Faith

Growing up, faith is the one word I never heard, never knew the meaning of nor did I understand its’ importance and the life-changing positive impact it could have on my life.  

When I first discovered my gifts that God had given me, I became passionate about using them because I loved and appreciated the wonderful blessings God was gracious enough to bestow upon me.  Thank You, Father.  I love You, too.

Focus

Starting my entrepreneurial journey, God had equipped me with all the tools I would need to reach my destiny; His word, His principles, His promises, my gifts, skill set, knowledge, talent, wisdom, abilities, goals, dreams, visions and inspiration.  When I tell you that I have truly been blessed to be able to create from scratch (self-taught) a portfolio of unique and brilliant designs I have been blessed beyond belief and I enjoy it more than I could ever explain.  With all that God has given me, the way that He expresses His love to me through the gifts He’s blessed me with I still fell short of His glory.  I was like an emotional roller coaster that was up and down.  

For some strange reason I just could not stay focused on my business.  My mind was, as I like to say, all over the map, which simply meant  that achieving my goals would be harder than it ever had to be.  Here I am blessed beyond belief with multiple gifts, highly talented in so many different areas of my life with the amazing ability to easily create my own wealth with the power God had given me and yet I’m not able to scale, leverage and grow my design business?

Why?  Why am I sabatoging my own business.  Why is it that I can’t take my business to the highest level possible that my passion and smart work deserved.  I put in countless hours creating and designing my unique collection of masterpieces.  My light work designs were in a class all alone and yet they weren’t moving like I had dreamed, prayed and hoped that they would. Reason being, I just could not focus on my design business.  The only thing I seemed to be able to focus on was making new designs.

Cultivating my Passion with Faith and Focus

Designing was my passion and I just wanted to cultivate my passion for others.  It was easy for me to sit down and create something breath-taking.  I also thoroughly enjoyed website creation.  Designing my own logos and headers for all of my businesses was sheer joy for me.  It gave me a true sense of peace and joy, almost like buying and wrapping Christmas gifts for my family. After the building of my websites the thrill and excitement always seemed to fizzle out.  The thrill stopped right after I completed my websites. I immediately lost interest and focus on what I was doing, on the business I was desperately trying to build.   I had veered off from the path of my amazing journey ready to begin a new adventure that I already knew would end before it had a chance to live, breathe and thrive.

It seemed like every other month another brilliant mind blowing business was being presented to me, but instead of incorporating these gems into my present businesses as they pertained to my businesses, I would purchase the domain name, write the content, create the designs in an attempt to brand another new business model.  This was no way to do business especially since everything was relative.  

The reason that I creating this map and traveling from point A to point Z was because I focusing on all the wrong things. I knew my businesses had the potential to be a blessing to a multitude of people, like sand on the beach and I knew that Cyndi’s Light Work Designs could solve problems for people in more ways than one; at least this is what my heart was and is still telling me today and in all honesty I knew that my design business could make me a lot of money, but I was too busy going from one business to the next instead of just focusing on one business and growing it.   I was literally wearing my mind out.  Why, why, why???  

Incredibly talented and gifted, as many women are, I didn’t know how to put the pieces of the puzzle together for my business. Yes, I had all the tools that God had gifted me, but I was lost.  Yes, I was lost and I knew that I had to do something as time was not waiting for me.  Either I was going to focus and work like I did when I worked in corporate America or I was never ever going to find my way.  After careful thought I knew that I had to pray and ask God for His guidance for my business.  He had given me everything I needed, but it was all me.  My faith was as deep as the deepest ocean, but I wasn’t applying it to every aspect of my business. For me to focus on my business I had to use my faith and using my faith comes from God and His word.  When I think about having faith in God it is then that I begin to focus on the all the things that He was lovingly instructing me to do.  I have to admit that there are always other things going on in and around my life, but I decided that I was not going to use that as an excuse, no, not when my God is much bigger than any obstacle or giant I had to face.  

Time to Shift

There was a shift in the way that I began to think.  I now think about how God expects me to run a highly successful and thriving design business that my customers would also love and appreciate as well. Here is how I began to focus on my achieving success for my business:

• I bought several notebooks that I like to call journals.  
• I began writing a to-do-list every single night Monday to Saturday.  I now adhere to it.
• I write down all my goals right before praying prayers of thanksgiving. 
• I include my goals and dreams in my prayers always giving God thanks for His Holy Spirit speaking to my heart and for giving me the gift of dreams and goals.  
• I look forward to working on and achieving my goals by staying focused, with thanksgiving, on my business ventures.
• As I accomplish each goal, even if it is only one for that day, I strike it out and put the date and time next to it.  This keeps me highly motivated as well.
• I surrender my life to God and commit myself to Him.
• I also ask God to speak clearly to my heart because I need clarity.  

Okay, the above list is what I started doing to help me to stay focused on leveraging my business and I am thankful because this is the brilliant plan that works great for me and I’m so sure that it can work phenomenally well for you.  

So every evening I write down all my goals for the next day, I pray and then I go to sleep.  My mornings are usually busy and consists of an early rise to spend time with God reading, studying and meditating upon His awesomeness, lifting Him up through prayer with a sincere and thankful heart, mind, soul and spirit.  All of my challenges then begin at 10 a.m. which is the start of my business day!  For me, it is vital that I keep my notebook filled and visible to serve as a reminder to always pen my goals directly into my to do list every night.  I cannot stress this enough.  I keep my notebook on my desk which is right next to my bed because this is where peace abounds, calm exists and rests deep within my spirit.  

For me, all these things make an enormous difference in how I now run my business.  Writing a daily to do list helps to keep me focused and truly motivated because it helps me to envision accomplishing my goals, building my business and seeing my business thrive in ways I could never imagine.  

Written by Cynthia G. Boyer