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Having a Plan for Building Something isn’t Any Good if You Don’t Use it

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The Bible is a Blueprint for Building Our Best Life

We live in a world of idea bombardment, and it’s hard to sort through it all to know what is real. We see things on the news, social media, the internet, and TV programs. We hear things from our family, friends, neighbors, and community. So many different opinions.

The world thrives on conflict.

How can we determine what is real and what’s not, what’s right and what’s wrong? This is a subjective question that can be hard to answer. Who do you believe and why?

Just like building a structure can be done in a variety of different ways…so can your life. Ultimately some things work, and some things don’t. A house without a roof is going to get wet inside when it rains. A house without a foundation is not going to stay standing when the ground erodes.

A house built on a solid foundation will weather the storm.

Back to the question of how can we know how to build our best lives? Just like building a good building, we need a plan…a blueprint. Just like how a building project doesn’t go well when the blueprint is ignored, so it is with our lives and ignoring the Bible.

The Bible is our blueprint for building our best life.

Using a blueprint requires some work. Just because you have a blueprint in your office doesn’t mean it’s going to help you if you don’t get it out and use it. This doesn’t mean that unrolling it and flipping through the pages is enough…it’s not. You need to study it, learn it, and implement it or the building will not turn out well.

The same is true for life. If we don’t get the Bible off the shelf and study it, learn it, and implement it, our lives won’t turn out well.

A good builder doesn’t just look at the blueprint once and then put it away. There are questions and problems that come up constantly throughout the project. He uses it every day until the project is finished. The more he studies it, the more he knows about what is expected.

We should use the Bible in the same way. We should study it daily so that we know what is expected.

Another problem that can happen with blueprints is when a builder doesn’t fully understand or misinterprets the blueprint. Just looking at the foundation plan doesn’t tell us about the roof. Just looking at one page of the print will lead to mistakes in the construction as well as subcontractors being led to do the wrong things. This is why it’s important to ask questions and discuss it with the architect and other builders.

This happens with the Bible as well. We can’t just pick and choose a verse here or there and not know the whole plan.

You need to take the whole Bible into account so that you don’t make a mistake when building or lead others to.

Blueprints let us see what the architect expects from the builder. He shares all the different aspects of a building and how they should fit together. A builder who has built buildings before can begin to think he knows how to build and doesn’t need a blueprint. Inevitably this is when mistakes happen and can be very costly.

God is the architect of our lives and when we begin to think we know more than Him problems are sure to happen.

A builder must decide if he’s going to trust the architect’s plans or not. He can ignore them and build the building however he wants. The problem is…the building doesn’t belong to him, and if it’s built wrong, he won’t get paid.

The same is true for us. We have free will, and we can live our lives however we want.

The problem is, in the end, the payment we receive will be what we earned.

Use the Bible as your life blueprint. Get it off the shelf, study it, learn it, ask questions, and build your best life.

This past Sunday, Jim Miller shared the message to “Just Tell Them the Truth”. Here is a list of Scriptures that he used throughout his message.

  • Matthew 6:33
  • 2 Corinthians 11:2-3
  • Ephesians 4: 14-15
  • Colossians 2:8
  • 2 Timothy 4:1-4
  • Hebrews 2:1
  • Revelation 2:4-5
  • Revelation 3:3
  • Romans 3:23
  • Romans 6:23
  • Romans 5:8
  • Romans 10:13
  • Romans 10:9
  • Romans 12:1-2

Having a Business Plan is Crucial to Building Your Best Business

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Just Like a Building, You Need a Blueprint for Building a Better Business

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a solopreneur or have a team. If you have been in business for 30 years or just starting out. Regardless of the kind of work you do, the organizational plan for your business is as important as the work you do…maybe more.

Too many people run their business on a wing and a prayer. They just roll the dice and hope things work out

If you own your business and aren’t intentional about the organizational operation of your company, it is likely that you won’t make it past your 5th year. This is according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Just think about the number of businesses that you have seen come and go over the years.

