Business Lessons Rick Warren Taught Me
Thursday, January 1st, 2009If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Many months ago, a friend of mine asked me who’s my model in entrepreneurship and I said - Rick Warren. He was surprised as I was with my answer. Who would ever think of Rick Warren as a model in entrepreneurship? (Well, at that time I was also surprised but later I found it was a good choice after all.)
When I was about to start my business 2 1/2 years ago, I virtually knew nothing about business. All I knew was I wanted to build a global team for my internet network marketing business and I was looking for a model.
I knew some people have been able to do that but what I wanted was a Christian model. I searched but I could not find one. It was also during that time that I was reading Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church.
The more I read Rick Warren’s book, the more I could see its potential as the model for what I was about to build. I felt I was reading a book on entrepreneurship and how to build a global organization, God’s way.
Later, I read somewhere a confirmation that my choice of a model wasn’t actually misplaced. Rick Warren, in an interview, said - “That book I wrote for pastors and priest on how to manage their church. The Federal Reserve Bank of America, years ago, handed out the “Purpose Driven Church” to all its branch managers not as a religious book but as a book on classic management.Forbes Magazine said, if Saddleback church, where I’m a pastor, was a business it would be compared to Starbucks or Google (laughter), because we now have around 400,000 churches in our network, spread all around the world. I have trained around 400,000 pastors in 162 countries. But now, my staff and I are not just training church leaders but business and government leaders and helping them, too.”
Among the many things that I always remember from Purpose Driven Church was the way Rick Warren used the lesson on surfing for church growth.
“Surfing”, he said, “is the art of riding waves that God builds. God makes the waves, surfers just ride them. No surfer tries to create waves. If the waves aren’t there, you just don’t surf that day! On the other hand, when surfers see a good wave, they make the most of it, even if that means surfing in the middle of a storm.”
In my business, I’ve learned to say the same prayer taught by Rick Warren- “Father, I know you’re going to do some incredible things in your world today. Please give me the privilege of getting in on some of what you’re doing”. I’ve learned to stop praying “Lord, bless what I’m doing” and started to pray “Lord, help me to do what you are blessing”.
During my first months in business when almost no one was believing in what I was doing, I would always be reminded of how Rick Warren started his Saddleback Church in their living room with just 5 members. It’s now recognized as the fastest-growing Baptist church in the history of America. Rick Warren said “They forget that every large church started off as a small church. And no church becomes large without struggling through years of problems, setbacks, and failures”.
Although he acknowledged he “knew nothing about direct mail, marketing, or advertising”, he was already marketing savvy even right when he started to reach out to his large community.
If you browse through the book and simply read the headings, you can’t help but notice his marketing savvy. In Chapter 9 (Who Is You Target?), for example, here are the headings:
1)Targeting for Evangelism is Biblical
2) How Do You Define Your Target?
a) Define your target geographically
b) Define your target demographically
c) Define your target culturally
d) Define your target spiritually
3) Personalize Your Target
I must say that Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church gave me the solid biblical foundation on many things I now know about business and marketing. That foundation enabled me to sieve good business advice from bad advice from various sources.
Whenever I felt impatient about not seeing visible results in spite of my efforts, I would always be reminded of what Rick Warren said about the bamboo tree. He said “Of all the growth patterns I’ve observed as a gardener, the growth of the Chinese bamboo tree is the most amazing to me. Plant a bamboo sprout in the ground, and for four or five years (sometimes much longer) nothing happens! You water and fertilize, water and fertilize, water and fertilize - but you see no visible evidence that anything is happening. Nothing! But about the fifth year things change rather dramatically. In a six-week period the Chinese bamboo tree grows to be a staggering ninety feet tall! World Book Encyclopedia records that one bamboo can grow three feet in a single twenty-four hour period. It seems incredible that a plant lies dormant for years can suddenly explode with growth, but it happens without fail with bamboo trees.”
I believe in my heart, that the “bamboo sprout” planted by God in my business 2 1/2 years ago will someday, in God’s perfect time, grow exponentially without fail just like the bamboo tree…
To God be the glory!
Photo by Joi
