Business and faith, can they blend together? I sat down with Christa Hutchins to discuss finding balance and harmony in life and business through faith. Christa has a unique business. She equips busy communicators to be more efficient and effective in their projects and business. She turns their ideas into big ministry or business projects.
What role does faith play in success?
Christa is a chemical engineer by degree and a project manager in the engineering and construction industry. She has a linear thinking brain which helps her bring structure and strategy to people who have creative ideas but struggle with prioritizing and breaking down the steps to make them a reality. Her clients are mostly women who work during the day and have a creative outlet through their side business or ministry. Christa's focus is on creatives such as writers, speakers, podcasters, and people with creative businesses.
What is the role of faith in business?
For Christa, it's a matter of priorities and time management. She is an empty nester and has a lot of time in the evenings and weekends to work with her clients. She has established a sabbath period where she doesn't work from Saturday evening to Sunday after church. During this time, she prioritizes her relationship with the Lord and spends time with her husband and church family. Additionally, she makes time for morning quiet times and bible study.
Her special spark is generosity. Christa blends her business and faith through generosity to her clients, such as promoting what they are doing in their own businesses. She is also incredibly generous with friends and people that have supported her. She supports them in this online business world by sharing those things not what just when it benefits her but sharing because she genuinely want people that she cares about to be successful.
How do you integrate faith in business?
Everybody needs to be working on relationships and making time to network with people, to have coffee chats with people, just to learn what people are doing. This way you will have a basket of options that you can offer others when they need help if you can't help them yourself. Christa shared, “I think the generosity and the level of generosity is what people remark on a lot when they talk about the things that I do in relationships.”
I love that and I think it's almost counterintuitive. It's not what we would expect because here Christa was sharing about her busy daytime schedule and her busy evening schedule with clients. Then she said that the key to all of this is being generous with your time. I asked Christa how she did it.
What are the Core Values of a Faith Based Business?
“I think it's being generous with your time, but also being generous with your wisdom, your connections and with your platform whatever size your platform is. Whether it's big or small, you can be generous with that by offering it to other people. You have no idea what an encouragement that is to someone, especially if it's someone who's a step or two behind you. For you to share your platform with them such as to invite them on an Instagram live or to share about their product in your newsletter.
It is a huge encouragement, even if it doesn't yield a sale. Just validating what they do means so much to people. So that's an easy way to be generous.”
I love that there is no competition in the kingdom. The biggest blessing is for those of us who are giving. It's never a detriment to what God has called us to do But it's out of the abundance of what he's called us to do,
Free Money Mindset Masterclass for Christian Entrepreneurs: Dissolving the 3 Most Common Money Blocks with the Truth of God’s Word so You Can Unlock Greater Joy, Fulfillment and Confidence to Grow Your Income & Impact