In my 40 years of being in business I have learned a lot of lessons, some of them the hard way. Let me tell you, the tuition for “The School of Hard Knocks” is expensive.

There were times when I got behind on taxes so I could pay bills and times that I got behind on bills so I could pay taxes. Neither of these is a very good business plan. One of my SHK professors once told me, “When you steal from Peter to pay Paul, you make Peter a Paul bearer”.

If you want to avoid the need for a pallbearer for your business…you need a plan.

It’s common for people to start a business without a plan. Generally, someone has learned a trade or a craft and for whatever reason they decide to go into business. Most of the time they have given little, if any, thought to the business operation. They show up every day working hard and then, surprise…you owe some taxes and haven’t saved any money to pay them.

You need a plan, a blueprint for building the business.

There are a lot of similarities in constructing a sound building and a constructing profitable business.

Both need –

  • To start with design plans – the thing that gives you a clear direction of what you want the outcome to be.
  • An architect – the person that can see the vision of what the finished product will be.
  • A solid foundation – the thing that will support you when the storms come.
  • A good framework – the thing that holds everything together.
  • A builder – the person that reads and understands the plans and puts all the different pieces together correctly.
  • The proper tools – these are what allow the pieces to be shaped and fastened together in the right places in the right order.
  • A good team – these are the different people with the different skills and knowledge needed.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in business for years or are just starting out…

YOU NEED A PLAN.

If you or someone you know would like to minimize the time spent attending “The School of Hard Knocks”, then follow or share our Weekly Solutions with people who could use some help with a business plan.

Finding solutions for building dream businesses is what we’re about at Solution Building. If you have questions about business plans, contact us below.

Revised and reprinted from 02/24/18

The Internal Battle Between Right and Wrong

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Are You Conscious of Your Conscience?

Each of us has an ongoing internal battle of right and wrong. To make this internal conflict even more difficult, we’re bombarded by external forces pulling us in different directions.

How do we determine who’s going to win this battle?

What makes one thing right and another wrong? How do we know which is which? Ultimately, it comes down to what you use to measure right and wrong.

This battle is difficult, but no one said it was going to be easy.

As a Christian, I use the Scripture, the whole Scripture, for this. If I’m going to base my rights and wrongs in the Bible, I need to be careful to not pick and choose only small pieces but use the whole thing.

Just like a blueprint for building, if I don’t use the whole plan the building won’t be what it was designed to be.

The Bible is the blueprint for building my life.

We also have a built in right and wrong meter called a conscience. This meter is a sense of moral goodness for one’s own conduct, intentions or character together with a feeling of right or good. We can choose to listen to it or not.

Someone was asked if they knew the difference between conscience and conscious. They answered, CONSCIENCE is being aware of what’s right and wrong, CONSCIOUS is wishing you didn’t.

The battle of right and wrong doesn’t begin where we think it does…IT BEGINS WHERE WE THINK.

If decisions are choices…and our thinking determines our decisions, then we do what we do because of our thinking. It’s up to us to make the choices wisely. I would recommend following the blueprint.

An Overview of the “Blueprint for Building A Better Proposal”

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An Explanation of How That System Works

 

This is the third post in the Blueprint for Building A Better Proposal series. The first focused on the importance of communication between contractor and customer and the problems that can happen without it. The second listed the foundational pieces of the proposal system. 

In this post we’ll take an overview of the process and how the different pieces fit together.

STEP 1 – Gathering Information

Once you’ve been contacted by a potential customer schedule a meeting to discuss the customer’s dreams and find out what they hope to get from this project. At this initial meeting you will gather information –

  • Measurements and dimensions, existing and new

  • Building materials, existing and new

  • Pictures of pertinent areas and existing construction

  • Customer’s design ideas and finishes

The information gathered in this meeting can be recorded in a variety of ways. The important thing in this step is to gather any and all information needed to prepare an accurate proposal. It can be handwritten on a printed out Bid Sheet. It can be typed in an electronic Bid Sheet on a tablet, smart phone or laptop. The purpose for using the Bid Sheet is that all the areas of a construction project are listed out, this minimizes overlooking things.

