired urges to chase personal or business perfection. Instead, she’d probably choose to focus on using the internet to access encouraging quotes, inspirational articles, and educational resources. In this way, she’d allow technology to motivate her pursuit of excellence at home and in her enterprises.
Despite her newfound access to the world of digital resources, the Proverbs 31 woman would most likely continue to prioritize people and relationships over automation and things. Our examination of her practices in the home, workplace, and community indicate that she would continue to use her resources to positively impact others (verses 12, 15, 20, 21). Thus, her digital resources would become a new set of tools for benefiting those in her sphere of influence.
It is also highly likely that the Proverbs 31 businesswoman would use social media to support worthy causes while continuing to act as a positive change agent. She would probably consider using social media profiles for the connection of businesspersons and professionals to spread her message in the online space.
Boosting Business
In her work, the Proverbs 31 entrepreneur would likely use automation, software systems, and global access via the internet to further optimize her businesses. She’d probably start with increasing the efficiency of her staff by communicating with suppliers and customers using email and phone services. Like other corporate colleagues navigating the pandemic, she would probably reduce in-office meetings by gathering via videoconferencing. When possible, she’d most likely permit employees to remotely complete and submit from home.
To improve the systems of her business, the Proverbs 31 entrepreneur would place and track the orders for her wool and flax (verse 13) with online software. To increase awareness of her venture, she would arrange for her home business to have an online presence. This might be accomplished using social media pages, websites, or a combination of these services.
To support her business’ branding, the marketing needs of her venture would likely be adjusted to include advertisements on social media, search engines, and websites. Similarly, the sales processes of her business would incorporate the placement of online orders using automated tools on social media profiles and websites. Her customers would enjoy the convenience of ordering whenever they felt inclined to do so. At the same time, the Proverbs 31 businesswoman would expand her business network while offering textile and clothing services (verses 18 and 24) to an international audience.
Because her sales processes would already be automated, it would be convenient for the Proverbs 31 woman to begin using banking and bookkeeping software to track the revenue generated by her businesses. Undoubtedly, she would still retain advisors to support the monetary details of her enterprise. Nevertheless, the bookkeeping and payroll software would dramatically increase the transparency associated with managing the tax filings and profitability of her businesses (verse 18). In some cases, auditing the monetary status of her enterprise could become as simple as prompting her software to populate a chart or graph.
Mechanized Money Management
In her personal life, the Proverbs 31 woman would probably use internet resources and phone apps to make the most of any money that she was to spend. In a process similar to that used for buying her vineyard (verse 16), she would use digital resources to compare prices and seek discounts before making personal and business purchases.
By automating her systems for saving, paying bills, investing, and donating to charitable causes, this entrepreneur would further increase the efficiency of her dollars. Also, her history of timely bill payments would only help to increase her personal and business credit ratings – even if it seems unlikely that she would choose to take on debt of any form (verse 18).
If she chose to participate in the stock market, the Proverbs 31 entrepreneur would be the kind of person to thoroughly research her positioning and potential investment options before involving any funds. She would use available software to track her gains and losses while rebalancing her portfolio as indicated. Come tax season, this home entrepreneur would be prepared with downloaded bank statements and software-generated bookkeeping records to input to her tax preparation software or provide to an accounting specialist.
In spite of the profitability of her businesses and automated systems for saving and investing, the Proverbs 31 woman would likely remain committed to preparing for future rainy days. Rather than allowing the euphoria associated with technological advances to cause her to relax attention to accumulating savings, this entrepreneur would probably continue to multiply her income streams and retain cash and differing forms of physical assets. In this way, she would remain prepared to provide for her household if they were ever to encounter harder times (verses 11, 21, 25).
Global Agent of Change
With this carefully constructed money management system, the Proverbs 31 woman would be well-positioned to leverage her social influence to invest in the lives of others. Rather than using her financial resources to serve only those of her immediate household, she would probably use philanthropy to support worthy causes and uplift the well-being of others (verse 20).
In times of relative peace, the Proverbs 31 woman would probably consider starting or contributing to scholarship funds, mentorship programs, and educational organizations. During periods of global health concern, she might use her resources to supply healthcare and medical supplies to those going without. Because of her commitment to enabling others to live up to their personal potential, she would likely find ways to use her business network and social standing to amplify the voice of those resisting oppression and injustice.
In the end, it wouldn’t be surprising to find that people might praise and adore the Proverbs 31 woman for her commitment to positively impacting others through service-oriented philanthropy, education, and investment of funds. Had the Proverbs 31 entrepreneur lived in our day, her popularity, broad business network, and collaborative approach to system building would have been dramatically amplified by current communication systems. As a result, a modern-day Proverbs 31 businesswoman may very well have found herself capable of leaving an international imprint on the world!
Join us in the next chapter where we’ll explore the lessons of the Proverbs 31 businesswoman for the Bible-based entrepreneur!
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Thank you for reading! If you’d like access to this section’s author notes and assignments, click here to purchase ebook access.
Until the next chapter, good luck with the growing!
D’Loreyn