CeasterHRISTUS RESURREXIT!  Christ is risen!

But this is a business blog – why would I want to bring Easter into the picture?

Because every one of our companies needs vitality.  It’s a living organism, which means it will either be nourished or die.  Easter is a time when we focus on renewal in the Christian faith, so it would be very appropriate to also spend a few minutes thinking about whether the foundation of our business is growing – or dying.

Another lesson we learn from Easter is that it’s necessary to go through a kind of death to reach the glorious life on the other side.  Your company may need to “die” to some of its current priorities so that it can develop into the kind of business that it really should become.

A couple of weeks ago I talked about New Belgium’s focus on their people.  That’s all grand and lovely, but don’t you think that they had to make sacrifices to get there?  They had all the industry advisers telling them that it’s impossible to be profitable with such expensive benefits.  They made significant investments that other companies would never have the courage for.

But because it’s their foundation, they did it anyway.

They had faith.  In themselves, in their people, and in the rightness of their vision.

In my own business, I have to constantly be looking out for what I’m really trying to achieve.  Sure, I deliver business coaching, and I want to make a profit at it.  But my deeper foundation is about helping people to succeed in their life’s goals by creating thriving, valuable companies.  That not only affects my coaching itself, but also how I market my services.  I “give away” a significant amount of my service not as a loss leader to get people to spend more, but because it makes an important difference to the people I meet.

And that’s important to me, personally and spiritually.

So it’s time to think about Easter and springtime renewal:  What are you doing to inject a new vitality into your business?  What’s going to make it more vibrant in April than it was in March?

By the way, lest you think that I’m spending Easter writing on a blog – I’m not.  I’m taking advantage of WordPress’ ability to delay posting.  Today, I’m at church and with family!