STEP 2 – Preparing the Scope of Work

After the preliminary information has been gathered it’s time to clarify the scope of the project by writing out the description of each specific task in terminology that both the customer and the contractor understand. It needs to include enough specifics to be thorough without being too technical. It doesn’t help communication if it’s confusing for the customer. This written description on the Bid Sheet gets transferred to the Proposal and serves as a written scope of work to be performed and materials to be provided.

STEP 3 – Pricing the Project

Next is putting prices to the project. This process involves two different Excel spreadsheets, the Worksheet and the Data Base. Based on the descriptions written on the Bid Sheet, content from the Data Base will be copied and pasted into the correlating cells on the Worksheet. After the pertinent information from the Data Base has been placed on the Worksheet it’s time to fill in the specific quantities.

STEP 4 – Quantities

On the Worksheet you will fill in the quantity needed to do the work on that line item. This may be lineal feet, square feet, square yards, cubic feet, cubic yards or numbers of pieces. Once this is completed you will now have prices for the Proposal. 

STEP 5 – Preparing the Proposal

Now you have everything you need to prepare the Proposal. You will use the description from the Bid Sheet and the prices from the Worksheet and put them both on the Proposal. Now you have a description for each specific task to be provided and the price for each. After filling out the customer’s information, the total project price, how payments are to be made and the duration of time to do the project, the Proposal is ready to present to the customer.

Next week I’ll go into the details of Gathering Information.

Building Your Business Is Critical to The Survival of The Business

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Just Like the Construction of a Building – You Need a Blueprint for Your Company

 

If you own your business and aren’t being intentional about the organizational operation of your company, it is likely that you won’t make it past your 5th year. This is according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics https://www.bls.gov/bdm/entrepreneurship/bdm_chart3.htm. Just think about the number of businesses that you have seen come and go.

Whether you are a solopreneur or you have a team. It doesn’t matter if you have been in business for 30 years or just starting out. Regardless of the kind of work you do, the organizational plan is just as important as the work you do…maybe more.

I know in my 40 years of being in business I have learned some lessons the hard way. Let me tell you, the tuition for ‘The School of Hard Knocks’ is expensive. There were times when I got behind on taxes to pay bills and times that I got behind on bills so that I could pay taxes. Neither of these is a very good business plan. One of my SHK professors once told me, “that when you steal from Peter to pay Paul, you make Peter a Paul bearer”. If you want to avoid the need for a pallbearer for your business…you need a plan.

It is common for people to start a business without a plan. Generally, someone has learned a trade or a craft and for whatever reason they decide to go into business on their own. Most of the time they have given little, if any, thought to business structure. They show up every day working hard and then…surprise, you owe some taxes and haven’t saved any money to pay them. They needed a plan, a blueprint for building the business.

Being in the construction business I see a lot of similarities in constructing a sound building and a constructing profitable business.

  • Both need to start with design plans – the thing that gives you a clear direction of what you want the outcome to be.
  • Both need an architect – the person that can see the vision of what the finished product will be.
  • Both need a good solid foundation – the thing that will support you when the storms come.
  • Both need good framework – the thing that holds everything together.

     

  • Both need a builder – the person that reads and understands the plans and puts all the different pieces together correctly.
  • Both need the proper tools – these are what allow the pieces to be shaped and fastened together in the right places in the right order.
  • Both need a good team – these are the different people with the different skills and knowledge needed.

It doesn’t matter if you have been in business for years or are just starting, YOU NEED A PLAN. If you would like to minimize the time you spend attending ‘The School of Hard Knocks’, then keep following our blog. We are working on some Business Building Solutions for just this purpose.

 

What areas of building your business would some ‘higher education’ be helpful.